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The Tao of Factorial
Table of Contents
Factorial is built around a small set of software principles. They shape how the product behaves, how it integrates with other systems, and how the team decides what to build.
Live, Shared Work
Manufacturing screens should not become stale while several people are coordinating the same work. Factorial uses live updates on collaborative pages and displays the people currently viewing them. The green Live indicator shows when the page is connected.
Fast Navigation and Data Entry
The command bar provides fuzzy search and rapid navigation across Factorial. Keyboard shortcuts and bulk actions reduce repetitive clicking when operators or planners need to process many records.
Moving information from a person, scanner, machine, or external system into Factorial should require as little friction as practical.
Bulk-First APIs
Factorial API endpoints are designed around bulk operations. A client can create or update a collection in one request instead of issuing a separate round trip for every record. This matters when scans, batches, or integrations produce many changes at once.
Server-Driven Architecture
Factorial is a Go application with a server-driven interface built using Datastar. The server remains responsible for application behavior and renders the interface updates sent to the browser. This keeps product rules in one place while still supporting responsive, application-like interactions.
The application is maintained as a monorepo. Shared types and generated interfaces help keep the database, server behavior, and browser interactions aligned.
Testing as Product Infrastructure
Static types, unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests protect the behavior customers depend on. The intent is not test coverage for its own sake. Tests make it safer to improve the product without silently changing manufacturing rules.
A Compact Self-Hosting Model
Factorial is designed to run without a large collection of supporting services. The compact deployment model makes self-hosting practical for organizations that need control over infrastructure and data residency.
Factorial also limits third-party operational dependencies where maintaining a capability directly produces a simpler or more predictable system.
Markdown for People and Software
Factorial presents structured records in concise, consistent forms that work well for both people and software. Markdown is especially useful for documentation and AI contexts because it preserves structure without surrounding the important data with interface markup.
This approach also informs the planned Factorial CLI, which will give people and AI agents a discoverable command interface to Factorial.
Using Factorial to Build Factorial
The Factorial team uses the product to plan and execute its own work. Bugs and workflow friction encountered through this internal use affect the team directly, which shortens the path from discovering a problem to improving it.