Ralph Orchestrator¶
What is Ralph Orchestrator?¶
Ralph Orchestrator is a production-ready implementation of the Ralph Wiggum orchestration technique - a simple yet powerful pattern for autonomous AI task completion. As Geoffrey Huntley originally defined it: "Ralph is a Bash loop" that continuously runs an AI agent against a prompt file until the task is marked as complete or limits are reached.
Based on Huntley's technique, this implementation provides enterprise-grade safety, monitoring, and cost controls suitable for production environments. For Claude Code users, also see the official ralph-wiggum plugin.
Key Features¶
-
🤖 Multi-Agent Support Works seamlessly with Claude, Q Chat, Gemini CLI, and ACP-compliant agents with automatic detection
-
💰 Cost Management
Real-time token tracking, cost calculation, and configurable spending limits -
🔒 Enterprise Security
Input sanitization, command injection prevention, and path traversal protection -
📊 Production Monitoring
System metrics, performance tracking, and detailed JSON exports -
🔄 Resilient Execution
Automatic retries, circuit breakers, and state persistence -
💾 Git Checkpointing Version control integration for state recovery and history tracking
-
🔌 ACP Protocol Support Full Agent Client Protocol integration with permission handling, file/terminal operations, and session management
Quick Example¶
# 1. Create a task prompt
cat > PROMPT.md << EOF
Create a Python function that calculates the Fibonacci sequence.
Include proper documentation and unit tests.
The orchestrator will iterate until the function is complete.
EOF
# 2. Run Ralph
python ralph_orchestrator.py --prompt PROMPT.md
# 3. Ralph iterates until the task is done!
Why Ralph Orchestrator?¶
The Problem¶
Modern AI agents are powerful but require supervision. They can lose context, make mistakes, or need multiple iterations to complete complex tasks. Manual supervision is time-consuming and error-prone.
The Solution¶
Ralph Orchestrator automates the iteration loop while maintaining safety and control:
- Autonomous Operation: Set it and forget it - Ralph handles the iterations
- Safety First: Built-in limits prevent runaway costs and infinite loops
- Production Ready: Battle-tested with comprehensive error handling
- Observable: Detailed metrics and logging for debugging and optimization
- Recoverable: Checkpoint system allows resuming from any point
Use Cases¶
Ralph Orchestrator excels at:
- Code Generation: Building features, fixing bugs, writing tests
- Documentation: Creating comprehensive docs, API references, tutorials
- Data Processing: ETL pipelines, data analysis, report generation
- Automation: CI/CD setup, deployment scripts, infrastructure as code
- Research: Information gathering, summarization, analysis
Getting Started¶
Ready to put Ralph to work? Check out our Quick Start Guide to get up and running in minutes.
Production Features¶
Ralph Orchestrator is designed for production use with:
- Token & Cost Limits: Prevent budget overruns
- Context Management: Handle large prompts intelligently
- Security Controls: Protect against malicious inputs
- Monitoring & Metrics: Track performance and usage
- Error Recovery: Graceful handling of failures
- State Persistence: Resume interrupted tasks
Learn more in our Production Deployment Guide.
Community & Support¶
License¶
Ralph Orchestrator is open source software licensed as MIT.