Hephaestus (software-factory)

Hephaestus (software-factory) is the factory that builds Chess Board, and this site. A work item says what must be true when it is done, and the factory takes it from ready to closed with nobody to ask.

The rule underneath: code decides, agents do. The dispatcher is a plain program that moves an item from stage to stage and never asks a model what happens next. Each agent does one bounded job and reports how it went. The record is the only state, so the factory can stop at any point and carry on from what the record says.

The stages

1. Ready
2. Triage
3. Build
4. Review
5. Land
6. Verify
7. Closed

A review with comments goes to a fixer and back to review. A failed check on landing goes to a fixer and back to land. A clause the verifier could not see sends the item back to build.

Who does what

Triager

Sizes the item from S to XL and sets its budget: which model, how hard it thinks, and how many turns. An L or XL item is never built whole: the planner splits it into smaller ones.

Builder

Works the item’s prompt in a fresh copy of the repository, proves it with the repository’s own checks, and opens one pull request that cites the item.

Merge-request reviewer

Reviews the pull request before it merges, against the item and the repository’s rules, and leaves each finding on its own line.

Fixer

Answers each review comment on the same branch, with the change or a reason, and rebases or fixes a failed check when landing asks it to.

Landing

Plain code, no agent. It merges only when every check has passed and the pull request is clean, then follows the merge’s own runs to the end.

Verifier

Checks each clause of the item’s done-when against what actually runs: seen or not seen, with the evidence. Every clause seen closes the item.

Unblocker

Reads a stopped item before it reaches me, and sends it back to build, or closes it with the evidence, when it can.

Planner and prompter

Split a piece of work into items the factory can take, and write each one’s five-line prompt.

When a person is asked

The factory waits for nobody but for keys: a change to a secret or an encrypted file always stops for me. A change to the factory’s own gates, or a large item, gets a stricter review before it lands. An item that stops three times comes straight to me.

The guard rails

• No agent can commit, merge or push to the main branch: hooks refuse it, whatever the agent intends.
• A pull request merges only once every check has passed, never on an automatic merge.
• A test is trusted once it has been seen to fail.
• Every move is written to the record, so the work board shows each item’s stage, and the agent on it, as it happens.

The source

The repositories behind all of this are private for now. Each will go public on its own, once its whole history has been swept, and get a link here. See Open source.

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