technology
Introduction
Ready machines for coding agents: describe what a project needs once, and each agent platform gets a setup file it can read, checked against its rules, with the setup run …
New: Preconfig Doctor explains a failed setup, and fixes the spec when the cause is there
Ready machines for coding agents
Describe what your project needs once. Preconfiguration writes the setup file each agent platform reads, checks each one, and runs the setup on a clean machine with your tests before any agent starts. When a setup fails, Doctor reads the log, names the cause and, when it's in the spec, writes the fix.
5 platforms
Written from one preconfig.yaml: dev containers, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, cloud-init and a plain setup script
About 1 minute
From a clean Ubuntu 24.04 machine to passing tests, with PostgreSQL and Redis running (49.6 to 73.0 s)
32 of 32
Bugs planted in Core on purpose and caught by its tests. Doctor's tests caught 14 of 14
20 of 20
Doctor's fixes run again on a clean machine, every failure gone: 19 setups READY and Cursor's Dockerfile built
Measured on the Alphas of Preconfig Core and Preconfig Doctor on one Linux machine with 2 CPUs. The Beta measures every number again with real agents on the platforms themselves.
Articles and case studies
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technology
How It Works
The idea. Describe the machine a project needs in one short file. preconfig writes the setup file each agent platform reads, checks the files a repository already has, …
case studies
Draft and Build Case Study: Five Files Read, One Spec Drafted, Setups Written for Five Platforms
Most repositories already say what they need. A .python-version file names the Python, requirements.txt the packages, a compose file the databases the developers run, …
case studies
Hand-Written Setup Case Study: Fifteen Errors in One Service's Agent Setup, None Flagged When It Was Written
A team that uses two or three agents writes the same setup two or three times: once as a Copilot workflow, once as a Cursor environment, once as a dev container. Each …
case studies
Clean Machine Case Study: Ready in 49.6 Seconds, and a Missing Redis Caught at the Ready Step
A setup file that looks right proves nothing. The only proof is a machine that starts empty, runs the setup, and then passes the project’s own tests. That is what …
case studies
Upgrade Case Study: PostgreSQL 16 to 17 in One Line, With Every Platform's Files Following
Setup files are written once and changed many times. Every upgrade of a runtime or a database has to reach every file that installs it: the dev container, the Copilot …
next uses
Next Uses: Six Places Where a Ready Machine Pays Off
The four case studies share one pattern. A machine that starts empty has to become a known, working machine before anyone can do useful work on it, and the knowledge of …
doctor
Preconfig Doctor Reads a Failed Agent Setup, Names the Cause and Writes the Fix Into the Spec
When the Alpha ran orders-api’s setup with Redis left out of the spec, the machine printed 1,096 lines. The setup itself worked: every package installed and …
technology
Preconfiguration Explained: How One Checklist Gets Every AI Coding Agent's Machine Ready Before It Starts
Preconfiguration is a prototype of a small program called preconfig. It gets a computer ready for an AI coding agent before the agent starts, from one short checklist, …
Get in touch
Teams running AI coding agents who would like to try the Beta on their own repositories, and anyone with a stack, a platform or a failed setup log the project should test, are welcome to write.