feat(external_plugins): Add Lisa - Enhanced Ralph Wiggum with observability

[Arakiss]

Summary

Lisa is an evolution of the Ralph Wiggum technique that adds observability and safety limits while preserving Ralph's core philosophy of iterative, self-referential development loops.

Like Lisa Simpson compared to Ralph Wiggum, this implementation is more methodical and observable.

Motivation

The existing ralph-wiggum plugin provides the core loop functionality. Lisa builds on this foundation by addressing common pain points:

• "What iteration am I on?" → /lisa:status command
• "Files accumulating after loops" → /lisa:clean command
• "How do I write good prompts?" → lisa-guide skill + examples
• "Is it making progress?" → Auto-detects from IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md
• "How long did each iteration take?" → Full logging to .claude/lisa-loop.log

What Lisa adds

Feature	ralph-wiggum	Lisa
Status command	❌	✅ /lisa:status
Cleanup command	❌	✅ /lisa:clean
Prep workflow	❌	✅ /lisa:prep
Iteration logging	❌	✅ .claude/lisa-loop.log
Progress detection	❌	✅ Reads IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md
Duration tracking	❌	✅ Per-iteration timing
Auto-detect promises	❌	✅ Extracts <promise> from files
Prompt writing guide	❌	✅ lisa-guide skill
Example prompts	❌	✅ examples/ directory

Commands

Command	Description
/lisa:loop	Start iterative loop that auto-restarts until completion promise is detected
/lisa:status	Check current loop iteration, max limit, and completion promise
/lisa:cancel	Cancel active Lisa loop
/lisa:clean	Remove stale loop files, logs, and orphaned PROMPT.md files
/lisa:prep	Create PROMPT.md, IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md, and specs/ scaffolding
/lisa:help	Explain Lisa technique and available commands

Example Usage

# Simple inline prompt
/lisa:loop "Fix all TypeScript errors" --max-iterations 30 --completion-promise "FIXED"

# File-based prompt with auto-detected promise
/lisa:loop PROMPT.md --max-iterations 50

Logging Output

[2026-01-06T16:30:00Z] [INFO] === Iteration 1 started ===
[2026-01-06T16:32:45Z] [INFO] Iteration 1 completed in 165s - Status: CONTINUE
[2026-01-06T16:32:45Z] [PROGRESS] Items: 1/48 (2%)
...
[2026-01-06T18:45:00Z] [SUCCESS] Completion promise detected: DONE
[2026-01-06T18:45:00Z] [SUMMARY] Total time: 135m, Iterations: 48

Philosophy

Lisa inherits Ralph's philosophy but adds pragmatism:

Ralph's Wisdom	Lisa's Addition
"Eventual consistency"	+ Observable progress
"Errors are tuning points"	+ Logged for analysis
"Don't blame the tools"	+ But do track what happened
"Persistence wins"	+ With safety limits

Testing

Tested on macOS with Claude Code v2.0.76.

After this PR is merged, users will install via:

claude plugin install lisa@claude-plugins-official

To test before merging, you can use the standalone marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add Arakiss/lisa
claude plugin install lisa@lisa-marketplace
/lisa:help
/lisa:status

Links

• Standalone repository: https://github.com/Arakiss/lisa
• Original Ralph technique: https://ghuntley.com/ralph/

Checklist

• Plugin manifest (plugin.json) is valid
• README documentation complete
• MIT License included
• All content in English
• No external service dependencies (pure Claude Code plugin)
• Tested locally