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Build Agent Loops That Never Stop Shipping

You start an agent, it does something, you check it, you start it again. That’s one loop, and you’re the scheduler. In this workshop you’ll build the loops that run without you.

A four-hour working session with Joel Hooks.

Free, by application.

• Read the workshop page with your agent.
• Answer five questions about your work, availability, and whether you prefer one session or two. You can skip any answer.
• Edit the card and approve it before your agent sends anything.

The idea

The first workshop built one loop: an agent working one issue at a time. This one goes up a level: graphs of loops of graphs of loops. Your agents’ work runs as durable plans that pick up where they left off, so shipping doesn’t stop when you do.

What we’ll build

• Loops that wake themselves, wait on real conditions, and keep going across restarts.
• Durable agent plans on Pi Durable: work runs as a graph, and finished steps never run twice.
• Judges that check work before it lands.
• Self-improvement: mistakes on the shipped path become fences³⁹. Stale fences get deleted.

The factory needs something to build, so each of us builds a personal cloud inside a Linux container. It’s the McGuffin. It also happens to be a place your loops could live afterward.

Working prototypes you’ll leave with

• Your own agent loops, built to fit how you work.
• A personal cloud running in a container on your machine.
• A durable loop that shipped verified work while you weren’t watching.
• One fence you added from a real mistake, and one you deleted.

Reference: the stack Joel uses

Read these for context. You’ll build your own.

Before you come

• Watch the first workshop (90 min). We won’t repeat it.
• Have Pi installed and a model subscription you’re happy to spend.
• We check everyone’s setup together a week before. No live install debugging.

Check your setup before you come. Your coding agent finds what’s missing.

Check my setup for the "Build Agent Loops That Never Stop Shipping" session.
1. Check that Docker is running (Docker Desktop or OrbStack).
2. Create a private repo from the joelhooks/rat-stack template and clone it: gh repo create my-factory --private --template joelhooks/rat-stack
3. Read https://ratstack.sh/llms.txt
4. Tell me what is missing.

Apply for a free seat

Four hours with Joel. Free, by application. The date gets set with the people picked.

How it works

1. Click the button. It copies a short prompt.

2. Paste it into your coding agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, whatever you use.

3. Your agent drafts your application from what it knows about your work. It asks what it can’t figure out.

   It asks for your name and X profile. You can skip both. It asks when you’re free and whether you’d prefer one session or two. It also asks whether we can email you, and whether Joel can share your email with the others picked.

4. It shows you exactly what it will send. You approve it, then confirm by email.

Your agent sends nothing until you say yes.

Joel reads every application and picks who joins. Confirming your email isn’t a seat.