Pick the loop primitive by its stop condition, not by how autonomous it feels — Anthropic's four-type taxonomy

Claude by Anthropic·high signal

Anthropic's Claude Code team published the official loop taxonomy: turn-based (Claude judges completion), goal-based (/goal, stops on verifiable criteria or max turns), time-based (/loop and /schedule, stops on cancellation), and proactive (event/schedule triggered, no human in real time). Each rung hands the agent one more piece of your job — the check, then the stop condition, then the trigger. The stated failure mode is over-building orchestration for a task that only needed a sharper verification skill.