Run the loop

Day-to-day work in Exosuit follows SOAR: Status → Orient → Act → Review (RFC 00224). If you know Boyd’s OODA loop, SOAR is the same idea with one change: OODA assumes a single actor, and SOAR assumes a human-AI pair where you keep decision authority. You run the loop all day, and it keeps the work grounded in what’s actually there instead of what the agent remembers.

The four phases

Status — where am I?

Detect current state and any drift from the planned trajectory. You are not sensing a raw environment; you are checking the delta from the plan.

• exo status — phase, tasks, and git state at a glance.
• exo phase status — the detailed phase breakdown.
• exo task list — the task-level view.

Outputs: current phase and epoch context, completed versus pending work, git dirty state, and any blockers or anomalies.

Orient — what are my options?

Synthesize context, update the mental model, and generate actionable options.

• exo map — active work and suggested next actions.
• exo map --next — a single best next action.
• exo context — a full context dump for recovery.
• exo goal list — goals with their RFC linkage.

Outputs: ranked options with rationale, repair paths when state is inconsistent, and any pending intents that need attention.

Act — execute the chosen action

Perform concrete work: code, tests, documentation. The constraint is the heart of SOAR. The human decides (explicitly or by delegation); the AI acts.

• exo task start, exo task log, exo task complete — task mutation.
• exo goal complete — close a goal with a log entry.
• Code edits and test runs in the workspace.

Review — did it work?

Verify the work meets expectations and capture what was learned. OODA leaves verification implicit in the next Observe; SOAR makes it an explicit phase.

• exo verify — run verification checks.
• Human judgment — visual inspection, manual testing.
• PR review — the code-review process.

Outputs: pass/fail status, learnings to record, and the trigger for the next iteration.

Cadence

You don’t run the four phases in a rigid march. Different moments lean on different phases.

• Session start: Status → Orient. Where am I, and what is next?
• During work: Act → Review → Status in a tight loop. Execute, verify, re-check state.
• At decision points: Orient. What are my options?
• Strategic moments: step out to the Plan tools (exo rfc, exo epoch, roadmap work). These operate across SOAR cycles and are not part of the tactical loop.

A complete SOAR cycle often culminates in a pull request. The PR is a Review artifact that captures what was done and invites verification. Merging closes the loop and produces a new Status on the main branch.

SOAR is the all-day tactical loop. To implement a single discrete unit of work with more rigor, use the heavier Prepare → Execute → Review protocol, which adds explicit approval gates between phases.