background from sssf to foundry

From SSSF to Foundry

Foundry is not a port of the Super Simple Software Factory skill. The skill under .claude/skills/sssf/ is a reference implementation of ideas: phases, envelopes, gates, write boundaries, earned success, and poll-don't-push. Foundry reimplements those ideas in TypeScript inside an Electron app and does not execute or import the skill.

Side-by-side

SSSF (reference)	Foundry	Why
Python ADW scripts stamped into each repo	TypeScript engine in the app; pipelines are JSON data	Users compose pipelines in UI; no code stamping
Pi coding agent	droid CLI, stream-JSON-RPC	Factory-native harness, model substitution, BYOK
YAML roster by hand	Roster as app state with editor UI	Settings are the product surface
pydantic envelope types fixed in code	zod schemas + optional custom fields per agent	Custom agents need custom report shapes
Runs on current branch	Git worktree per run by default	Isolation that SSSF left as "the obvious next thing"
Trace db inside target repo	Trace in app support dir, one db per project	Repo does not need gitignore hygiene for the app
Separate Bun + Vue visualizer	Renderer is the visualizer; no server or ports	One process tree

Sources for this comparison: root PLAN.md, AGENTS.md, and the skill's SKILL.md.

What stayed the same

• Code owns sequencing, retries, and acceptance. Agents work inside one phase.
• Typed JSON envelopes across seams; parse failure re-prompts the same session.
• Gates validate claims with evidence, then feed corrections.
• Write boundaries enforced after the fact with git, not by tool-list theater.
• Poll SQLite with a rowid cursor; live and history are one transport.
• A known command is a code phase, never an agent rediscovering bun test.

What the skill still is for

• Reading cookbooks and module design when you want the original vocabulary
• Stamping a Python factory into a different repo (outside Foundry's product path)
• The Vue visualizer templates as design ancestry for the waterfall UI

Do not treat the skill as a dependency of apps/desktop/. See Patterns and conventions.

Timeline note

The public skill history and Foundry app history share this repository in August 2026 (see Lore). Conceptual continuity is intentional; runtime coupling is not.