What this is
Claude hands you work and tells you it is done. Sometimes it is. The Judge Loop is a way of not having to take its word for it: instead of you reading the output and hunting for what is wrong, you make the model do that job, adversarially, before it ever reaches you.
It is three lines on the end of a normal prompt. There is nothing to install, no framework, and no new tool. This guide is the exact wording, the rule that stops it, and the part the video did not have room for, which is when it is worth running and when it is a waste of money.
The three lines
Line one is your task, written exactly as you would have written it anyway. Lines two and three are the whole technique.
- Your task, as normal. Be specific about what finished looks like, because that is what the judge will measure against.
- Spawn a team of sub-agents to do this work rather than answering directly.
- Assign three of them as PROSECUTOR, DEFENSE and JUDGE. The prosecutor's only job is to build the strongest possible case that the output is wrong. The defense answers each charge with evidence from the work itself. The judge rules on the evidence and returns a verdict plus a list of defects. Rebuild against the verdict and repeat.
That is it. The reason it works is not that the model gets smarter on the second pass. It is that "find everything wrong with this" is a genuinely different task from "write this", and a model asked to attack its own output will surface things it will never volunteer while it is still in the mood to please you.
What each role actually does
The prosecutor
- Give it one instruction: argue that the work fails. Not "review it", not "give feedback". Adversarial framing is doing the real work here, and softening it to "suggest improvements" produces the same agreeable notes you were trying to escape.
- Ask for charges, not impressions. A charge names the specific line, file, claim or behaviour it is about.
- This is the role that catches the confident wrong answer, because it is the only one being paid to look for it.
Free, for your email
Get the full setup steps + the copy-paste setup prompt
The rest of this guide (5 more sections) opens right here. The setup prompt, one paste into Claude that sets it all up, comes by email only. Use your real address.
Unlocks: The defense · The judge · The stopping rule · When to run it · Honest notes
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