Loop Design Skill

A Claude skill that turns any recurring business deliverable into a designed AI loop — by interviewing you in management language and producing a completed Loop Design Canvas plus a plain-language, runnable loop spec. It asks the questions a good operator asks ("How would you judge a junior hire's version? What would make you reject it?") and it refuses vague success criteria: no testable definition of done, no loop.

Companion to the loop-design method at cmoconfessions.com/loops, from the practice behind Kill the Battle Card and the PMM Skill Stack.

What it does

• Interviews, not configures — management questions in plain language; no AI jargon required
• Forces testable goals — "improve our case studies" becomes "every closed-won deal has a publishable draft within two weeks"
• Builds your Done-Test (the eval) — choosing the pattern that fits: checklist, rubric, golden example, or claims audit, with an optional second-AI reviewer
• Refuses vague criteria — "make it professional" gets you sharper questions back, not a hollow canvas; a loop built on a vague eval automates disappointment
• Defines the full loop — worker, iteration rule, escalation path, write-back, owner, and cadence
• Outputs three artifacts — the completed canvas (markdown), a runnable loop spec you can paste into any AI tool your company uses, and the Done-Test as a standalone checklist

When it triggers

Phrases like:

• "Design a loop for [recurring task]"
• "Turn this recurring deliverable into a loop"
• "Help me write an eval for [work product]"
• "Fill in a loop canvas with me"

Installation

Option A — Claude.ai (no command line — where most operators work)

1. Download loop-design-skill.skill from this repo (top level, one click).
2. In claude.ai, open Settings → Capabilities, find Skills, and upload the file.
3. Done — next time you ask to design a loop, the skill runs.

Option B — Claude Code (if you work in the terminal)

Copy the skill folder into your Claude skills directory:

# Personal (all projects)
cp -r loop-design-skill ~/.claude/skills/

# Or project-scoped
cp -r loop-design-skill /path/to/project/.claude/skills/

Restart Claude Code (or start a new session) and the skill will be available.

Usage

Design a loop for our weekly campaign QA. It goes to the CMO every Friday.

The skill interviews you, then returns the canvas, the runnable spec, and the checklist. See examples/ for a worked interview (invented, illustrative data) — including the moment the skill refuses a vague criterion and sharpens it.

The blank canvas

Prefer paper first? The one-page Loop Design Canvas is a free PDF: cmoconfessions.com/loops.

Repository contents

• loop-design-skill/SKILL.md — the skill
• examples/ — worked example (illustrative, invented data)
• loop-design-skill.skill — packaged for upload

Part of a series

Prompt → skill → loop. The method: Stop Prompting. Start Managing. · The tools: the PMM Skill Stack · Built by Daniel Glickman — product marketing and AI leader.