Factory only works on issues you have explicitly marked for it. Everything else is ignored — not queued, not deferred, ignored.
Read this before running it for real. The gate is the main guardrail, so loosen it deliberately.
The three gates
All must pass:
| Gate | Default | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
safety.requireTitlePrefix | [factory-e2e] | Issue title starts with this |
safety.requireLabel | factory | Issue carries this label |
safety.requireTeamKey | AR | Issue belongs to this team |
[factory-e2e] is reserved for Factory's own self-test soak — those PRs auto-close. For real work you want to keep, set the prefix to [factory].
How an issue enters
Depends on your issueSource:
| Source | What you do |
|---|---|
| Linear | Title it [factory] <task>, set the team and a repo label, move it to Ready for Agent |
| GitHub native | Add the readiness label (factory) and a repo route label to an open issue |
| GitHub mirror | Add factory to a GitHub issue — it's mirrored into a [factory] Linear issue, then dispatched through the Linear flow |
Pulled issues but dispatched none? That's the gate doing its job.
Nothing merges by itself
mergePolicy is never by default. Factory opens real pull requests and stops there.
Set on-green-with-review and it will merge — but only once CI is green and the PR has been reviewed. Even with babysitter mode shepherding a PR to green, final review and merge stay with a human.
Where issues land
terminalState decides where an issue goes when Factory is finished:
human-review(default) — someone signs off.done— Factory closes it out.
Start with human-review. Move to done per-team once you trust the output.