fabrik

How Fabrik works

Fabrik is an automated driver for Claude Code that is powered by GitHub Issues and Projects. It watches a GitHub Project board and moves Claude Code through configurable workflow stages. Issues are the unit of work: the issue body is the specification, comments are user input, and the board columns define the workflow. The documented pipeline runs through six stages named Specify, Research, Plan, Implement, Review, and Validate. A human can stay in the loop at each stage or let the process run, which is the meaning behind the project's tagline about a human being in the loop or on it. The design turns a project board into a visible control surface for autonomous development, so progress and stuck items are visible in GitHub rather than hidden inside a local agent. Documentation, guides, and examples are hosted at fabrik.handarbeit.io, and the README points there for deeper detail than the quick start covers. Because the board columns map to stages, you can pause work by moving a card, which gives a non-technical stakeholder a way to steer the agent without opening a terminal. That mapping of project management concepts to agent execution is the central idea the tool is built around, and it is what makes the run state inspectable after the fact.

Requirements and configuration

The quick start requires Go 1.26.1 or newer, the Claude Code CLI, and a GitHub token with repo and project scopes. You initialize stage configs, a plugin, and a project config template, and you can pass a GitHub Project URL to auto-populate the owner, project, and owner type. Running without a URL gives interactive prompts in a terminal or a blank template in non-interactive mode. The config summary names two files. The .fabrik/config.yaml holds non-secret project settings and should be committed to git. The .env holds secrets only, specifically FABRIK_TOKEN or GITHUB_TOKEN, and must be gitignored. Precedence is CLI flag over environment variable over .env over config.yaml over defaults. An auto-upgrade flag lets Fabrik upgrade itself at startup and after idle polls by checking GitHub Releases for binaries or rebuilding from source when built locally, then re-executing. When stages drift from newer defaults, a refresh command prints warnings and can apply missing keys. The separation of committed config from gitignored secrets is the right call for a tool that touches your repository and your GitHub token, and the explicit precedence order means you can override one value in CI without editing the committed file. Those details matter when you run Fabrik in more than one environment.

Using it without the binary

If you do not want to install the binary yet, the Fabrik PM plugin gives Claude Code ambient awareness of your project. You install it in an interactive Claude Code session and then get a fabrik skill that auto-activates when a .fabrik directory is detected or Fabrik is mentioned. That skill lets you ask questions like what is on the board, why a given issue is stuck, or what is in progress without leaving the editor. A second skill walks through one-time onboarding from scratch. The plugin is a lighter way to try the ideas before committing to the full board-driven loop. Because the project is Apache-2.0 licensed and written in Go, you can read the CLI source, audit the stage logic, and adjust the workflow to your team's columns. The combination of a board, issues as specs, and staged Claude Code runs is the core that the rest of the tooling builds around. The README also notes the plugin gives ambient awareness rather than autonomous execution, so you can pilot the project-management layer safely before handing the agent real write access to your repository through the full CLI. The skill-based path is a good way to evaluate Fabrik before trusting it with merges.

Editorial conclusion

Fabrik is published under the Apache-2.0 license, written in Go, and its documentation lives at fabrik.handarbeit.io.