Inner Loop

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The fast, localised development cycle covering writing, running, and testing code on a developer's own machine, before changes are pushed to shared infrastructure. 

The term is used to distinguish the individual developer's coding and unit testing step from the broader SDLC activities that follow, sometimes called the outer loop, which include integration, review, quality assurance, security, and deployment. In the context of AI-accelerated development, the inner loop has sped up significantly, creating pressure on the outer loop to keep pace.
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