The Constellation

How the tools fit together

One queue, one state machine, and the tools that keep twenty workers honest.

Flat illustration in the site's avatar-logo style: a constellation diagram on cream. At the center, a needle-dial gauge set in a deep red star labeled NEEDLE, connected by thin black lines to four machine totems — a tray of queued cards labeled BEAD-FORGE, a loom labeled FABRIC, a pressure gauge labeled CLAUDE-GOVERNOR, and an upright ring labeled HOOP — with one extra line joining BEAD-FORGE and FABRIC.

The tools

  • Orchestrator

    NEEDLE

    Deterministic state machine that dispatches the whole agent fleet.

    GitHub →
  • Work queue

    bead-forge

    Git-native work queue with atomic claims — the fleet pulls tasks from it.

    GitHub →
  • Telemetry

    FABRIC

    Fleet telemetry — every dispatch and outcome lands here.

    GitHub →
  • Cost gate

    claude-governor

    Cost and quota gate between workers and model providers.

    GitHub →
  • Control plane

    HOOP

    Fleet control plane for NEEDLE workers.

    GitHub →

The engine room

Six NEEDLE workers, one shared queue. Each worker independently runs the same loop — SELECT → CLAIM → BUILD → DISPATCH → EXECUTE → OUTCOME — pulling beads from bead-forge with atomic claims: exactly one worker wins each bead, losers move on to the next. Success closes a bead, failure re-queues it, timeout defers it. No dispatcher, no coordinator — just the loop, running unattended. The workers aren't uniform, either — each one drives a different agent harness (Claude Code, Codex, Goose, Pi) and model through the same adapter contract: prompt in, exit code out.

Beads shown are simulated.