← Patterns / practice
Checklists with go-back lines
The agent copies the checklist into its reply and ticks it off, and a failed check sends it back a step.
- Authors
- Michael Staton
- Augmented with
- Claude Code on Claude Opus 5.5
- Tags
- Agent-Skills · Checklists · Feedback-Loops
What it is
Multi-step skills carry a checklist the agent copies into its reply and ticks off as it goes. Checks that can fail carry a go-back line :
- [ ] Every new doc's frontmatter parses (run the parser; don't eyeball it)
→ if any fails, fix it and re-run this check before continuingWhy
Agents skip steps on long tasks, and a ticked box can wave through a wrong result. The go-back line turns a checklist into a feedback loop: check, fix, check again.
How
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Process checklists live in the workflow skills.
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Document checklists ("done when") live at the end of each template.
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Repo-specific additions live in that repo's clarified loop doc, not in copies scattered through folders.