by Amit Shekhar · 20 August 2026
What is Loop Engineering?
Loop Engineering, the practice of designing the repeating cycle that an AI agent runs again and again until a task is actually finished. We will also see why we need it, what one turn of the loop looks like, the parts of the loop that we must control, how it is different from prompt engineering and context engineering, the common ways a loop breaks, the techniques that fix those breaks, and where it works well and where it fails.
Before you read, guessHow did we previously describe the function of a language model?
Ten seconds, a guess, then read — a wrong guess still makes the answer stick.
What this article covers
- What is Loop Engineering?
- Loop Engineering = Loop + Engineering
- Why do we need Loop Engineering?
- What is a loop in an AI agent?
- The simplest loop and its problems
- The parts of the loop that we must engineer
- Prompt Engineering vs Context Engineering vs Loop Engineering
- Common ways a loop breaks
- Techniques of Loop Engineering
- A complete example
- Where it works well and where it fails
The article lives on outcomeschool.com. Read it there, then come back: the tutor in the margin has read it and will answer questions, and the questions below check what stayed.