The Builder's Path #5intermediate

Your First Software Factory

Build a self-running software factory using the Minimum Viable Factory. Set up Linear as your dashboard, connect 6 agent stages (PM, Architect, Dev, Review, Test, Deploy), and watch a ticket turn into a deployed web app — automatically.

What You Build

A running Minimum Viable Factory that takes Linear tickets and produces deployed web apps

Sections

Lessons

Estimated

Concepts

Prerequisites

Spec-Driven Development Building Skills, Agents & Rules

mvfsoftware-factorylinearlanggraphdockerpipelineorchestration

Dev Jordan

walkthrough · casual

First 5 lessons are free (33% of the course). No login required.

The Vision

What a software factory is and the primitives it needs.

What Is a Minimum Viable Factory?

25 min Build in Public

Tweet: Tweet: 'About to build a self-running software factory. Ticket in, deployed web app out.'

The 11 Primitives Every Factory Needs

30 min

Set Up Your Factory Infrastructure

Clone MVF, configure Linear, webhooks, and Slack.

Clone MVF and Configure Your Environment

30 min Ship

Ship: MVF repo cloned, .env configured, docker compose up running

Set Up Linear as Your Dashboard

25 min Ship

Ship: Linear workflow states created and project configured

Connect the Webhook Pipeline

25 min Ship

Ship: ngrok tunnel active and webhook verified in Linear

Preview — content blurs halfway through

Set Up Slack Notifications

20 min

Unlock the rest of this course

$5 for full course or $25/mo for everything

See pricing

Understanding the Pipeline

The orchestrator, memory files, 6 agent stages, gates, and parallel execution.

The Orchestrator: FastAPI + LangGraph

40 min

Memory Files: The Only Shared State

30 min

The 6 Agent Stages: PM → Architect → Dev → Review → Test → Deploy

45 min

Human-in-the-Loop Gates

30 min

Parallel Dev Agents and Subtask Decomposition

35 min

Factory Features

Skills, tracing, and deployment automation.

Factory Skills: Spec-Writing to Deploy-Checklist

35 min

LangSmith Tracing: See Everything

30 min

Deploy Automation: Vercel + Supabase

30 min

Final Ship

Run your factory end-to-end.

Create a Ticket and Watch Your Factory Run

60 min

Concepts Covered

The Software Factory

A paradigm where developers stop writing code by hand. AI coding agents implement features and fix bugs while humans design, architect, and improve the factory itself.

AI Coding Agents

Autonomous software agents (Claude Code, Stripe Minions, Gas Town Polecats) that read codebases, write code, run tests, and open pull requests with minimal human interaction during execution.

Skills

Markdown files that tell AI models how to perform specific tasks, optionally accompanied by extra documents and pre-written scripts. Skills extend what agents can do.

Backpressure

Automated feedback systems (type checkers, linters, test suites, build systems) that keep agents on track. Without backpressure, you review trivial mistakes. With it, agents self-correct.

Blueprint Architecture

Hybrid systems combining deterministic code nodes (run linters, push changes) with agentic subtasks (implement feature, fix CI). A pipeline with guardrails, not full autonomy.

The Factory Is the Product

The meta-insight that the factory itself compounds in value. Skills built, pipelines improved, and architectural decisions that make the codebase more agent-friendly all accumulate.

Real-World Factory Implementations

Production-grade software factories already operating at scale: Stripe Minions (1,300+ PRs/week), Gas Town (Kubernetes for agents), Karpathy's autoresearch, Linear + Cursor integration.

Next Course

Multi-Agent Orchestration

Go beyond single-agent workflows. Build parallel agent fleets, LangGraph DAGs, merge queues, custom MCP servers, and Docker-isolated devboxes. Learn from Stripe Minions, Gas Town, and Karpathy's auto-research to design production multi-agent systems.

Your First Software Factory

What You Build

A running Minimum Viable Factory that takes Linear tickets and produces deployed web apps