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How to Write Your Own Gauntlet Loop Prompt (With Template)

The five slots of a gauntlet prompt: goal, named fetchable bar, split, builder plus separate critic, earned exit. With a worked 120-word example.

How to Write Your Own Gauntlet Loop Prompt (With Template)

How to Write Your Own Gauntlet Loop Prompt (With Template)

The gauntlet loop is not a magic incantation; it is a structure. Once you know the five slots, you can write one for any goal in two minutes. Here is the recipe, with the choices that matter.

The five slots

  • Goal. One sentence. A landing page, an essay, a CLI tool, a research brief. Anything whose output can be opened, read, run or screenshotted.
  • Bar. The hard part. Pick something NAMED (a specific page, post, repo or product, not a category), FETCHABLE (the critic can actually open or screenshot it) and COMPARABLE (your output and the bar can sit side by side). "Stripe's pricing page" works. "A world-class pricing page" does not.
  • Split. Tell the agent to break the goal into small pieces that each produce a real artifact. Small matters: a critic can judge a hero section; it cannot judge "the whole site" in one look.
  • Builder and critic, separated. For each piece, a builder produces the artifact and a SEPARATE critic with fresh context judges it. The critic never sees the builder's reasoning, only the output.
  • Exit. The critic compares blind and picks a winner. If the bar wins, it names the single biggest gap; the builder fixes only that; repeat. The loop ends when your work wins, or when you stop it. Never after N rounds.

    • A worked example

    "Build a landing page for my trail-running brand, dark and green, that feels alive. Quality bar: the current Nike Trail campaign page, screenshotted at desktop and mobile. Split the page into hero, product grid, story section and footer. For each, run a builder, then a separate harsh critic that screenshots my section next to Nike's, labels stripped, and picks the better one. If Nike wins, name the single biggest gap and fix only that. Loop until mine wins. Do not stop after a fixed number of rounds."

    That is the whole thing. About 120 words.

    Shortcuts

    The reusable template has the slots ready to fill, and the original Claude of Duty prompt shows the pattern at maximum ambition. If your run drifts, check the failure modes - it is almost always a vague bar.

    Tags
    gauntlet-loop·agent-loop·prompt-engineering·claude-code·builder-critic·agents

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