# auto

> auto is a programmable software factory — defined in YAML, woken by events, steered by you, improved by itself.

## Docs

- [Overview](https://docs.auto.sh/index.md): The platform for programming software factories.
- [Quickstart](https://docs.auto.sh/quickstart.md): Go from zero to a fully deployed agentic workforce in under 15 minutes.
- [Resource Lifecycle](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/resource-model.md): How .auto/ files compile into project resources, how applies reconcile them, and how to validate changes before they land.
- [Agents](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/agents.md): What an agent is in auto: one YAML file that declares who it is, where it runs, what it knows, what it can touch, when it wakes, and how events route to it.
- [Fragments](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/fragments.md): Share environments and prompts through .auto/fragments/ imports, merge order, append, and remove.
- [Templates](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/templates.md): When to track @latest, when to pin, and how to tailor managed templates without forking.
- [Variables](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/variables.md): Declare repoFullName, githubConnection, and apply-time {{ $name }} substitution for imported content.
- [Triggers and Events](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/triggers-and-events.md): How events flow into auto, how triggers match them, and how spawn, bind, and deliver routing decide which session does the work.
- [Routing](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/routing.md): Production rules for spawn, deliver, and bind — pairing triggers, suppressing loops, and choosing onUnmatched.
- [Binding](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/binding.md): Spawn once, bind to an artifact, and route follow-ups back into the same session.
- [Sessions](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/sessions.md): A session is a durable, observable execution of an agent: how sessions spawn, move through their lifecycle, receive commands and events, park, hand off, and end.
- [Concurrency](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/concurrency.md): How concurrency: 1, replace: auto, onReplace, and onUnmatched: spawn work together for long-lived orchestrators.
- [Environments and Sandboxes](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/environments.md): Where agents run: isolated cloud sandboxes built from a declared base image, build steps, and cached per-session setup, with secrets injected at launch.
- [Connections and Identities](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/connections-and-identities.md): Connections grant the platform permission to act in your GitHub, Slack, Linear, and Telegram accounts; identities decide who each agent appears as and how activity is attributed.
- [GitHub Sync](https://docs.auto.sh/concepts/github-sync.md): CI/CD for your agents: plan .auto/ changes on every pull request, apply them on merge, and keep managed templates current automatically.
- [Agent Fleet](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/agent-fleet.md): A chief-of-staff orchestrator that splits a task list into scoped briefs, dispatches one staff-engineer session per task, shepherds every PR to green, and reports back with one packet.
- [Code Review](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/code-review.md): A reviewer agent that owns each pull request: one severity-ranked comment, a managed check, folding re-reviews on every push, and an optional Slack verdict.
- [Chat Assistant](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/chat-assistant.md): An @mentionable Slack agent with its own identity that holds context across a whole thread: mention it to start, reply to continue.
- [Incident Response](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/incident-response.md): A first responder woken by an alerting webhook: it correlates the alert with recent changes, posts an evidence-based triage, answers follow-ups in the thread, and drafts a fix PR when the cause is clear.
- [Self-Improvement](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/self-improvement.md): An agent that sweeps the project's own session history and PR feedback on a schedule, then proposes concrete improvements to the app and to the .auto/ configuration itself.
- [Issue Triage](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/issue-triage.md): A triage agent that grooms every new issue and hands implementation-ready work to Shepherd, which opens the PR and reports back.
- [Daily Digest](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/daily-digest.md): A cron-triggered, read-only analyst that compiles what shipped in the last 24 hours and posts a one-line summary with the full digest threaded in Slack.
- [Handoff](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/handoff.md): A handoff coder that takes ownership of a PR or implementation request on mention, works it to green CI, and reports back — from GitHub or Slack.
- [Research Loop](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/research-loop.md): A coordinator that runs the experimental method on a fleet: hypotheses per round, one experimenter session per hypothesis, a lab log in the thread, iterate until the objective is met.
- [Lead Engine](https://docs.auto.sh/examples/lead-engine.md): An agentic BDR: leads arrive by webhook, the agent researches and scores each one, drafts outreach, and posts the package to Slack for human approval.
- [Agent File](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/agent-file.md): Field-by-field reference for .auto/agents/*.yaml — every field, type, default, and constraint the agent schema defines.
- [Triggers](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/triggers.md): Complete reference for the triggers block: event selection, where filters, routing (spawn, deliver, bind), trigger messages, PR checks, and concurrency interaction.
- [Environments](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/environments.md): Field-by-field reference for environment specs — image presets or direct bases, build steps, per-session setup, caching, resources, env vars, and approvals.
- [Validate an Environment Image](https://docs.auto.sh/guides/environment-images.md): Test a preset or direct Docker/OCI base image, authored build steps, setup commands, and repository smoke checks locally before applying an agent.
- [Mounts](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/mounts.md): Git mounts: repository checkouts inside the sandbox, ref templating, GitHub App capability scoping, and how mounts gate GitHub MCP tools and git credentials.
- [Tools](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/tools.md): Declare the tool servers an agent's sessions can call: auto's platform tools, brokered GitHub access, hosted provider connections, and raw remote MCP servers.
- [Identity](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/identity.md): The agent identity block: display name, username, avatar assets under .auto/assets/, how inline identities compile to resources, and @mention presence in chat providers.
- [Variables and Templating](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/variables-and-templating.md): Apply-time variables, runtime event templates, and mount ref templates in .auto/ files — plus GitHub Sync context variables and file-backed prompt strings.
- [Imports and Fragments](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/imports-and-fragments.md): How agent documents compose: import resolution, field-by-field merge semantics, remove directives, the append directive, and fragment authoring conventions.
- [Managed Templates](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/managed-templates.md): The @auto/* template registry: import specifiers, @latest vs pinned versions, template variables, the subscription sweep that pushes updates, staleness advisories, and grant equivalence.
- [Project Config](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/project-config.md): .auto/config.yaml — the optional per-project settings singleton, its fixed config/project resource, and what it does (and does not) control today.
- [Secrets](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/secrets.md): Store credentials as write-only, envelope-encrypted values and reference them by name from agent environment variables, environments, and webhook triggers.
- [Runtime Controls](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/runtime-controls.md): Session governance declared on the agent: concurrency slots and automatic slot replacement, spend caps and their enforcement, and model selection with fallback chains.
- [GitHub Events](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/github.md): Every GitHub event a trigger can bind — payload fields, template placeholders, where-filter paths, and routing guidance for each event key.
- [Slack Events](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/slack.md): Every Slack event an agent trigger can listen on: messages, mentions, edits, and reactions, with payload placeholders, where filters, and bind-to-thread routing.
- [Linear Events](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/linear.md): Linear issue events an agent trigger can listen on: payload shape, label and state filters, mention detection, and issue-bound routing.
- [Telegram Events](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/telegram.md): Telegram events an agent trigger can listen on: group messages, bot mentions, direct messages, and reactions, with payload placeholders and filters.
- [Cron and Webhooks](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/cron-and-webhooks.md): Schedule agents on a cron with heartbeat triggers, and wake them from any external system with authenticated custom webhook endpoints.
- [Lifecycle Events](https://docs.auto.sh/reference/events/lifecycle.md): auto's internal events — apply lifecycle, connection lifecycle, session-binding transitions, and onboarding — with payloads, placeholders, and example triggers.
- [Inside the Sandbox](https://docs.auto.sh/runtime/sandbox.md): What an agent finds at runtime: the base image, workspace layout, mounted repositories, the /workspace/auto-docs bundle, environment setup, credentials, and the sandbox lifecycle.
- [Chat.* Tools](https://docs.auto.sh/runtime/chat-tools.md): The unified messaging surface agents use to talk on Slack, Discord, Telegram, and Linear: every chat.* tool, its parameters, addressing and threading semantics.
- [Auto.* and Checks.* Tools](https://docs.auto.sh/runtime/auto-tools.md): The platform coordination tools every agent can carry: spawning and messaging sibling sessions, bindings, session introspection, connections, resource dry-runs, webhooks, secrets — and checks.* for GitHub check runs.
- [GitHub Tools](https://docs.auto.sh/runtime/github-mcp.md): The brokered GitHub MCP server: the curated tool catalog, how capability scoping derives from mounts, the credential model, and the guardrails on write tools.
- [Auto MCP](https://docs.auto.sh/runtime/auto-mcp.md): The platform's own MCP server: the session-scoped endpoint behind the auto alias, what it exposes, how tool names appear in each client, and how the sandbox adapts it.