Mathew Mathew · Claramap
Build your Software Agent Factory
A software agent factory turns a backlog into pull requests with no one at the keyboard. Each ticket gets its own disposable workspace and its own headless agent. The factory, not the agent, runs the tests, sends failures back, and gives up after a fixed number of tries. The only thing that reaches a person is a verified pull request to review. You manage the work instead of steering it.
Read the full slide transcript · Markdown · llms.txt · Fife repository
Headless agents, sandboxes and orchestration
What is a software agent factory?
A software agent factory turns a backlog into pull requests with no one at the keyboard. Each ticket gets its own disposable workspace and its own headless agent. The factory, not the agent, runs the tests, sends failures back, and gives up after a fixed number of tries. The only thing that reaches a person is a verified pull request to review. You manage the work instead of steering it.
What is a headless coding agent?
A coding agent started by a program instead of a person. The program supplies the task, the context, the tools, the permissions and the limits, then collects the result. The agent still plans, edits files and runs tools. Headless describes how the run starts and ends, not what the agent can do.
Why does a coding agent need a sandbox?
Because it runs commands. A sandbox gives each run its own files, processes and network policy, so concurrent jobs cannot touch each other or your machine. How strong the boundary is depends on the mechanism. A sandbox limits what a bad run can reach; it says nothing about whether the code is right.
What does Fife demonstrate?
Fife is a GitHub-issue-to-pull-request line. Label an issue `agent`; Fife clones the repository into a fresh Modal sandbox, runs Claude Code headless with the issue text, runs the test script itself, feeds failures back to the same session for up to three rounds, and opens a pull request. The sandbox receives a Claude credential and never the GitHub token. Agents never merge.