Kiln builds Kiln

Kiln's own repository is worked on by a Kiln factory, kiln-self: issues labeled kiln-ready go to its foreman, the factory opens pull requests, and people review and merge them.

#How work arrives

Work for Kiln is filed as GitHub issues in the Kiln repository. Labeling an issue kiln-ready sends it to the kiln-self factory, which triages it, writes a spec when needed, builds it and opens a pull request. People still review and merge every pull request.

#The definition

The factory lives in factories/kiln-self/. Apply it with kiln apply factories/kiln-self.

# factories/kiln-self/factory.yaml
schemaVersion: kiln/v1
name: Kiln
alias: kiln
project: kiln
repositories:
  - { owner: fishuke, name: kiln }
integrations: [github, linear]
agentDefaults:
  harness: { type: claude-code, model: router:by-task }
  runner: linux-node
selfImprovement: { failedRunThreshold: 10, reviewers: { type: admins } }
defaultPipeline: feature
budgets: { perWorkItemUsd: 30, monthlyUsd: 3000 }

The ready automation filters on repos: [fishuke/kiln]. GitHub events carry both repo and repos.

#The rules it works under

The agents follow the same rules that CLAUDE.md sets for people and Claude Code in this repository: one task per branch, failing tests first, pull requests under about 400 changed lines, packages/* never import apps/*, every external system behind an interface with a fake, and docs pages updated with each task.

Kiln enforces what agents can do on GitHub: run tokens push only kiln/* branches and cannot approve or merge. People merge.

#Protecting the checks

A factory that improves itself must not loosen the checks that review it. policies/self-protection.yaml lists:

protectedPaths:
  - packages/definitions/src/validate*
  - apps/api/src/app.ts
  - packages/auth/**
  - policies/**
  - gates/**
  - packages/engine/src/gates.ts
  - packages/engine/src/state.ts
  - .github/workflows/**
  - factories/kiln-self/policies/**
twoApprovalPaths:
  - packages/definitions/**
  - packages/engine/src/improvement.ts

policies/default.yaml also protects policies/**, gates/** and .github/workflows/**, and needs two approvals for decisions/**.

What Kiln enforces from these today:

• Self-improvement drops any proposed change to a protected path and never changes policies/ or gates/.
• A self-improvement change to a two-approval path needs two different people.
• Kiln never opens a self-improvement proposal without a replay report, and agents cannot approve proposals.

Self-improvement changes definition files. Code changes to packages/ and apps/ arrive as ordinary pull requests from work items, so the protected code paths there also need branch protection and code owners in the repository. Spending is capped at the lowest of budgets.perWorkItemUsd (30) and the policies' maxUsdPerWorkItem (40 and 30), so $30 per work item, and at monthlyUsd (3000) per month. The deniedActions keys are accepted but not enforced yet.

#Scorers

With failedRunThreshold: 10, a proposal starts once an agent's unreviewed failures cover 10 runs, or the oldest is 7 days old.

#Measuring the share

Every pull request the factory opens carries the factory:kiln label. The share of merged Kiln pull requests with that label shows how much of Kiln is built by Kiln. The factory's dashboard adds autonomy, cycle time and cost per merged PR.

#Related pages

• Make a factory improve itself
• Self-improvement
• Policies and budgets
• Pipelines and gates
• GitHub