What CAIA actually does

141 microfactories. 15 control-plane components. One founder brief in, one shipped app out.

Each microfactory (SF-##) owns one narrow responsibility, is versioned, and emits typed events on a shared backbone. Control-plane components (CP-##) wire them together — workflow durability, agent reasoning, secrets, observability. The whole factory is deterministic on the edges and LLM-only at the decision leaves.

Stage A

Vision Capture & Intake

Founder walks in with an idea. CAIA turns it into a canonical brief.

SF-00

Vision Intake

Prompt to canonical vision doc

SF-01

Interviewer

Multi-turn Q&A to sharpen the brief

SF-02

Grand Idea Capture

One-paragraph north star

SF-03

Signal Enrichment

Web + market context

SF-04

Wizard Orchestrator

7-step flow coordinator

SF-05

Spec Synthesis

Brief to executable spec

SF-06

Feasibility Score

Can we build this? Cost + time

Stage B

Product Definition

Interview thread + information architecture + acceptance criteria.

SF-10

Persona Builder

Target-user cards

SF-11

Journey Mapper

End-to-end user flows

SF-12

IA Atlas

Entity + page + relationship map

SF-13

Coverage Auditor

Gap analysis vs 12 dimensions

SF-14

AC Writer

GWT acceptance criteria per feature

Stage C

Product Engineering

Bounded contexts, component contracts, API specs.

SF-65

Bounded Context Modeller

DDD splits

SF-66

Service Boundary Designer

Where a service starts/ends

SF-71

Component Spec Writer

Per-component API contract

SF-72

Event Schema Registry

Cross-service event contracts

SF-75

Domain Model Compiler

ERD + migrations from DDD

Stage D

Architecture Gate

ADRs, ratification, ratchet enforcement.

SF-77

ADR Synthesizer

Decision drafts from tradeoff analysis

SF-78

Ratification Runner

Operator sign-off loop

SF-79

Ratchet Auditor

Enforces one-way arch decisions

SF-80

Cost/Perf Modeller

$/req at target scale

Stage E

Code Implementation

Spec to shipped code with tests + docs + CI green.

SF-82

Code Implementation

Spec to working code, first draft

SF-83

Refactor Steward

Post-first-draft cleanup

SF-85

Migration Generator

DB migration from schema delta

SF-91

Unit Test Generation

Test coverage to green

SF-93

Integration Test

Cross-service contract tests

Stage F

Quality Gate

Security scans, perf budgets, a11y checks.

SF-98

Security Scan

Trivy + deps + secrets scan

SF-99

Perf Budget Auditor

Lighthouse + bundle-size gates

SF-100

A11y Auditor

axe-core CI gate

SF-101

Reuse Steward

Refuses copy-paste of existing OSS

SF-104

Release Orchestrator

Auto-merge PR + deploy

Stage G

Deploy + Operate

Per-app dedicated infra, provisioned + observed.

SF-105

Deploy Decision

Blue/green vs rolling per app

SF-141

App Spawn Microfactory

Provisions per-app tenant + DB + secrets

SF-96

Auto Deploy + Live URL

DB, auth, ops dashboard handover

SF-125

Observability Wiring

OTel + Prometheus + Grafana per app

SF-133

SLO Enforcer

Burn-rate alerts + auto rollback

Control plane (CP-01 to CP-15)

Cross-cutting services every microfactory depends on. Ratified in the CAIA blueprint — see the ADRs on Confluence.

CP-01 Durable Workflow (Temporal)
CP-02 Agent Reasoning (LiteLLM + free tier)
CP-03 Event Backbone (Kafka + CloudEvents)
CP-04 Policy Engine (kill switch, cost gates, DoD)
CP-05 Artifact Store (MinIO)
CP-06 Operational DB (Postgres per tenant)
CP-07 Project Knowledge Graph
CP-08 Decision Registry (ADRs, ratified)
CP-09 Evidence Store (screenshots, traces, test results)
CP-10 Secrets Broker (Vault)
CP-11 Identity + Tenant Fabric (Keycloak)
CP-12 Observability Stack (Prom + Loki + Grafana)
CP-13 API Gateway (APISIX)
CP-14 Dispatch Status Reporter
CP-15 DoD Gate (mechanical enforcement)

See it live

Every merge to develop shows up on Factory Live. The wizard front door lives at dashboard.chiefaia.com/wizard/onboarding.