Factory

The factory runs state-machine workflows of spawned child agents. A stored factory entry — harness kind factory, written with rlm.harness.create_factory — declares the machine: states, each backed by a subagent spec, plus guarded transitions between them. The spec validates at write time (machine form, or dag sugar that compiles to one; pass exactly one), and an invalid spec is never stored. await rlm.factory.run('<spec_id>') then spawns each state's subagent as an ordinary child, feeds captured outputs into the successors' prompts, and drives the run to quiescence in a background kernel task — the call returns immediately and the run continues after the model turn ends. Use it when a workflow needs shape: fan-out, bounded loops (review/fix until a verdict approves), joins, or one child per list item.

For the full authoring reference and API guide — states, ports, guards, joins, foreach, residents, budgets and policies, and the rlm.factory run/status/stop/resume/graph/watch calls with worked examples — call rlm.factory.help() in the kernel. The guide lands with the factory-core PR; on builds without it, the module docstring in prime-agent-runtime/src/rlm/factory.py is the source of truth.

The opt-in gate

The factory ships disabled. rlm.factory.help() answers while it is off (the authoring guide stays readable before opting in), but every other rlm.factory call and every factory harness write refuses with one message: the factory is disabled; run /factory on to enable it. The user turns it on with /factory on in the client (/factory off disables it again — refused while the session still has live runs, and on a lane-advertising client while the live-run count cannot be read, so an active factory never loses its stop path, /factory status reports it), which persists the factory.enabled setting in the agent dir's settings.json — the same setting the daemon's factory_activity lane advertisement reads, so the TUI's factory dock group and page surface only on a client started while the factory is enabled. If a call refuses with that message, tell the user to run /factory on and restart the client.

Discovering machines

• The machine library: machines are MACHINE.md files, one directory per machine — the bundled seeds ship inside the runtime package (wheel package data, rlm/machines/<name>/MACHINE.md; PRIME_AGENT_MACHINES_DIR redirects that level at a team directory), and the personal library lives under the agent dir. prime-agent factory list | import | export manages them. The seeds are builder, pr-manager, and review-sweep.
• The TUI factory page: the activity dock's ⚙ N factory group (Enter or click) opens one live diagram per run, newest run first. The up/down arrows move the selection, Enter opens the selected run's action rows (stop, or resume while it is paused — arrows to walk, Enter to run), Esc closes.