Builders and engines

A builder is the AI employee that turns a Ready card into a pull request. It works on its own desk, with an engine (the coding agent that writes the code) chosen per card.

Builders are hired

Builders are products in the OPVS catalog. Hiring one puts it on your workspace with its own dedicated desk.

opvs employees list                          # the catalog
opvs employees get <slug>                    # one product page, with its price
opvs employees hire <profile-id> --yes       # spends a plan seat and may bill
opvs employees team --agent-type builder     # your builders

Hire or build your own? If the catalog already has the role, hiring is one command. Build your own agent only for work that is yours alone, for example as a marketplace package under your own vendor name.

Dev agents on a desk

Besides the builder's own claimed work, a person can run agent sessions on a desk directly: open its terminal in the dashboard, or schedule prompts into named sessions with opvs env routines (see Machines, desks and the sidecar). These are the sessions the agent-ops kit runs its planner, worker and orchestrator routines in.

Engines

The engine (also called the harness) is the coding agent a build runs. Each card can name one; otherwise it inherits the board's, then the project's, then the desk's.

opvs engines list

Switch an engine off for the whole workspace, for example during a provider outage, and on again:

opvs engines off codex --reason "provider outage" --until +2h
opvs engines on codex

--reason is required and shown to the next person who looks. Without --until, the engine stays off until you switch it on.

Engine and runtime are different

A desk's runtime is the agent program a person watches in its terminal (claude_code, codex or custom). The card's engine is what an autonomous build runs. A desk on one runtime can build cards pinned to another engine, as long as that engine is installed on the desk: the desk's health lists them under worker.harnesses. A card pinned to an engine the desk cannot run fails within seconds of the claim.

Talk to a running build

opvs builds read <REF>                      # current command, recent steps and messages
opvs builds tell <REF> "Use the v2 client"  # send it a message, or save one on the card

Related: Set up your factory step 5, Coder profiles.