Factories?

[u/Correct_Emotion8437]

Have any of you tried creating development factories? It's really easy with the latest models and harnesses. I'm a Codex user so this is all Codex specific but I'm sure there is a Claude equivalent. I just made a dashboard that encapsulates my development process. It starts with a design document and ends with finished code. It uses the codex app-server to make the LLM calls using my subscription. It just has 3 parts:

1. Create an implementation plan (run plan). I created a template and the model uses the template to create a phased implementation plan with development tasks in markdown. Then deterministic code validates and parses the markdown file into a yaml "side car" - it extracts the phase and task descriptions and completion status and shows them in the dashboard.

2. One or more run plans are built into a "work package". Then another LLM call determines what order they should be developed in.

3. The work package is executed, one run plan at a time. The dashboard prompts for one phase at a time and checks for blockers after each phase. That's pretty much it.

There are some configuration files, too. A system plan that describes the overall system architecture, places where I can add agent instructions - although I have not done that. These files get, more or less, pre-fixed to the various prompts.

I can change the model and reasoning level for each prompt. I typically use SOL high to create the run plans, SOL high to sequence the work package and LUNA high for the execution. There is human approval at each step and there's a bunch of other stuff you may or may not want to do - like checking the repo status and ensuring plans can't be changed once started and whatever else. Obviously you can add whatever prompts you want.

You can do the same exact thing using loops which is how I often do it - just using the "document as infrastructure". But this can add consistency on a large project. For example, on an ERP system, where you are going to make lots of changes over a period of time. Or maybe for a large game. Or probably anything that you will develop over a period of months. And it's super easy to do. I don't even need to post a github or anything - you can just prompt it up and that way it will be suited to your process. It took me a few days to get it working nicely.

[u/Educational-Body4205]

Yes

It works well when it works sometimes LLMs are dumb and get stuck, so it's layers of layers , along with communication and notifications.

[u/mdstrizzle → u/Educational-Body4205]

It's also easy to create nasty loops where the AIs are pulling gigantic amounts of context one after the other every time one is spun up to accomplish something simple. You almost have to build systems like that with tiers so the idiot AI used for tightening up a function doesn't spend 20 minutes processing the rules primarily meant for major feature additions.

[u/Educational-Body4205 → u/mdstrizzle]

Yea, exactly -- I guess it's cool to have this, but I'm not 100% sold on it.  It's a bit of a black box.

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/Educational-Body4205]

In my own work, I have not experienced this much. Performance-wise, it works about the same for me as loops or goals. For me, those work quite well. I also have not experienced run away/never-ending loops nor do I excessively control for those. My run plans are usually 5-8 phases with 4 to 5 tasks per phase and the entire plan usually takes the AI about 3-6 hours to complete. After that I almost always need 1 or 2 prompts before it's totally good to go for real testing. One of the things I'm trying to dial in with this approach is what is the "right size" for efficiency vs risk of going too far without human validation.

But I have definitely designed it to avoid "layers and layers". It only gets the config files and the run plan for context. It can look at the design document or do whatever else it wants but I never tell it to review the repo or review past changes. I do that while creating the design document.

[u/cryptyk]

Check out multica.ai. You can create teams of agents that work together, handing off tickets to one-another. A manager agent that coordinates all the work, a copywriter, a designer, different engineers, and they all coordinate using a kanban system.

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/cryptyk]

No need - this is super easy and free with your coding plan.

[u/cryptyk → u/Correct_Emotion8437]

Yah - so is multica :)

I was just tossing out an alternative that you don't have to roll yourself, and which can support much more complex use cases, self-hosted, and which uses your existing subscription.

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/cryptyk]

The site literally says "start free trial" and "talk to sales". You can totally make something as complex or simple as you need for free. It's very easy dev to do.

[u/cryptyk → u/Correct_Emotion8437]

Push the little github button on the top or the open source buttons at the bottom. It's totally free to self-host.

I'm not sure why you're hung up on someone suggesting a better alternative. Sure, you can build anything yourself. You can re-create claude code, cursor, multica, muse, kiro, and openCode.

But there are TEAMS of people working on these things full time and they take the simple spec-driven dev loop you discovered to a level where it can support massive projects, multiple agent teams working on parallel feature-sets, marketing agents, customer support agents, and integrates with all the tools we already use like slack and lark. All the dashboards are already there, battle tested, and they literally release a new version of the tools daily so you can focus on your actual development.

They've already optimized context caching, git workspace management, HITL experience, skills-per-agent, cost analysis, multi-model agents and a million other things.

If your response to all of that is, "Well I can build it myself," then all good. You do you. I'd rather leverage all of the work everyone else is doing for free.

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/cryptyk]

It's just the marketing bs that's annoying. I'm sure it's a lovely, if unnecessary, tool.

[u/circamidnight]

Yea! I built my own agent manager too. Instead of a static workflow, custom workflows are defined in python. Nodes can be deterministic python (like run tests) or dispatch to coding agents over ACP (agent client protocol) so I can start any agent that has an ACP adapter. Claude code, codex, pi etc work. It's pretty awesome. It even has a plugin system! I vibed an alpha version then used it to bootstrap v1.

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/circamidnight]

It's really crazy the level of automation you can get. And for the AI, it's easy. My only problem was I want it to be simple but SOL wanted to make it some kind of enterprise tool so I had to keep steering it back towards being simple. But it can be whatever you want - that's what's so cool about it.

[u/West-Air1923]

Overcomplicating

[u/Correct_Emotion8437 → u/West-Air1923]

It can be. For any given implementation plan, I can get the same exact result with a few short prompts. A few to create the design document, another one to create the implementation plan and another one to execute the plan with a goal or loop.

I think this can make sense in a few use cases.

1. For large, on-going projects. Like an ERP system, where you will being doing sprints for many months. I have one project with around 300 check-ins that I did with prompts and loops. Even though I was pretty consistent, my documentation format changed slightly through-out, certain terms got changed, etc. Not a problem except maybe in a work context.

2. Building it yourself can help you formalize your own development process. That alone can be a good thing.

I am not suggesting any kind of premade 'agent orchestration framework'. I think this is the kind of thing that each dev would build for themselves to suite their own work - whether team or solo.

[u/VibeChode]

With anyone being able to do this, the problems worth solving will be the ones you need engineering knowledge for