Introduction
The factory is a way to build a product with coding agents. You decide what the product does. Agents write the code. Gates check the code before you merge it.
Each product has two repositories. The app holds the code. The hub holds what the product is and the work to do: the positioning, the decisions, the rules and one file for each task. Agents run in the hub, so each session reads the same facts.
#The loop
Each change goes through the same steps. The steps in colour need you. Agents do the others with nobody there.
- IntakeTurns an input into a task
- ProbeYou settle each open question
- BuildAn agent builds it and opens a pull request
- GatesCI and the Flow review
- MergeYou merge on GitHub
- AcceptFacts go to the context
Each step runs in its own session, and it stops when it is done. You start the next step with a button in the Factory panel.
#What you get
new-project sets up each of these for a new product.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| The hub | Holds the context and the tasks. It has the skills intake, probe, explore, build, triage and accept. |
| Flow | Gives the agents the docs, the skills and the lint rules for an AdonisJS app, and the lenses of the review. |
| CI | Runs lint, types and tests on each pull request, on AWS CodeBuild. |
| The Flow review | Reviews each new pull request on AWS CodeBuild, and posts each finding on its line. |
| The Factory panel | Shows the tasks, the pull requests and the sessions in Herdr, and starts each step. |
| Interface skills | Give the agents rules for layout, type, motion and web platform features. |
#Where it comes from
The factory is built from factories-hub, the software factory of Harminder Virk. His article A practical look at software factories explains the ideas. These docs describe factory-kit, which changes three parts of that setup.
| In factories-hub | In factory-kit | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Paseo and a macOS worker | Herdr and a panel | It runs on Linux. A person starts each step. |
| GitHub Actions | AWS CodeBuild | The checks do not need GitHub billing. |
| The hosted Flow reviewer | The flow-code-review skill and reviewdog on CodeBuild | This is the path that the code review guide of Flow gives. |