isanna builder

What it is

Builder installs a workflow into a repository — specify, design, review, plan, implement, verify — with a human approval gate at each of the first four boundaries. No code is written until the requirements and a plan exist and someone has agreed to them; implement and verify then run autonomously against the plan you approved. It works with VS Code and Copilot Chat, Claude Code, and Codex, because it ships as prompts and a small command-line tool rather than as an agent of its own.

Claims and verdicts

The idea the rest of the system is built around: an agent can write the word “SUCCEEDED” into any file, but it cannot forge an exit code the host observed itself. So the two are never treated as the same kind of thing. The host runs the verification commands and gates on the exit code; the agent’s own report of its work is not consulted.

Progress across a release is computed only from host-observed events, which means an agent that writes more tasks, splits existing ones, or marks something verified moves the number by exactly zero.

How it works

Phase gates

Six phases. The first four each end at an approval boundary a human crosses deliberately; approving the plan releases implement and verify to run without further prompting.

Enforced test-first

A validator checks task schema and requires red-then-green exit-code evidence, so test-first is a mechanical gate rather than an instruction in a prompt that an agent may quietly skip.

Drift detection

A sync command compares the spec artifacts against the implementation and can backfill specs from code that was written without them.

Zero dependencies

The workflow ships as prompt files and needs only bash and an agent. Python 3.11 is optional and unlocks the deterministic validator — standard library only, no install step — and where it is absent the validator reports itself unavailable rather than passing silently.

What is true today

In service, and its own first customer: isanna’s software ships through this system, with the same gates, across every repository behind the records on this page.

Apache-2.0, and honest about the limit — the evidence is tamper-evident, not tamper-proof. The guarantee is the host’s verdict, never a file.