Learn

Colony is an autonomous software development pipeline. This pillar covers the concepts you need to understand it, the workflow that drives it, and the four human roles that work alongside it.

If you’ve never seen Colony before, follow the 10-minute orientation below. If you already know what Colony does and need to understand your job, jump to the role that matches the work you’ll be doing.

10-minute orientation

A leader-friendly read that explains the human/system division of labor.

1. Core Concepts — what Colony is and what it manages (~5 min)
2. The Workflow — how an issue moves from raw input to merged PR, and where each human engages (~5 min)
3. (Optional) Sponsor — the staffing and budget framing for a Colony rollout

The four roles

Colony is staffed by four kinds of human work. One person can wear multiple hats; on a small team, one person may wear all four.

Author Files issues. Defines acceptance criteria. Validates the result.

Reviewer Judges Colony's pull requests. Escalates and overrides when needed.

Operator Configures the colony. Allocates capacity. Recovers stuck work.

Sponsor Charters the rollout. Sets risk envelopes. Tracks throughput and cost.

Reference material

Core Concepts Tenants, repos, the pipeline, agents, and work types.

The Workflow One issue's journey from intake to done.

Team Patterns How teams adopt Colony at scale.

Integrations How Colony connects to your existing tools.