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Slang & Culture

Ralph loop

A way of running an AI coding agent in a simple loop: give it the same task prompt over and over, letting it pick up where it left off each time, until the work is done. Named after Ralph Wiggum from The Simpsons — dim but relentlessly persistent.

Origin · no single documented coiner

Popularized by developer Geoffrey Huntley in 2025 blog posts on 'Ralph Wiggum as a software engineer'. Spread through developer communities; not a formal technical term.

No single primary source link for this term.