feat: deliver v1.8.0 harness reliability and parity updates

skills/continuous-agent-loop/SKILL.md

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+---
+name: continuous-agent-loop
+description: Patterns for continuous autonomous agent loops with quality gates, evals, and recovery controls.
+origin: ECC
+---
+
+# Continuous Agent Loop
+
+This is the v1.8+ canonical loop skill name. It supersedes `autonomous-loops` while keeping compatibility for one release.
+
+## Loop Selection Flow
+
+```text
+Start
+  |
+  +-- Need strict CI/PR control? -- yes --> continuous-pr
+  |                                    
+  +-- Need RFC decomposition? -- yes --> rfc-dag
+  |
+  +-- Need exploratory parallel generation? -- yes --> infinite
+  |
+  +-- default --> sequential
+```
+
+## Combined Pattern
+
+Recommended production stack:
+1. RFC decomposition (`ralphinho-rfc-pipeline`)
+2. quality gates (`plankton-code-quality` + `/quality-gate`)
+3. eval loop (`eval-harness`)
+4. session persistence (`nanoclaw-repl`)
+
+## Failure Modes
+
+- loop churn without measurable progress
+- repeated retries with same root cause
+- merge queue stalls
+- cost drift from unbounded escalation
+
+## Recovery
+
+- freeze loop
+- run `/harness-audit`
+- reduce scope to failing unit
+- replay with explicit acceptance criteria