The chat orchestrates development
Name the work, not the card. The project agent writes no code: it reads the board, finds who builds it and passes your line to the running session. The gates still judge the result.
AI software factory · Self-hosted · Source available
Write the roadmap. Agents build it on your servers.
The worst an agent can do is wreck its own sandbox. Nothing merges until the checks pass. You run it all from one chat and one board.
Designed and built by Sebastian Rücker · Portfolio · GitHub
- One chat, one board. Say what you want. The agent proposes, you press Do it.
- Each card in its own sandbox. A closed network, no credentials, deleted when the card is done.
- On your servers. Hosted models or your own. The source is published.
Built for teams that cannot sign off a hosted coding agent: regulated industries, and companies where security and compliance decide the tool choice.
One card's life. The amber steps are yours.
Everything else runs on its own.
What you get
Six things the console shows. Each one links to the file, the test and the run behind it.
A plan is a card you accept
A big request becomes a plan card. The planner lists its cards in build order and asks what it cannot decide. Once you accept it, the cards land, each criterion naming its test before the code exists.
the file · the test · the run · how the spec-driven process works
Stuck sessions get help in steps
A stuck session gets a nudge, then a check-in by the stronger model, then the stronger model itself. Caps on sessions, agent time and budget end the climb in front of a human.
Control spending intelligently
Caps per task, per day, per month and per project, and the factory stops at each. At autonomous and full auto the project agent settles small raises from a monthly pool you set. Anything bigger still asks you.
Routines run themselves
Ask the chat for a weekly job, and it writes the schedule into the project's file. Each run files a card, and the card passes the same gates as any other.
Going full auto
From manual to full auto. Direction and money beyond the project's pool stay with you at every level.
What the agent can reach
Its own sandbox and a few named hosts, nothing else. What it writes still has to pass the gates.
- Its own throwaway pod. gVisor, non-root, read-only root, no service account token. Deleted when the card is done.
- A closed network. The agent reaches named hosts only, through the factory's tools. A probe proves the network closed before it starts.
- No credentials. The agent never holds a push token. The factory pushes once, after the agent is dead.
- No prompt rules for safety. A prompt rule is a request to the model. A closed network is a fact.
The risk that stays
The model can write code that is wrong on purpose, and that code can pass the checks. The review, the hold-out tests and the audit make that hard, not impossible. The threat model names every hole we know.
Your servers. Your files.
The source is published. You run it on your own servers, and the licence says what you may do with it.
Model calls go through one gateway. Point it at a hosted API or at your own model.
Everything you configure is a file in your repository: the process, your prompts, the caps.
A project may only tighten: four stages stay in every process, and no file can remove them. The three layers in full.
Open source parts. Our code only where none fit.
We wrote four parts in Go: the control plane, the console, the sandbox worker and the gateway in front of LiteLLM. Every other part is an open source project, set up by configuration.
The harness is an adapter. opencode ships as the default, and another harness is one more adapter behind the same interface. Each licence is the one its project publishes. SigNoz and LiteLLM keep their enterprise features under a separate licence.
The model proposes. The system decides.
Every guarantee lives in a schema, a check, a gate or a route. A prompt rule is the last resort. Open a module for what enforces it.
The sandbox
gVisor, non-root, read-only root, no service account token, the metadata address blocked, default-deny egress, an egress probe before the agent starts, the write token minted after the agent is dead and used once.
The gates
Nine kinds of stage. Four of them stay in every process, and a process file cannot remove them. A deleted or weakened test is a finding. A review that gives no verdict is a finding on the reviewer's card.
A separate session writes hold-out tests that no sandbox can see. When a hold-out fails, an audit names the defective side: the test, the code or the spec.
The money
The hold is taken under a database lock. The model's output is clamped to the amount held. The real cost is booked after the call. A missing cap reads as zero, which stops all spend.
Recovery from stalls
One durable workflow per task. Twelve detectors watch each session for no write, repetition, the same failure, the same call, flip-flop, churn, wall clock and spend with no push.
A stalled session gets a nudge, then a supervisor, then a fresh session on the stronger model. A human sees it only after the session cap.
The numbers it keeps
The metrics page keeps the four DevOps delivery metrics: deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate and time to restore. It also keeps cost per card, per project and per week. All of them read from the same ledger as the board.
Three more facts
The factory builds itself. Every commit carries the task, the session, who asked and who approved.
An outsider's issue is screened for injection before any session runs.
The console was designed by image models and an independent critic. Every image has its sidecar.
The architecture: the five planes and the three layers.
How it compares
A table of guarantees, not of features. Every cell was checked against the vendor's own documentation on 22 October 2026.
Eight guarantees against six tools
| Guarantee | This factory | GitHub Copilot cloud agent | Cursor cloud agents | Devin | GitLab Duo Agent Platform | OpenHands | Factory |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The control plane runs on your servers, source published | Yes. Self-hosted on rented commodity servers, source published. | No. Runners can be yours, the control plane stays in GitHub's cloud. Closed source. | No. Workers can be yours, the control plane stays in Cursor's cloud. Closed source. | No. Outposts workers can be yours, the control plane stays in Cognition's cloud. | Partial. The whole stack self-hosts under a paid, source-available licence. | Yes. MIT core. The enterprise tier is source-available and paid. | Partial. Factory Private is in preview, by quote, closed source. |
| Your own model behind the same gateway, run end to end | Yes. Hosted APIs and self-hosted models sit behind one gateway. | No. The cloud agent offers a hosted model list. | No, hosted models. | No, its own models. | Yes. vLLM or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, documented. | Yes. vLLM, Ollama and LM Studio, documented. | Partial. Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint in the CLI, no published run. |
| The agent never holds a push token | Yes. A fresh identity per task, minted after the agent is dead, used once, revoked. | Partial. It cannot run git push. The platform pushes for it, to one branch. | Not documented. The agent pushes its own branch. | No. Devin pushes itself, with the GitHub App's permissions. | No. The agent runs with the user's token, a composite identity. | No. The token sits in the agent's shell, and it runs git push. | No. The agent runs with the user's own git credentials. |
| The money is held before each call, and at the cap it asks | Yes. The hold is taken under a database lock. At a cap: fund or end. | No, organisation and user budgets. | No. The cap lags, and usage stops without a question. | No. Limits per session, user and organisation block work at the cap. | Partial. Caps per user, group and subscription pause use. No hold before a call. | No. Budgets and a per-run cap stop the run with an error. | No. Rolling rate limits, long tasks pause at the limit. |
| A fix must fail at base and pass at head | Yes. An issue or an alert files the fix card. The gate runs the repro command at base and at head. | No gate. Issues, schedules and code scanning alerts start tasks. | No gate. Sentry, PagerDuty, Linear and labels start runs. | No gate. PagerDuty, Linear and GitHub issues start sessions. | No gate. Failed pipelines, merge requests and scans start flows. | No gate. Issue labels and webhooks start tasks. | No gate. Sentry, PagerDuty, Slack and GitHub events start runs. |
| The gates run the tests the criteria name, and a file cannot lower the floor | Yes. The criteria gate runs each named test and requires it green. Four stages stay in every process. | Partial. Rulesets require checks. No criteria name tests. | No. Bugbot's review advises. No named-test gate. | No. Devin Review comments. Merge gating is your branch protection. | Partial. Policy pipelines a project cannot remove, on Ultimate. No criteria name tests. | No. Hooks and a critic are optional. No named-test gate. | Partial. Organisation policy a project cannot weaken. No named-test gate. |
| The process is a set of YAML files | Yes. Lanes, stages, merge rule. Ours is spec-driven, bring your own. | Partial. Agents and workflows in YAML, the merge rule in settings. | Partial. Files set the environment, hooks and review, not the stages. | No. Files hold the environment, rules and skills, not stages or a merge rule. | Partial. Flows, agents and CI are YAML. Triggers are set in the UI. | Partial. Automations sync to YAML in Git. No stages or merge rule. | Partial. Settings, hooks and skills in the repository. No stage process. |
| Delete everything and rebuild from Git and a bucket | Yes. Rebuilt from the repositories and a backup bucket, rehearsed on 13 October. | No, SaaS. | No, SaaS. | No, SaaS. Only Outposts workers rebuild from Helm and Terraform. | Yes, self-managed. Helm charts, and backup and restore through a bucket. | Partial. Helm charts and Terraform. The backup is database dumps only. | No, SaaS. The Private preview is undocumented. |
The source of every cell: the comparison file. Chat intake stays out of the table, because 78 of the 148 tools in our market sweep score high on chat.
Tradeoffs we made
- gVisor, not a microVM. Cheap commodity servers are enough. The residual risk is in the threat model.
- The roadmap is linked Markdown, not Jira. Markdown lives in the repository. A Jira adapter is a small job.
- Model APIs are commodities behind the gateway. A trusted provider is like a server: you pick one. A self-hosted model sits behind the same gateway and has completed tasks.
- Forgejo and SigNoz are the signal sources. Forgejo speaks GitHub's protocol. SigNoz is the open telemetry stack we picked.
- Four stages stay in every process, and no file can remove them. A configuration mistake must not remove a check.
Proof and limits
- The source: three repositories, factory, code and infrastructure.
- The architecture: the five planes and the three layers.
- The threat model: what the sandbox stops, what it does not stop, the known holes.
- The evidence page: the file and the test per guarantee, a run where one exists, "not yet" where none does.
The open limits live in the threat model: the hosted model APIs see diffs and briefs, the Go module proxy is a covert channel of a few hundred bytes per request, gVisor is not a microVM, and the model can write code that passes the checks.