Most people start chaining agents too early. They have a vague task, they split it into planner, writer, reviewer, tester, maybe even critic, and then they wonder why the result feels bloated, circular, and strangely fragile. The answer is simple: the chain did not remove uncertainty, it only distributed it across more participants.
The Ralph loop matters because it forces the system to keep working until the task crosses a clear finish line, which means the chain has to serve a concrete result instead of producing a polite pile of intermediate artifacts.