Backpressured is a set of skills designed to help agents iterate autonomously for longer. It teaches the agent how to validate its own work with automated checks, adversarial reviews, and even manual testing through cURL or a real browser (via Playwright).

Backpressured runs a four-phase loop:plan, implement, verify, ship and monitor. It gates every step on real checks: lint, tests, benchmarks, manual testing, independent code review, and PR monitoring. It stops when every acceptance criterion and quality gate passes, or when it hits a blocker it can name.

Run it with /backpressured:goal <description>, or by explicitly asking for a "backpressured" run. State your acceptance criteria in the prompt; if you don't, it infers and states them before starting.

Install

One command from your terminal:

npx -y github:lucasfcosta/backpressured

Re-run it any time to update; it refreshes the marketplace and the plugin. Flags: --ssh (clone over SSH), --force (uninstall + reinstall, bypassing the version cache), --dry-run (preview).

Afterwards, run /reload-plugins or restart Claude Code.

Or, inside Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add lucasfcosta/backpressured
/plugin install backpressured@lucasfcosta
/reload-plugins

Configurations

Configuration is optional. Without any, the loop discovers your project's commands itself (package.json, Makefile, CI config, README).

To customize, drop a BACKPRESSURE.md at your project root with plain-English, project-specific instructions. It's authoritative: it layers on top of the defaults and wins on conflict. Common things to set:

• Checks: exact lint, test, and verification commands; how to check coverage; benchmark suites and what counts as a regression.
• Review: standards skills the reviewer should also apply (e.g. react-best-practices, a design guide).
• Running the app: how to start the frontend, backend, and dependencies; how to seed data; which credentials are needed and where to get them.
• Shipping: open a PR, or merge from a local branch.
• Skip: gates to turn off (e.g. no visual review when there are no design specs, or let an E2E suite stand in for manual testing).

You don't have to write it by hand. Run /backpressured:config and it detects your commands, surveys your skills and MCP servers, confirms each value with you, and writes the file. Re-run it any time to refresh.

Why backpressure

Right now, humans spend a lot of time giving unnecessary feedback to an AI.

Most of that feedback could be replaced by series of automated checks, adversarial agentic reviews, and other forms of self-validation. That way, the agent can fix its own problems as it goes, without needing to stop and ask for help.

This skill set teaches the agent how to do that, and how to run a tight feedback loop that gates every step on real checks. The result is a more autonomous agent that can iterate faster and more reliably, reducing the need for human feedback.

License

MIT