5 lines of code drive the entire Silicon Valley crazy. An Australian sheepherder unlocks the singularity of AI programming.
[Introduction] With just 5 lines of code, this sheep farmer has shattered the ceiling of AI programming! It has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley, leaving the father of Claude Code without writing code for 30 days, and even spurred a new species explosion of Cowork!
Recently, the story of an Australian sheep farmer shattering the ceiling of AI programming with 5 lines of code has gone viral.
At the end of 2025, during a break from shoveling sheep manure, Geoffrey Huntley wrote the following Bash script consisting of only 5 lines of code.
- while :; do cat PROMPT.md | claude-code ; done
He probably never imagined that within just one month, these few lines of code would trigger a technological frenzy and directly disrupt Silicon Valley today!
It can be said that the previously popular Claude Code and the recently well - known Claude Cowork are all intricately linked to these five lines of code.
Even an engineer predicted: 2026 will be the year when the entire Silicon Valley is wrapped in Ralph Wiggum!
The Mystery of the Five Lines of Code
What exactly do these five lines of code mean?
In plain language, it means: "Please complete this task. If the test fails, don't even think about getting out. You can check the error messages yourself, write the code yourself, and retry on your own. Try as many times as you want. As long as there are errors, keep modifying until it works. No leaving work!"
The AI actually believed it.
This infinitely looping and abusive command made the AI actually write the code without any human intervention.
Therefore, the sheep farmer named this loop Ralph Wiggum, after the ever - persevering and extremely optimistic little boy in "The Simpsons".
Different from the traditional approach of "seeking to write correctly on the first try", the core concept of the Ralph Loop is to assume that you won't write it correctly on the first try.
But as long as it's not written correctly, the compiler will report an error and the test will fail. And this error message is the most valuable asset, as it precisely tells the AI where it went wrong.
Therefore, the AI can have an epiphany.
Now, Ralph Wiggum has evolved from a character name in an animated series to one of the most influential names in the AI field.
It can even be said that Ralph - Wiggum has brought today's large AI models very close to AGI.
The Father of Claude Code Praises: I Don't Need to Write Code Anymore
Why is the Ralph - Wiggum loop foundational for Claude Code and Cowork?
The story begins at the end of 2025.
After noticing the magical effect of these five lines of code, Boris Cherny, the person in charge of Claude Code at Anthropic, officially incorporated Geoffrey Huntley's five - line script and launched the official Ralph - Wiggum plugin.
From then on, Claude Code seemed to be blessed with divine assistance.
In Claude Code, with just the following one - sentence command:
- /ralph-loop "Build a REST API for todos. Requirements: CRUD operations, input validation, tests. Output <promise>COMPLETE</promise> when done." --completion-promise "COMPLETE" --max-iterations 50
Claude can achieve the following:
- Continuous iteration - Keep trying repeatedly even in the face of failure
- Self - referential learning - Improve based on test results and previous code
- Until completion - Keep looping until all requirements are met
- Output completion promise - Output the specified completion flag when the task is done
At the end of 2025, Boris Cherny's sharing caused a major earthquake in the developer community.
He personally admitted that in the past thirty days, 100% of his contributions to the Claude Code project were completed by Claude Code itself!
Boris recalled that in the past thirty days, he submitted 259 PRs - 497 commits, added 40,000 lines of code, and deleted 38,000 lines of code. Every line of code was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5.
At that time, Claude could run continuously for minutes, hours, or even days. It can be said that software engineering is undergoing a drastic change, and we have already stepped into a new era of coding.
Why can Claude run continuously for several days? Boris explained that when it stops, a stop hook can be used to "poke" it and make it continue running.
And the hero behind this hook is Ralph - Wiggum!
For details, refer to this link: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-plugins-official/tree/main/plugins/ralph-wiggum
Since this news was so explosive, developers' messages almost flooded Boris's private messages. So two days later, Boris shared his exclusive recipe.
In Part 12, Boris mentioned that for tasks with a particularly long running time, he usually uses the following methods, one of which is to use the ralph - wiggum plugin.
(a) After the task is completed, prompt Claude to use a background agent to verify its work;
(b) Use the agent's Stop hook to complete the verification in a more definite and controllable way;
(c) Or use the ralph - wiggum plugin
That is to say, in just one month since its birth, these 5 lines of code have given rise to the current explosion of Claude Cowork!
Closest to AGI? Ralph - Wiggum Shakes the Entire Silicon Valley
Meanwhile, the design of Ralph - Wiggum with continuous iteration and endless looping has also enabled other developers to achieve miracles.
In the Y Combinator Hackathon, someone used it to generate 6 complete code repositories overnight; someone completed a $50,000 contract with an API cost of only $297.
Even within three months, someone directly developed a programming language called cursed using this method entirely!
On YouTube, videos introducing the Ralph loop have flooded the platform.
Developer educator Matt Pocock recently explained in detail why Ralph is "so powerful".
The ultimate dream of a programming agent is that when you wake up in the morning, the code is already written.
Your AI agent has been working quietly all night, clearing your backlog, and the written code can run directly.
In his opinion, the Ralph plugin is very close to this dream: "This is the most powerful AI programming tool I've ever used, which can enable long - running agents to truly deliver usable code."
Dennison Bertram, the CEO and founder of the blockchain token creation platform Tally, posted a message exclaiming:
No kidding, this might be the closest thing to AGI that I've ever seen:
This prompt combined with Claude is definitely a beast.
Arvid Kahl, the founder and CEO of Podscan, an automatic podcast business intelligence extraction and brand detection tool, said that the new method has opened up the future and has excellent results:
As Chicago entrepreneur Hunter Hammonds said: A million opportunities are right in front of you, but you're not ready.
AI engineer and serial entrepreneur Ian Nutall said, "2026 is the year of wrapping Ralph Wiggum."
