Cubic Loop

Iteratively review and fix code until cubic finds no more issues: review -> fix -> re-review -> repeat.

When To Activate

• User says "loop until clean", "keep reviewing until done", or "cubic loop"
• User wants to fully optimize a PR or branch before merging
• User asks to "fix everything cubic finds" or "make cubic happy"

Inputs

• Mode (optional): local (default) for CLI review, or pr for PR-based review.
• Max iterations (optional): Defaults to 5. Safety cap to prevent runaway loops.

Instructions

1. Determine review mode

Check whether to use local CLI or PR-based review:

• If user said "pr" or there's an open PR for the current branch -> PR mode
• Otherwise -> local CLI mode

For local mode, verify the CLI is installed:

which cubic

If not found, show install instructions and stop:

curl -fsSL https://cubic.dev/install | bash

For PR mode, verify GitHub CLI access:

gh auth status

If gh is missing or unauthenticated, stop and tell the user they need GitHub CLI access for PR mode.

Then identify the PR:

gh pr view --json number,headRefName -q '{number: .number, branch: .headRefName}'

2. Loop (max 5 iterations)

Repeat the following cycle.

#### A. Run review

Local mode:

git status --porcelain
# If uncommitted changes: cubic review -j
# If clean working tree: cubic review -b -j

If local review output is queued/running (or no final issues array is available yet), poll until complete:

• Sleep 15 seconds between retries
• Retry up to 20 times (5 minutes total)
• If still pending after 5 minutes, stop the loop and report timeout

PR mode:

git push

Then wait for GitHub/PR review results to settle before fetching issues:

• Poll every 30 seconds
• Retry up to 30 times (15 minutes total)
• Only proceed once PR review output is final
• If still pending after 15 minutes, stop the loop and report timeout

After completion, use gh api graphql against repository.pullRequest.reviewThreads.

• Paginate with reviewThreads(first: 100, after: $after) until pageInfo.hasNextPage is false
• Request thread fields: id, isResolved, isOutdated, path, line, originalLine, startLine, originalStartLine, diffSide, startDiffSide, resolvedBy { login avatarUrl }
• Request comment fields: comments(last: 100) { nodes { id databaseId path line originalLine startLine originalStartLine author { login } body url createdAt } }

Prefer unresolved, non-outdated review threads. If the author identity is available, focus on comments authored by cubic's bot/app; otherwise, use the PR's review comments and note that the source could not be narrowed to cubic with certainty.

#### B. Check exit conditions

Stop the loop if ANY of these are true:

• Zero issues found -> success, code is clean
• Only P3 (low) issues remain and no P0/P1/P2 -> success, good enough
• Max iterations reached -> stop, report remaining issues

#### C. Fix issues

For each issue, prioritized P0 first then P1, P2:

1. Read the file and surrounding context
2. Validate the issue is real -> skip false positives
3. Fix in the simplest way possible without refactoring unrelated code
4. Track what was fixed for the summary

When there are multiple independent issues, use sub-agents where available to verify and fix them in parallel.

• Give each sub-agent one issue or one disjoint file set
• Ask each sub-agent to independently validate whether the issue is real before fixing
• Keep fixes isolated so they do not overwrite each other
• Review and integrate each sub-agent result before moving to the next review iteration

Skip P3 issues unless the user explicitly requested "fix everything".

#### D. Commit and continue

git add -A
git commit -m "fix: address cubic review feedback (iteration N)"

Go back to step A.

3. Report

After exiting the loop, present a summary.

Output Format

Clean exit:

## Cubic Loop Complete

Iterations:   2
Issues fixed: 5
Remaining:    0

Changes:
- Iteration 1: Fixed SQL injection (P0), added null checks (P1 x2)
- Iteration 2: Fixed error handling (P2), added input validation (P2)

All commits pushed. Ready to merge.

Max iterations reached:

## Cubic Loop — Stopped after 5 iterations

Iterations:   5
Issues fixed: 11
Remaining:    2

Remaining issues:
- src/legacy.ts:234 — P2: "Consider extracting this into a utility function"
- src/config.ts:12 — P3: "Magic number could be a named constant"

These may be intentional trade-offs. Review manually or run again.