The age of software factories
Describe the product.
The factory builds it.
Shipyard plans the work, writes the code in an isolated sandbox, tests it, reviews it, and opens a pull request for you to approve — all inside a budget it cannot exceed.
You're in. We'll write when your dock is ready — once, briefly, from a person.
No credit card. No newsletter. One email when we open.
- Runs on Cloudflare's network
- Every build sandboxed
- Hard budget ceilings
- A human merges every change
How it works
Watch the work, not a spinner.
A factory you can't see into is a factory you can't trust. Every Shipyard run streams its plan, its progress, and its spend — live.
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Brief
Tell us what you need in plain language. The architect turns it into a backlog you can actually read — and asks when it isn't sure.
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Build
An engineer works in an isolated sandbox — never on your infrastructure — with exactly the tools and budget the task calls for.
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Prove
Your project's own tests and checks decide whether the work is done. Not the model's opinion of itself.
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Review
An independent reviewer inspects every change before a pull request reaches you. You merge. You own it.
✓ plan approved — 4 tasks, ceiling $2.50
✓ clone repository 12s
✓ 1/4 invoice model + migration $0.31 · 9 tests passing
● 2/4 QuickBooks export running checks
○ 3/4 PDF templates
○ independent review → pull request
Why Shipyard
Prototyping tools make demos.
Factories make products.
v0, Bolt, and Lovable are great for a Friday-afternoon prototype. Shipyard is built for the application your business will still be running in five years.
Security
Bold claims, honestly made.
Letting software write software is a real decision. Here is exactly what protects you — and the one thing we refuse to promise.
Isolated by construction
Every build runs in a fresh sandbox on Cloudflare's infrastructure — created for the run, destroyed after it. Your systems are never in the blast radius.
Your credentials stay out
The sandbox never holds your tokens. Repository access passes through an authenticated proxy outside the box — code inside can't leak a credential it never had.
A budget that cannot be exceeded
Spend ceilings are enforced in the payment path itself, per task and per run. Not a policy someone follows. A precondition the code checks.
Nothing merges itself
Every change arrives as a pull request, and a person on your side approves it. Always. There is no setting that turns this off.
Communication
Written like a person, because we check.
No confetti. No "I hope this email finds you well." When Shipyard writes to you — a progress note, a pull request description, a question — it's brief, specific, and readable in one pass.
If a message reads like it was churned out by a machine, we treat that as a bug and fix it like one.
Morning —
The QuickBooks export is done and tested: 14 files changed, all checks green.
One thing worth your attention: I renamed tax_rate to
tax_rate_bp (basis points) to avoid float rounding on totals.
PR #12 explains the tradeoff.
— Shipyard · $1.14 spent of your $2.50 ceiling
On the slipway
Launching soon after we do.
Being built now, in the order our beta customers ask for it.
- Preview deployments on every pull request
- Scheduled maintenance runs — dependencies, patches, small fixes
- Team seats with per-person approval rules
- Slack and Linear integrations
- Bring your own model keys
- SOC 2 Type II (audit in progress)
Questions
Asked and answered.
What does it cost?
You pay for what the factory actually does, under a ceiling you set before any work starts. The ceiling is enforced in code — a run stops itself rather than pass it. Beta pricing goes out with invitations.
Who owns the code?
You do. Work lands as pull requests in your repository, under your license. If you leave Shipyard tomorrow, you keep everything.
What happens when the factory gets stuck?
It stops and says so, plainly, with what it tried and what it spent. Unfinished work is a short report, never a surprise bill.
Which stacks do you support?
TypeScript and Node.js applications first, with more stacks during the beta. Tell us what you run — the waitlist brief is the roadmap.
Is my code used to train models?
No.
The age of software factories is beginning.
Bring the first brief. We'll bring the yard.
Join the first cohort