Introduction
Kiln is the software factory of Harminder Virk, with one command to start a product. You stay in the decisions, and agents do the building. You still read the code before it merges.
The idea comes from a simple split. A person shapes the work for as long as they want. Once the work is settled, the building can happen with no person. His article A practical look at software factories explains why.
#The flow
Each piece of work starts as an input, and goes through the same steps.
- input
- intake
- change taskdraft
- probe
- ready
- build
- review
- accept
- done
- explorationready
- build
- review
- accept
- done
- intake
- change tasks
- inbox.md
The flow explains each step.
#The hub
A product is rarely one repository, so what it knows does not live in one. Each product has a hub, a repository above its code repositories. It holds the positioning, the decisions, the vocabulary and the work to do. You run the agents in the hub, so each session reads the same facts.
#What you get
kiln new acme makes two repositories: acme for the code and acme-hub for the factory. The hub has five skills, a state machine, and a place for the context and the work.
If you choose AdonisJS, the app starts from an official AdonisJS starter kit with the newest Flow harness, and it can run CI and a Flow review on each pull request. The Factory panel shows the work in Herdr, and it has a button for each step.
The five skills and the state machine are the files of factories-hub, as they are. Kiln and factories-hub gives each difference.