Your first loop

A loop lives in a directory you choose. arthur init builds it with an interview; --demo skips straight to something worth looking at.

The fast way: a seeded demo

mkdir my-loop && cd my-loop
arthur init --demo
arthur status
arthur web

The demo seeds sample projects, a queued job, live sessions, an open human decision, and a quota bar — a busy loop, safe to break.

The real way: the interview

arthur init asks a handful of questions and writes config/arthur-loop.json. The first choice is the one everything hangs off:

Pick a master agent

The master agent is the AI that runs the show. The wizard detects what is installed on your machine — claude, codex, openclaw, gemini, grok, goose — and seeds the chosen one with the Arthur Loop skill plus a KICKOFF.md interview so it can wire the rest of the loop itself.

Pick a flow preset

Preset	Shape
`guided`	The default: advisor plans, executor builds, review gates on, human decisions on
`solo`	One agent wears both hats — smallest setup
`pair`	Distinct advisor and executor agents
`browser-advisor`	A logged-in ChatGPT conversation is the advisor, via your own browser
`custom`	You pick every piece by hand

Scripting it

arthur init is an interview; without a terminal it exits 1 rather than hanging. From scripts, pass --yes plus the flags you want (for example --master-agent codex).

What lands on disk

my-loop/
  config/arthur-loop.json    # adapters, quota, projects — hand-editable
  queue/                     # append-only job ledger + events
  projects/<ID>/artifacts/   # saved agent responses
  human-decisions/open.md    # the questions only you can answer
  runtime/                   # derived state, safe to lose

Every file is markdown or JSONL. Nothing phones home. See how the loop works for what moves through them.