MetaFactory

Customer

Portfolio properties — PA-site, vela, principia, Performix, DevPlane, Fourth & Two, anycomp, segmentation-studio — that need the same library, the same canonical IDs, and the same passages queryable the same way.

Problem · external

Each consumer re-implements retrieval, identity, and integrity against the substrate, with definitions drifting per product.

Problem · internal

Every cross-portfolio question feels like a week of plumbing before the actual question gets answered.

Problem · philosophical

Cross-portfolio infrastructure that ultimately speaks to humans about humans should not have seven slightly-different definitions of competency, persona, or passage — it should be one substrate, legible to every consumer the same way.

Guide

`meta-factory-prod` — the thin Vercel API host that exposes the OLD meta-factory engine over a frozen v1.x REST + MCP contract plus a build-time-bundled cross-portfolio library snapshot every product reads from.

Plan

Pin to a v1.x contract version → read snapshot, library, and passages via REST or MCP per `docs/CONSUMERS.md` → migrate explicitly on major bumps; the engine and write-side stay in OLD, the host stays thin.

Success

One library, one canonical-output spec, one passage search, one identity authority — and a contract changelog the consumer can read in a sitting.

Failure avoided

Per-product taxonomy drift, runtime coupling to engine internals, and the substrate sliding back toward the half-renovated state the OLD/PROD split was designed to fix.

Cross-cutting infrastructure — book ingestion at chapter-respecting fidelity, schema-conformant extraction of behavioral constructs, job / competency / persona generation, survey factories, the canonical-vocabulary substrate every consumer needs to compare measurements across products — gets re-implemented per consumer when there's no production-factory substrate. The cost isn't only engineering: each consumer ends up with its own slightly-drifted definition of competency, persona, engagement, effect-size, and behavioral constructs that should be comparable across products become incomparable. The earlier 'Universal Information Factory' framing tried to do too much; the resulting analytics-vs-production drift left the repo half-renovated for a stretch. The fix was a deliberate split: production-factory engine in one shell, consumer-facing API in another, with a clean seam between.

Two-repo architecture. **OLD (`meta-factory`)** — AI-controlled engine, local-only on Mike's Mac, no human UI. Owns ingestion pipelines (collector → organizer → referee → classifier 14-stage book flow; research_agent + deep_research_agent for articles), the named factory roster (Persona Factory, Survey Factory, Competency Factory, Models Factory, Requirements Factory, Prompt Factory, Publishing Factory, Business Ideas Factory, Application Designs Factory, plus checkpoint-charlie and orchestrator infrastructure), the asset registry (5,013 entries as of 2026-05-11), and canonical_outputs production. Cryptographic provenance with SHA-256 tracking on every source file; safe-delete invariants require hash verification before any local delete. Dual-grade corpus ingestion migrated in from Vela — same database holds editorially-selected curator passages and bulk research chunks, distinguished by tag. **PROD (`meta-factory-prod`)** — pure API host on Vercel. Owns the v1.2.0 REST + MCP contract (`docs/API-CONTRACT.md` + `CONTRACT-CHANGELOG.md`), the cross-portfolio library layer (Stream 7, library snapshot of ~944 records consumed by every portfolio product), consumer-onboarding doc (`CONSUMERS.md`), auth boundary (`META_FACTORY_API_SECRET` shared-secret), and cloud content access (bundled snapshot + Supabase Storage). Same engine; different shells.

• 01Split engine + API host architecture — OLD does the work, PROD makes it accessible. The seam is a snapshot + cloud-storage refresh, run manually on a manual cadence. The two repos can evolve independently without coupling consumer integration to engine internals.
• 02Named factories as units of production — Persona Factory, Survey Factory, Competency Factory, Models Factory, Requirements Factory, Prompt Factory, Publishing Factory, Business Ideas Factory, Application Designs Factory. Each is a package that outputs a structured behavioral artifact; analytics offerings explicitly excluded. The roster grows; the substrate doesn't.
• 03Cross-portfolio library layer (Stream 7) — a single read surface for ~944 corpus records that every product consumes, with a shared lifecycle and spec at `peopleanalyst-site/docs/library/SPEC.md`. The portfolio has one library, not seven slightly-different ones.
• 04Dual-grade corpus ingestion — same database holds editorially-selected curator passages and bulk research chunks, distinguished by tag. Vela's pipeline lifted into the substrate.
• 05Cryptographic provenance contract — SHA-256 tracked for every source file; safe-delete invariants require hash verification on backup and durable storage before any local delete. The substrate cannot lose source material to a careless deletion.
• 06~$0.13 per research-run synthesis at 30K+ passage scale — most 'AI research' tools run 10–100× more expensive because they retrieve without pattern extraction. The discipline is statistical: extract patterns once, cite the evidence, don't re-retrieve.
• 07Schema-extracted measurement vocabulary (@measurement/core) shared across consumers — constructs, items, instruments, effect-sizes defined once in canonical form, so behavioral measurement compares cleanly across Performix / Principia / PA Platform / the toolbox. Cross-product comparison becomes structurally possible rather than aspirational.
• 08v1.2.0 REST + MCP contract — PROD exposes the same engine over HTTP for engineers and MCP for AI agents. Consumer integration is contract-versioned with a changelog; consumers pin to the version they were built against and migrate explicitly on major bumps.

1. 2026-05-18**DP-161 + DP-163 (Phase 1):** MetaFactory Console v2 lift — 10 admin routes under app/admin/substrate/* + login, 57 shadcn primitives, console widgets (substrate-browser, record-detail, ingestion-jobs, integrity-dashboard, pathb-planner, drm-queue, cross-property-memberships), gold/Geist-Mono operator-console visual discipline (P233). SHA d5914a3.
2. 2026-05-18**DP-161 Phase 2 prep:** supabase/migrations/002_metafactory_console_phase_2.sql (10 tables) + 6 admin HTTP routes + scripts/mcp-meta-factory.ts v1.5.0 with 6 mirrored admin write tools; gated on DATABASE_URL so nothing 500s pre-activation. SHA 2e3917b.
3. 2026-05-18**MF-150:** chat-capture pipeline (Chrome extension → /api/capture/chat-turn → chat_turns_raw → /books). SHA e6492ed.
4. 2026-05-18**DP-162:** portfolio adapter corrected for structured consumes[] edges. SHA db65cca.
5. 2026-05-18**MF-012:** receiver-archive notification handoff (HRIS fold landed in toolbox; segmentation-studio receiver repo safe to archive).
6. 2026-05-14**MF-200:** research-discovery engine (problem-anchored scans). SHA 85b9fae.
7. 2026-05-13**Stream 8 / state-ui:** six accessibility wins — /state/fixes, /state/queues, filters, evidence pane, weekly cron. SHA fdca4bf.
8. 2026-05-13**MF-100 → MF-106:** Content-State Service v1 — /state page + REST API, cloud-mirrored canonical_outputs + restore, quality validators (caught 350+ registry mismaps), reconciliation reports + registry consolidation (846 proposals), re-extraction workflow with budget gates.
9. 2026-05-11**MF-050:** chapter-level passages search baseline — 32,768 chunks indexed across 513 books, 99 ms/query, MCP search_passages tool v1.3.0. SHA 96d214a.
10. 2026-05-09**Phase 1C cloud-press:** REST + MCP host live at meta-factory-prod.vercel.app; library snapshot + Supabase Storage content; documented in docs/handoff/2026-05-09-phase-1c-shipped.md.

• ·DP-161 Phase 2 activation — pending Neon provisioning (Vercel Marketplace) + psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f supabase/migrations/002_metafactory_console_phase_2.sql; smoke-test 6 admin HTTP routes + 6 MCP write tools after.
• ·MetaFactory Console v2 Phase 3 — wrap the OLD engine MCP for ingestion orchestration through the same console (queued behind Phase 2).
• ·PA-022 Path B curate batch — title-match plan output landed (4 actionable, 23 NOT_FOUND, 17 MISSING_TEXT); awaiting Mike's budget-reset decision on the 68-book aggregate-fixable rerun (~$68 actual vs $25 authorized).
• ·PAT-47 substrate-first disposition — producer half dropped per 2026-05-18 stash disposition; substrate stays canonical, consumer half tracked in toolbox.
• ·MF-031 UI/UX leverage survey — pills production-ready (0.5d lift), player 2-3d, kanban 1-3d; rollout plan staged in docs/ui/MF-031-leverage-survey.md.
• ·PA-SPEC §5 alignment ask — off-session ask to PA-site; unblocks every Phase 2 canonical_id join.

`meta-factory-prod` is a thin API host on Vercel over a build-time-bundled library snapshot, with the engine and write-side living in OLD `people-analyst/meta-factory` (MF-DEC-1 settled). The contract is frozen at v1.x and additive-only (`docs/API-CONTRACT.md` + `CONTRACT-CHANGELOG.md`), so consumers pin a version and migrate explicitly on majors. Phase 1C shipped 2026-05-09; Phase 2 — durable operational DB on Neon plus the MetaFactory Console write surface — is staged behind a `DATABASE_URL` gate so nothing 500s pre-activation, and Phase 3 wraps the OLD engine MCP for ingestion orchestration through the same console. The seam between OLD and PROD is a manual snapshot + Supabase-Storage refresh; the two repos evolve independently.

Private. OLD/PROD split shipped + cleanly separated in the portfolio registry (DP-149) and the briefing composite (DP-146 ripped the canonical.inspect fallback); v1.2.0 API contract live on Vercel at `meta-factory-prod.vercel.app`. Asset registry at 5,013 entries; cross-portfolio library snapshot at ~944 records (Stream 7, 2026-05-11). All major portfolio consumers integrated (PA-site, vela, principia, Fourth & Two, Performix, DevPlane). **MetaFactory Console v2 Phase 1** lift shipped 2026-05 (DP-161 + DP-163; Phase 2 prep DP-161-PHASE2-PREP added SQL schema + admin write surface + MCP v1.5.0). **MF-150 chat-capture pipeline** shipped (Chrome extension → `/books`) — the first new ingestion-side capability since 2026-05-11, alongside MF-200 (filed) research-discovery engine for problem-anchored scans. Provides capabilities to portfolio consumers: `library-api`, `chat-capture`, `research-discovery` (filed). Operator commands (`registry:build`, `registry:verify`, `snapshot:registry`, `upload:content`) are the engine-health surface for Mike or an AI agent. The half-renovated state is behind us; the substrate is legible in thirty seconds.