Leopold vs Ralph

Ralph is a well-known autonomous loop: you write a prd.json of user stories, and a loop spawns a fresh agent each iteration to implement the next story, runs checks, commits if they pass, and repeats until done. It is a deliberately simple, brute-force loop.

Leopold is a different bet. The goal is not to grind a spec; it is to debate a feature, then conduct Claude Code to a high-quality, complete implementation, deciding the way you would and only pinging you when it truly must.

The core difference

flowchart LR
    subgraph Ralph
        direction TB
        S1[prd.json] --> W1[worker]
        W1 --> W2[worker]
        W2 --> W3[worker]
    end
    subgraph Leopold
        direction TB
        Cond["Conductor<br/>(your charter)"] --> LW1[fresh worker]
        Cond --> LW2[fresh worker]
        Cond --> LW3[fresh worker]
    end

Ralph is repeated operators with no maestro. Leopold is a conductor plus operators. Ralph removes the human by ignoring judgment; Leopold removes the human by encoding it.

Side by side

Dimension	Ralph	Leopold
How it starts	you write prd.json	you debate the feature; it captures mission + charter
Forks ("A or B?")	no concept; it guesses or fails	decision protocol: decides as you would, logs, escalates only irreversible+ambiguous
Judgment / taste	none	the charter is your taste, encoded
Quality bar	typecheck + tests pass	conducts the gstack toolchain (/spec, /code-review, /verify, /qa, /investigate)
Memory	fresh context + git + progress.txt	fresh worker context + a persistent conductor + System of Context
Git	commits automatically	locked; stages and reports, you commit
You in the loop	runs and exits	decides, notifies, calls you only when it must

What Ralph gets right

Ralph's fresh-context-per-task is a good idea, not a flaw: a context window that fills up degrades quality. Leopold's SDK driver adopts exactly this, and adds the piece Ralph lacks — a persistent conductor that holds the mission, charter, and decisions across the whole run.

See the SDK Driver for how that composes.