SFLO — Simon Factory Lights Out

A gated pipeline protocol for building software with AI agents. Five gates — each producing a required artifact. No artifact, no progress. No skipping.

flowchart LR
    G1["Gate 1<br/>DISCOVER<br/><br/>PM Agent<br/>SCOPE.md"] --> DEV_QA

    subgraph DEV_QA ["Inner Loop — max 10 rounds"]
        G2["Gate 2<br/>BUILD<br/><br/>Dev Agent<br/>BUILD-STATUS.md"] --> G3["Gate 3<br/>TEST<br/><br/>QA Agent<br/>QA-REPORT.md"]
        G3 -- "below threshold" --> G2
    end

    DEV_QA -- "meets threshold" --> G4["Gate 4<br/>VERIFY<br/><br/>PM Agent<br/>PM-VERIFY.md"]
    G4 -- "not A" --> DEV_QA
    G4 -- "A" --> G5["Gate 5<br/>SHIP<br/><br/>SFLO Agent<br/>SHIP-DECISION.md"]

Install

If you want to use v1 (no code) - get it from here

Latest version install

Tell your AI agent:

Install SFLO from https://github.com/simonasrazm/simon-factory-lights-out

The agent will clone the repo, run setup.sh, install the pipeline hook, and configure bindings. After a gateway restart (OpenClaw) or new session (Claude Code), SFLO is ready.

Usage

Say "SFLO: [describe what to build]" to start the pipeline. Examples:

• "SFLO: build a job board website with search and filters"
• "SFLO: create a CLI tool that scans code for vulnerabilities"

The pipeline runs automatically — Scout picks the right agents, gates enforce quality, hooks keep it moving until done or escalated.

Agents

Gates define what to produce. Agents define how. Each agent is a directory with a SOUL.md (methodology) and a BRIEF.md (one-paragraph description for Scout matching). See docs/agent-spec.md for the spec.

How Scout picks agents

On user prompt, Scout scans agents/ directory and reads each BRIEF.md to understand what the agent specializes in. It then matches agents to pipeline roles based on the user's prompt. Scout is an LLM agent.

flowchart TD
    P["User prompt:<br/>'Build a weather dashboard'"] --> S["Scout reads prompt"]
    S --> SCAN["Scans agent directories"]
    SCAN --> B1["agents/pm/BRIEF.md<br/>'Generic PM for any project'"]
    SCAN --> B2["agents/pm-website/BRIEF.md<br/>'PM specialized for web apps.<br/>Web-specific acceptance criteria.'"]
    SCAN --> B3["agents/pm-mobile/BRIEF.md<br/>'PM for mobile apps. Platform-specific<br/>criteria for iOS and Android.'"]
    B1 --> MATCH{"Match prompt<br/>to role"}
    B2 --> MATCH
    B3 --> MATCH
    MATCH -- "web app → pm-website" --> A["PM: agents/pm-website"]
    MATCH -- "no match → generic" --> G["PM: agents/pm"]

Example: When the prompt says "build a weather dashboard," Scout reads all BRIEF.md files, sees that pm-website specializes in web apps, and assigns it as PM. If no better agent matches, Scout falls back to the generic agent (agents/pm).

Adding your own agents

Create a directory with two files:

agents/
  my-pm-agent/
    BRIEF.md      ← one paragraph, tells Scout when to use this agent
    SOUL.md       ← full methodology, read by the agent at runtime

Scout will discover your agent automatically on the next pipeline run — no configuration needed.

Configuration

SFLO is config-driven via pipeline.yaml. The default pipeline is bundled with SFLO, but you can override it by placing your own pipeline.yaml in your project root.

# project-root/pipeline.yaml
threshold: A-  # Raise the quality bar

guardian:
  enabled: true   # Enable safety limits
  max_spawns: 30  # Max agent spawns before escalating

gates:
  1:
    artifact: SCOPE.md
    role: pm
    gate_doc: sflo/gates/discovery.md
  # Add custom gates by inserting float keys, e.g. 1.5 for an architecture gate

See sflo/pipeline.yaml for the full default configuration with all options documented.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT