All coding harnesses and code factories have a few major flaws: 1. You don't get to pick the workflow - someone else decides the workflow for you 2. It's often unclear when the human is needed - is the agent done, or do you need to verify? 3. You're limited to prose and all it's downsides - nested logic and complex compesition is pretty much out of the question 4. We end up relying heavily on agents calling mcp's or cli's for things that should be deterministic calls
You don't get to pick the workflow #
Why should the guys at vercel, linear, factory, anthropic, or openai decide what workflow is best for you?
Penguin flips that:
YOU decide what workflow is best.
Three concepts: Workflows - what's run Adapters - a way to connect to the outside world Messages - async or sync sent between workflows and adapters
With these three primitives, you can build incredibly complex workflows including, but not limited to, software factories.
It's often unclear when the human is needed #
With Penguin, you can write deterministic s in workflow ("New messages from slack, would you like to implementing or read them after?")
When an agent stops it's either because the agent needs human input or because it is done. When done, the workflow moves on to the next step until a human is needed. There is clear separation between an agent finishing and human input needed.
You're limited to prose and all it's downsides #
If you want a workflow that runs another workflow that runs another workflow that runs several agents and it runs all those workflows in peralell, you just can't do that with prose very easily. Code is much more clear The workflows and adapters all are written in TypeScript making it incredibly straightforward to build a new workflow or adapter.
We end up relying heavily on agents calling mcp's or cli's for things that should be deterministic calls #
When you implement a github issue, jira ticket, or review a PR, you are ALWAYS going to pull the info from those sources, and you can do this with a script. There's no need for the agent to use an MCP.
Final notes #
You can build a workflow that has steps, blockers, and all, without ever even calling an agent.
You can make workflows that respond to all kinds of triggers: Slack, GitHub, Jira, User, a webhook, anything you can bulid an adapter for
Penguin is the ultimately composable workflow builder
Install with: npm install -g @mikaelweiss/penguin
https://github.com/mikaelweiss/penguin Still early beta, but I've already started using Penguin at work as well as to build Penquin!
Comments URL: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342987)
Points: 1