Martin Loop

MartinLoop

Give coding agents more work. Watch them less. Ship more.

MartinLoop lets you give coding agents real software jobs without babysitting every step.

Your coding agent still writes the code. MartinLoop keeps the job focused, bounded, and accountable — with limits, stop conditions, verification, recovery, and a clear outcome when the run ends.

Trust your coding agents with real work.

Built from thousands of agent runs where the problem was not just intelligence — it was whether you could give the agent a real job and confidently walk away.

Measure your loop tax: npx -y martin-loop@latest audit Get started: npx -y martin-loop@latest start Try the demo: npx -y martin-loop@latest demo

MartinLoop is part of the NVIDIA Inception program.

Start Here

Audit first — run npx -y martin-loop@latest audit to see how much API-equivalent Claude Code spend went into fix-and-retry loops. Add --offline for zero network access or --share for a shareable summary.

Install / onboard — run npx -y martin-loop@latest start, or install it globally with npm install -g martin-loop@latest.

Governed run — define an objective, verifier, budget, and iteration cap with martin run.

Verifier — completion requires fresh verifier evidence bound to the active run and workspace. A configured verifier proves only the checks it runs; VERIFIED is not a claim that the code is bug-free or automatically safe to merge.

Budget — set a hard spend ceiling with --budget-usd and an attempt ceiling with --max-iterations.

Receipts — inspect the latest result with martin dossier --latest and validate stored integrity with martin runs verify --latest.

Hosted sync (optional) — governed work is local-first. Configure MARTIN_API_TOKEN and MARTIN_TELEMETRY_ENDPOINT, then use martin sync status and martin sync flush to send preserved evidence to a dashboard later. See the quickstart.

MCP — install @martinloop/mcp@latest in a supported host or generate host configuration with martin mcp print-config.

Documentation — continue with the quickstart, CLI reference, or MCP setup.

When --model is provided, MartinLoop passes it through unchanged. Without --model, the authenticated host runtime chooses its own default. MartinLoop does not inject a hidden fallback model.

For AI Agents

MartinLoop is the system around the coding job.

The coding agent still writes the code. MartinLoop keeps the job, limits, verification, recovery, outcome, and history consistent around the work.

Use MartinLoop when a coding task needs:

• clear job and success criteria
• preflight readiness before agent spend
• hard budget and iteration limits
• allowed or denied edit scope
• controlled retries and stop conditions
• independent verifier commands
• recovery and rollback evidence
• a finite completion decision
• run receipts, dossiers, history, failure classification, and post-run analysis
• one consistent workflow across supported coding-agent runtimes

Canonical lifecycle:

DEFINE

-> PREFLIGHT -> CONTROL -> VERIFY -> RECOVER -> PROVE -> ANALYZE

The product-level flow is Definition of Done -> Controlled Run -> Verified Handoff.

For machine-readable context start with llms.txt, llms-full.txt, and MartinLoop for AI Agents.

One System Around the Run

Teams should not need to stitch together a separate script or point tool for every part of coding-agent execution. MartinLoop connects the control path around the agent from preflight through post-run evidence.

MartinLoop does not replace Git, GitHub, CI, dedicated security scanners, observability platforms, code review, or the coding agent itself. It gives those workflows one governed execution record to inspect.

Change the worker. Keep the job.

MartinLoop is model-agnostic by design. The job, limits, verification, recovery, and outcome are separate from the worker underneath.

Native coding-agent CLIs and OpenAI-compatible model runtimes use different execution paths, so MartinLoop only describes a worker as fully supported when that execution path has been publicly released and validated.

Why MartinLoop

AI coding agents can create more software than ever. The problem is trusting them with bigger jobs without turning yourself into their full-time manager.

Agents drift. They retry. They break unrelated things. They say "done" too early. And a run that was supposed to save time can create even more work to review.

MartinLoop keeps the job accountable outside the agent itself: clear boundaries, hard limits, configured checks, recovery information, and an explicit outcome.

The goal is simple:

Give the agent more responsibility without giving it unlimited freedom.

Why Teams Adopt MartinLoop

• Less babysitting — give agents larger jobs without watching every step.
• Clear boundaries — keep scope, attempts, and spend inside the limits you set.
• Checks before "done" — configured verification decides whether the evidence passed.
• Understand failures — know why the run stopped instead of digging through logs.
• Recover cleanly — preserve enough evidence to retry, repair, roll back, or hand off.
• One workflow across agents — keep the job consistent as the worker underneath changes.

More software. Less supervision.

See Your Loop Tax

Before changing your workflow, measure it:

npx -y martin-loop@0.9.0 audit

MartinLoop reads Claude Code session history locally and reports how much API-equivalent agent spend happened inside fix-and-retry loops, how often verifier commands failed, the longest retry chain, and sessions that ended red. Session contents stay local. Use --offline to disable even the public pricing lookup, and --share to create a screenshot-ready SVG plus Markdown summary.

Then put limits around the next run:

npx -y martin-loop@0.9.0 enable --engine codex

npx -y martin-loop@0.9.0 run " " --verify "npm test" --budget-usd 2 --max-iterations 3

2-Minute Install Path

If MartinLoop detects more than one supported coding-agent runtime, save the one you want to use before the first governed run. For example:

npx -y martin-loop@latest enable --engine codex

Replace codex with claude or gemini when that is your intended runtime.

npx -y martin-loop@latest start

npx -y martin-loop@latest demo cd martin-loop-demo npm install npx -y martin-loop@latest run "Summarize the demo workspace and prove tests still pass" --verify "npm test" --budget-usd 2 --max-iterations 1

Quick Start

Try MartinLoop in a disposable demo workspace:

npx -y martin-loop@latest enable --engine codex

npx -y martin-loop@latest start npx -y martin-loop@latest demo npx -y martin-loop@latest --version cd martin-loop-demo npm install npx -y martin-loop@latest run "Summarize the demo workspace and prove tests still pass" --verify "npm test" --budget-usd 2 --max-iterations 1 npx -y martin-loop@latest dossier --latest npx -y martin-loop@latest share --latest

Optional global install:

npm install -g martin-loop

martin-loop --version

If this flow is useful, open an issue with feedback so we can keep improving the public experience.

start prints the first-run guided path. run auto-checks doctor, session-start, and preflight, then executes when the environment is ready. Use --proof only when you intentionally want an explicit no-spend lane.

Inspect-first flow:

npx -y martin-loop@latest enable --engine codex

npx -y martin-loop@latest doctor npx -y martin-loop@latest session-start npx -y martin-loop@latest preflight "Summarize the demo workspace and prove tests still pass" --verify "npm test"

share --latest writes three files into the selected run directory under share/: run-receipt.json, run-receipt.md, and proof-card.svg.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.6.5: MartinLoop 0.6.5.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.6.6: MartinLoop 0.6.6.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.6.7: MartinLoop 0.6.7.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.6.8: MartinLoop 0.6.8.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.7.0: MartinLoop 0.7.0.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.7.1: MartinLoop 0.7.1.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.0: MartinLoop 0.8.0.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.1: MartinLoop 0.8.1.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.2: MartinLoop 0.8.2.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.3: MartinLoop 0.8.3.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.4: MartinLoop 0.8.4.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.5: MartinLoop 0.8.5.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.6: MartinLoop 0.8.6.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.7: MartinLoop 0.8.7.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.8: MartinLoop 0.8.8.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.8.9: MartinLoop 0.8.9.

Release notes for MartinLoop 0.9.0: MartinLoop 0.9.0.

Swarm Mode Demo

Run the deterministic 15-agent launch-board demo without provider calls or spend:

npx -y martin-loop@0.9.0 demo --swarm

That default result is local simulation evidence only: it is non-governed, is not persisted to the Swarm run store, and does not evaluate signed receipt integrity. Inspect simulation output through the `demo