The technique works like this
while true: if tickets exist -> burn down the backlog by one ticket, exit if not -> figure out what feature would make sense to add next, create PRD and ERD, break down into tickets, exit
It did get stuck once due to tty issues related to running playwright in a non-tty environment but otherwise I have not had to manually step in.
I have it running in a droplet using systemd continuously.
Toy code the agent is creating is a multi-tenant todo kata. Here is the set of prompts:
https://github.com/waynenilsen/ralph-kata-2/tree/main/prompts
Anyone could make their own version of the same, these are just the set of prompts that work for me.
In 15 hours it created a full multi-tenant auth system from scratch and todos with assignees due dates, email reminders, tags and full text search. I created the first PRD by hand with something like "create a PRD for a multi-tenant todo system".
For anyone looking to do something similar, the e2e tests have played a critical role in closing the agent's loop with reality.
The age of programming with prompts is clearly arriving.
codingdave•1h ago
OK. And did that scratch auth system pass any level of security testing? If it did, great, that is worth talking about. But what I've seen generated by AI isn't anywhere near secure.
waynenilsen•1h ago
the ticket burndown is a very nice feature because whenever you want to add a ticket it'll just pick it up and do its best