Claim◆Article
Loop engineering is really just old-school automation like cron jobs and triggers rebranded, since a fully automatable strategic workflow either becomes tactical AI work or is plain automation, and people seem to have forgotten automation predates LLMs.
Oded Messer argues that 'loop engineering' is mostly a rebrand of long-existing automation patterns (cron jobs, triggers), and that a truly automatable strategic workflow is either just tactical AI use or old-school automation — not a new concept. ✦ AI generated
Oded Messer · The Pragmatic Engineer · 2026-07-14 · original ↗
The idea is that strategic workflows that are repeatable and automatable can be done so with an agent. OK. But if my strategic workflow is automatable then it either becomes tactical if the AI is capable enough or it's just a high level old-school-automation I can set up like a cron or a trigger. The name suggests simplicity and repetition. Sometimes it feels like AI enthusiasts forgot automation was a thing before LLMs.
Read full article ↗excerpt · fair-use quotation
- ·Repeatable, automatable strategic workflows can be run by an agent
- ·But if it's truly automatable, it's not new
- ·It's either tactical AI work or old-school automation
- ·Cron jobs and triggers already solved this
- ·Name implies simplicity and repetition, nothing more
- ·AI enthusiasts seem to forget automation predates LLMs
- ·No genuinely new category is being created
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rebuts → Loop engineering means designing the system that prompts the agent, instead of being the person who prompts it yourself.Addy Osmani · The Pragmatic Engineerrebuts → My job is no longer to write prompts for Claude — it's to write loops that prompt Claude and figure out what to do.Boris Cherny · The Pragmatic Engineer