Silverpond Factory

An automated software factory that runs Claude AI agents on a remote worker machine to implement tasks, reviews the code with Crucible, and opens pull requests — all from a single command.

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Two ways to use it

1. One-off task

factory run "Add a health check endpoint that returns {\"status\": \"ok\"}" --repo owner/my-repo

Claude runs on the worker, implements the task, Crucible reviews the result, and if anything needs fixing it retries automatically. A PR is opened on pass.

2. Batch from GitHub issues

Label issues with factory, then:

factory poll owner/my-repo

Every labeled issue gets picked up in parallel — each becomes a task for Claude to fix, with a PR opened on success.

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Prerequisites

Before you start, ask your admin to set up:

• SSH access to ares — your public key needs to be added to the worker machine
• Claude authenticated on ares — already done once for the team, nothing to do here

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Setup

1. Install

git clone https://github.com/silverpond/silverpond-factory
cd silverpond-factory
pip install -e .

2. Fill in your .env

cp .env.example .env

Then edit .env and add:

Variable	Where to get it
FACTORY_GITHUB_TOKEN	Create at https://github.com/settings/tokens — scopes: repo, issues, pull_requests, workflows
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN	Ask your admin — from the shared Slack app at api.slack.com/apps
SLACK_APP_TOKEN	Ask your admin — same Slack app, under "App-Level Tokens"
SLACK_DEFAULT_REVIEWERS	Comma-separated Slack member IDs to invite to each run's channel (find yours at slack.com/account/profile)

Slack is optional — leave those blank to skip notifications.

3. Run the setup wizard

factory setup

This asks for your username on the worker machine, your SSH key, writes your GitHub token to the worker so clone/push works, and optionally creates the standard factory labels on your repo.

Note: workers.yaml is already configured for the Silverpond ares machine. Your personal SSH key and username stay in .env (gitignored) — not in the repo.

Worker machine requirements

• claude CLI installed and authenticated
• tmux
• crucible — nix profile install github:jonochang/crucible (for code review)
• untangle — cargo install untangle (Rust projects only)

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Running tasks

Inline

# Basic
factory run "Fix the login bug" --repo owner/my-repo

# With eval commands (run after the agent finishes each iteration)
factory run "Add input validation" --repo owner/my-repo --eval "pytest" --eval "ruff check ."

# Override model and effort (haiku + low is cheapest)
factory run "Refactor the auth module" --repo owner/my-repo --model haiku --effort low

# Control how many Crucible review rounds run (0 = skip Crucible)
factory run "Add a loading spinner" --repo owner/my-repo --crucible-rounds 2

# If you're inside a git repo, --repo is inferred automatically
cd ~/projects/my-repo
factory run "Add a health check endpoint"

Without --eval, Crucible is the only quality gate — it reviews the diff and sends feedback to Claude if it finds critical issues.

Poll GitHub issues

# Basic — picks up all issues labeled 'factory'
factory poll owner/my-repo

# With eval commands
factory poll owner/my-repo --eval "bundle exec rails test"

# Override model/effort for all issues in this poll
factory poll owner/my-repo --model haiku --effort low

# Control crucible rounds
factory poll owner/my-repo --crucible-rounds 2

# Cap how many issues run in parallel (default: worker slot count)
factory poll owner/my-repo --max-concurrency 2

Individual issues can override model/effort via labels:

• factory:model:opus — run that issue with Opus
• factory:effort:low — run with low effort

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Monitoring

The terminal frees up immediately after launch. Use these to check on runs:

factory status                  # list all runs (includes PR URL)
factory status <run_id>         # detail for one run
factory attach <run_id>         # attach to the live tmux session on the worker
factory logs <run_id>           # tail agent output
factory kill <run_id>           # stop a run
factory workers                 # show active sessions + CPU/mem on each worker

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Maintenance

# Remove worktrees on the worker for finished runs
factory cleanup                 # remove all dead worktrees on ares
factory cleanup --dry-run       # preview first

# Remove local run history
factory runs-clean              # remove finished runs older than 7 days
factory runs-clean --days 1     # keep only last day
factory runs-clean --all        # remove all finished runs
factory runs-clean --dry-run    # preview first

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Advanced: task YAML files

For repeatable or complex tasks, define them in a YAML file:

factory run tasks/my-task.yaml                              # run from YAML
factory poll owner/my-repo --template tasks/my-task.yaml   # poll with YAML template

YAML files let you configure the full pipeline — eval commands, crucible rounds, untangle, evaluator, Slack reviewers, service ports, and more. See tasks/todo.yaml for a complete example.

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Pipeline

worktree → agent → eval → crucible (N rounds) → evaluator → PR

Any stage that fails sends feedback back to the agent for another iteration (up to max_iterations, default 3). Stages not configured are skipped.