Show HN: SFML – A markup language for software factories, Terraform for agents

A developer released SFML, a language specification for defining "software factories" that the author describes as "Terraform for your software development lifecycle," aimed at standardizing agentic coding processes that teams currently share through AGENTS.md files and committed Claude and Codex settings files. The author says the design follows the Unix philosophy of small steps with clear inputs and outputs composed together, betting it applies to agentic coding, and is soliciting dissenters and collaborators on Hacker News, where the post had 2 points and 0 comments.

SFML is a language specification for defining software factories. You can think of it as Terraform for your software development lifecycle. I started from a language spec to help think through both how a factory is defined and how a conforming runner processes it. The push to do this comes from leading teams where everyone has a unique coding setup, which results in different agentic coding processes. People also want to work together on improving that process. Right now they do it through shared AGENTS.md files and, in some cases, committed Claude and Codex settings files. But it hasn't led to the collaboration we all want. SFML is my attempt to help make that happen. My core bet is that the Unix philosophy applies to agentic coding just like it applies to all other coding: small steps with clear inputs and outputs, composed together to get results. Most agentic setups lean on ever-growing AGENTS.md files that quickly become unwieldy. Breaking them up helps, but then the agent has to rediscover and reassemble your process on every run. I'm pretty early in thinking about what SFML should be, and I'm hoping to hear from dissenters and collaborators here today, to push me to think more critically and to show me directions I haven't imagined yet. Thanks in advance for your feedback. Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49908363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49908363 Points: 2 Comments: 0