# Factory

Turns tracker issues into reviewed pull requests — discover, triage, dispatch, review, merge gate.

Rendered page: https://agentrelay.com/docs/factory/introduction
Markdown endpoint: https://agentrelay.com/docs/factory/markdown/introduction.md

---

The Agent Relay factory is an autonomous multi agent factory which integrates
with any surface you want.

It runs the loop a human normally babysits. An issue is marked ready, and Factory picks it up, decides how to tackle it, puts implementers and a reviewer on it, opens a pull request, shepherds that PR until it is green, and moves the issue on. You stay in the loop where it matters and out of it where it doesn't.

## The loop

1. **Discover** — poll or subscribe for issues that are ready and in scope.
2. **Triage** — decide the repo, the shape of the work, and how many agents it needs.
3. **Dispatch** — put implementers and a reviewer on it, in real checkouts.
4. **Review** — agents review each other's work before a human sees it.
5. **Merge gate** — the PR must be green and reviewed. Nothing merges by itself.
6. **Transition** — move the issue to human review, or to done.

Every stage is gated by the [safety scope](/docs/factory/safety-scope). Factory only touches work you have explicitly marked for it.

## Triage decides the shape

Triage is the interesting step. Before any agent is spawned, Factory works out what the issue actually needs:

- **Which repo** — from labels, project, or keyword rules.
- **How big** — `single` for one implementer, `workflow` for a defined sequence, `team` for several agents across repos.
- **Who** — how many implementers (up to six), which reviewer, which model per role.

It tries a cheap heuristic pass first and only escalates to a model when the heuristic comes back thin or low-confidence, then merges the two. Most issues never need the expensive path.

If triage can't route an issue confidently, it says so rather than guessing.

See [Issue labels and repository routing](/docs/factory/issue-routing) for the explicit `agent:single`, `agent:team`, and `agent:workflow` shapes and cross-repository dispatch.

## Escalation

Agents ask instead of inventing. When an agent hits a decision it shouldn't make alone — an ambiguous requirement, a missing credential, a product call — it parks the work and posts to the issue thread, mentioning the stakeholders you configured. The thread is where the answer goes back in.

Nothing silently stalls: a stuck run surfaces rather than quietly failing.

## Babysitting

Opening a PR is not the same as landing one. With babysitter mode on, a dedicated agent stays with each pull request and shepherds it: responding to review comments, resolving conflicts, and re-running until CI is green. When it's genuinely ready, the issue moves to human review.

You can also point it at an existing PR without turning the mode on:

```bash
factory babysit <PR>
```

Final review and merge always stay with a human.

## Multi surface

Factory sits on top of [Relayfile](/docs/file), so the surfaces it reads and writes are the [full integration catalog](/docs/file/integrations) — issues from Linear or GitHub, status to Slack, and anything else an adapter covers. Point it at the surfaces your team already uses.

## Watching it work

Factory reports to the Agent Relay dashboard by default: every instance, every run, and a progress timeline of what each agent did — with a trace id correlating a run's whole life, and a closed privacy contract that has nowhere to put your prompts or source code. See [Observability](/docs/factory/observability).

It also reports where you already are: lifecycle updates on the Linear issue, or GitHub comments plus `factory:in-progress` and `factory:human-review` labels, and a threaded Slack status per issue with your stakeholders mentioned when an agent needs a decision.

## Start here

- [Quickstart](https://agentrelay.com/docs/factory/quickstart): Run one issue end to end, dry-run first.
  - [Safety scope](https://agentrelay.com/docs/factory/safety-scope): The gate that decides what Factory may touch.
  - [Observability](https://agentrelay.com/docs/factory/observability): Live instances, runs, and trace correlation.