There is absolutely NO way that anyone touting this “loop engineering” absurdity has spent significant time honestly confronting how AI systems actually drift, reinterpret instructions and manufacture their own logic.
Yeah, I said it.
I just reviewed a so-called “loop engineering” repo that is basically made up of prose-style Markdown.
Is this really what all the hoopla is about?
Are real developers and software engineers seriously staking their reputations on essentially feeding AI agents prose instructions—and calling the resulting orchestration an engineering discipline?
I understand that the Markdown does not literally execute itself.
I understand that there are schedulers, tools, APIs, tests, Git workflows and agent harnesses underneath it.
That does not make the central premise any less absurd.
The behavioral control layer is still largely prose!
Ambiguous, probabilistically interpreted, context-sensitive prose.
And we already know that AI systems can reinterpret instructions, expand scope, rationalize deviations and confidently declare success according to criteria they have effectively reframed for themselves.
So where is the actual anti-drift guardrail?
Where is the immutable, independently enforced mechanism that prevents the loop from gradually changing the meaning of its own mission?
I am beyond stunned.
And for those of you who need to hear it dressed up in more technical language, here it is:
You are placing probabilistic natural-language interpretation inside the behavioral control plane of software development without demonstrating adequate protection against semantic drift, goal reinterpretation, scope expansion, instruction mutation or correlated verifier failure.
like I said... beyond stunned.
There is absolutely NO way that anyone touting this “loop engineering” absurdity has spent significant time honestly confronting how AI systems actually drift, reinterpret instructions and… | Scarab Systems | 80 comments
There is absolutely NO way that anyone touting this “loop engineering” absurdity has spent significant time honestly confronting how AI systems actually drift, reinterpret instructions and manufacture their own logic. Yeah, I said it. I just reviewed a so-called “loop engineering” repo that is basically made up of prose-style Markdown. Is this really what all the hoopla is about? Are real developers and software engineers seriously staking their reputations on essentially feeding AI agents prose instructions—and calling the resulting orchestration an engineering discipline? I understand that the Markdown does not literally execute itself. I understand that there are schedulers, tools, APIs, tests, Git workflows and agent harnesses underneath it. That does not make the central premise any less absurd. The behavioral control layer is still largely prose! Ambiguous, probabilistically interpreted, context-sensitive prose. And we already know that AI systems can reinterpret instructions, expand scope, rationalize deviations and confidently declare success according to criteria they have effectively reframed for themselves. So where is the actual anti-drift guardrail? Where is the immutable, independently enforced mechanism that prevents the loop from gradually changing the meaning of its own mission? I am beyond stunned. And for those of you who need to hear it dressed up in more technical language, here it is: You are placing probabilistic natural-language interpretation inside the behavioral control plane of software development without demonstrating adequate protection against semantic drift, goal reinterpretation, scope expansion, instruction mutation or correlated verifier failure. like I said... beyond stunned. | 80 comments on LinkedIn
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Top comments (4)
That line about "probabilistic natural-language inside the behavioral control plane" — most honest take on loop engineering I've seen in a while. Everyone else just hand-waves the drift problem. You named every single thing that can go wrong in one sentence.
I added the link to the actual post so folks could see some of the replies...it was amazing how many people on LinkedIn are willing to argue a theory with no evidence at all..
It's my own take but I'm always more than happy to discuss really nerdy ideas with people and figure it out but literally no one had anything substantive to say or push back with... really astonishing.
Honestly, trolls and hot takes are a dime a dozen — always have been, on every platform. The real skill isn't arguing with them. It's learning to sift through the noise and find the few signals that are actually worth your time.
Your post was one of those signals. That's why I commented. Keep writing real stuff — the right readers will find you. The rest was never your audience anyway.
🙏