Factory Mission

factory-mission

What this skill does

factory-mission is the execution-harness orchestrator of the software factory. It takes a feature description, structures it into a Mission Brief (goal, constraints, non-goals, success criteria), generates an ordered step list, and executes those steps via sequential subagent runs.

It implements the following key factory platform capabilities:

1. Universal Skill Routing: Decoupled step dispatching. It scans installed skills and hands the inventory to subagents (the model picks which tool fits the step).
2. Tracker-Agnostic Integration (references/tracker-integration.md): When invoked with --issue <ref>, it pulls ticket context, respects automation/dispatch labels (autonomous/supervised), and writes back status comments + iteration logs.
3. Inter-Agent Comment Bus (references/tracker-integration.md §Inter-Agent Comment Bus): When tracker-integrated, each step's terminal output (decisions, findings, artifact references — never drafts) is published as a structured comment on the PR/MR/issue. The next step reads previous markers before starting. This is the durable inter-agent memory that survives session boundaries, runtime switches, and pod crashes. Drafts stay on local disk.
4. Self-Contained Worker Brief: The Mission Brief is persisted to .adlc/workflows/runs/<run_id>/brief.md as a draft. Resumed runs and cross-runtime workers read it from disk — no session-context dependency.
5. Worktree Isolation: Each run gets its own git worktree. Never touches the user's main checkout. Cleaned up on exit (retained if unsaved work).
6. Lease-Based Liveness: The state file carries a renewable lease with heartbeat + TTL. Resume can distinguish live, stale, and completed runs.
7. Stall Detection: After dispatching a subagent, observable progress is checked at a configurable window (default 20 min). A hung agent that passes the circuit breaker is detected and killed.
8. Lane-Based Dispatch (references/lanes.md): Steps can run on different lanes — inline (this session), agent (fresh session of same CLI for maker/checker separation), or cli:<runtime> (optional cross-vendor). The agent lane is the default for unattended stages.
9. Scratchpad Tools: Subagents share named, run-private scratchpads (.adlc/workflows/runs/<run_id>/scratchpads/<name>.txt) to compile notes, drafts, and reviews incrementally before publishing.
10. Workflow Memory & Self-Improvement: Persistent JSONL database (.adlc/workflows/memory.jsonl, workspace-global) stores learnings across runs. factory-learn periodically runs retrospectives to prune/weight memories.
11. Hierarchical Context Parameters: Workflows and agents reference parameters as {{params.<key>}}, resolved from most specific to least specific: agent < workflow < repository < project < default.
12. Decoupled Test/Code Separation: In autonomous or supervised modes, it splits implement into sequential test (Test Agent writes failing tests under read-only src/) and code (Implement Agent writes code under read-only tests/) runs — each closed by a mandatory mechanical gate (see Phase 5): the RED gate proves the new suite fails before coding starts; the GREEN gate proves it passes before converge is reached.

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When to use

• "Build this feature end to end" inside a factory-enabled team.
• You want an execution loop with a circuit breaker, score-regression checking, and a robust resume mechanism (factory-mission --resume).
• You want to run autonomously against a ticket queue.

When NOT to use:

• For non-factory standalone projects (run adlc-cli workflow run <workflow.yml> — the CLI engine, ADR-395).
• Trivial 1-line changes (do them directly).

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Process

factory-mission executes in alignment with the shared executor contract (references/executor.md) and the tracker-agnostic layer (references/tracker-integration.md).

Phase 0 to 4: Setup & Compilation

1. Read the run's mission.yml (.adlc/workflows/runs/<run_id>/mission.yml). Resolve execution and supervision.
2. If --issue <ref> is specified:
   • Discover credentials and MCP/CLI tools (references/tracker-integration.md).
   • Pull the issue content as the primary Brief description.
   • Read the labels. If dispatch is interactive or gating is human-required -> HALT execution (hand back to interactive session).
   • The comment bus is active for this run — step outputs will be published as marker comments on the PR/MR/issue.
3. If no issue: read spec description from arguments. The comment bus is inactive — steps communicate through local files only.
4. Structure the Mission Brief (Goal, Constraints, Non-Goals, Success Criteria). The Brief is a draft — not published to the comment bus.
5. Resolve hierarchical Context Parameters from agent < workflow < repository < project < default and embed the frozen value map in the brief.
6. Generate the step list based on route classification (spec, change, quick). Each step declares output_type (draft/decision/findings/artifact-ref) and reads_from (markers or local paths) per the executor contract.

Team index fallback: when no team record-class index was injected at session start, read the binding records directly from docs/adlc/memory/ (ADR-401 dual-read order: docs/adlc/memory first, legacy .adlc/memory fallback) and state that fallback in one line. Never block on the missing injection.