Look before touching
loop doctor, loop debrief, loop observe and loop status answer "what is it doing" and "why is it stuck" without dispatching, reviewing or merging anything.
Machine-first entry point
Operate the loop without guessing.
The harness orchestrates the lifecycle; it does not drive a worker's own model loop. Everything below is readable, checkable state — no screen scraping, no inference from a terminal.
Read what the worker left
Each worktree carries .ak-loop/plan.md, verify.json and dod.json. The loop advances on those files, so they are also the fastest explanation of where an issue actually is.
Never answer for the human
Driving loop plan means relaying one question at a time with alternatives and a recommendation. The answers are the requirements; an agent that invents one builds the wrong thing confidently.