SH
Use cases / Engineering
Ship Bot
A software factory on your open-source queue. You still merge.
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The story behind this use case
Kun Chen owns open-source projects that add up to more than 24k GitHub stars. The incoming issues and PRs had buried him. What moved the queue was not reading faster. It was changing the layer he operates at.
Three changes. First, a VISION.md on every repo (he is renaming it STRATEGY.md): where the project should go, not a feature list of what it already is. Second, a software factory he named Grok Ship, running on Grok Bot. Firstmate is the only Bot he talks to. It keeps projects and tasks in sqlite on the shared computer, files work as scout (a report, never a PR) or ship (authorized change), and hands coding to per-project crewmates that drive Cursor cloud agents so the factory can scale without crowding the shared computer. A fresh adversarial review reads every ship branch before a pull request exists. Third, he invited a few maintainers, but only onto work already triaged as vision-aligned.
He published the distro at github.com/kunchenguid/grok-ship. The install line is one sentence: follow GROK_SHIP.md. After that, you talk to Firstmate. You still merge. Checks stay green. Default-behavior and security changes stay off any auto-merge path.
Posted on X, Aug 23, 2026. Factory writeup Aug 20.
Screenshots & demos
Prompt
This reference prompt was supplied by its author. Review it before giving it to your agent.
Walk me through connecting GitHub (or GitLab / Origin) on this shared computer. Then set up Grok Ship as a software factory. Follow https://github.com/kunchenguid/grok-ship/blob/main/GROK_SHIP.md if the file is reachable; otherwise reconstruct the same shape below. Talk to me only through Firstmate after install. For every repo I own: 1. Draft a VISION.md (where the project should go, not what it currently is). Show it to me before it is the rubric. 2. Triage open issues and PRs against that file: vision-aligned, off-vision, or needs-my-call. 3. File work in the local sqlite backlog as scout (report, never a PR) or ship (authorized change). Per-project crewmates drive Cursor cloud agents. Coding work runs on those cloud agents, not by crowding this shared computer. 4. After a ship branch is pushed, run a fresh adversarial review. No pull request until that pass is clean. Hard stop: do not merge, force-push, close someone else's issue, comment publicly, or contact maintainers until I say yes. Off-vision closings are drafted for me. Factory ships never merge while checks are red. I merge. After the first clean triage, save the VISION rubric as a skill and offer a weekday issue/PR routine that stops at the review list.