01
More output, same team
Every service, image and dependency the factory ships becomes something to upgrade, patch and keep compliant. AI multiplies the output. The team that maintains it stays the same size.
Software factory
Every software factory has a build line. Yours needs a maintenance line.
Your software factory turns plans into production software, with engineers, coding agents or both. Everything it ships has to stay current, secure and compliant long after release. That’s the maintenance line, and MaintenanceOS runs it continuously.
Definition
What is a software factory? Plan to production, on one line.
A software factory is an organization’s end-to-end system for producing software: the people, platforms, pipelines and practices that take work from plan to design, build, review, test and ship. Like a manufacturing line, the goal is a repeatable, largely automated path to production.
Platform engineering teams usually run it: internal developer platforms, golden paths, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and the guardrails around them.
An AI software factory goes further. Coding agents plan, write, test and ship a growing share of the work, so output grows faster than the team that has to look after it.
The build line
- Plan
- Design
- Build
- Review
- Test
- Ship
The maintenance layer · MaintenanceOS
A continuous loop over everything that ships
Identify Understand Prioritize Act Verify Govern
- 1 Identify Find what’s outdated or at risk
- 2 Understand Map impact, owners and dependencies
- 3 Prioritize Rank by risk, cost and urgency
- 4 Act Fix it with AI agents or your engineers
- 5 Verify Confirm the fix worked in production
- 6 Govern Keep every change within your policies
Continuous: every verified change resets the baseline for the next cycle.
Why maintenance breaks first
The build line got faster. The maintenance line didn’t.
02
Everything ships with an expiry date
Runtimes, databases, Kubernetes versions, base images and AI models reach end of life on their vendor’s schedule, not yours.
03
Findings scale faster than fixes
Scanners report what’s vulnerable within hours. Working out the fix path, the owner and the order of changes is still manual, so backlogs grow.
04
Agents without context stall
A coding agent can write the upgrade. Without knowing what breaks, who owns it and what your policy allows, its pull requests sit unmerged.
The maintenance line
What the maintenance line does. One continuous loop.
The maintenance line is the part of a software factory that keeps everything already shipped current, secure and compliant: upgrades, end-of-life migrations, vulnerability fixes, certificate rotation, configuration drift, and the evidence that proves each change is done.
MaintenanceOS is the maintenance layer that runs it: one loop between the tools you already use and the engineers and agents who make changes.
-
01 Identify
Find what’s outdated or at risk
-
02 Understand
Map impact, owners and dependencies
-
03 Prioritize
Rank by risk, cost and urgency
-
04 Act
Fix it with AI agents or your engineers
-
05 Verify
Confirm the fix worked in production
-
06 Govern
Keep every change within your policies
From engineers to agents
Your factory will change. The maintenance layer stays.
Some teams run coding agents at scale. Most are somewhere in between. Either way, versions reach end of life, CVEs land and audits come around. MaintenanceOS works at every stage, and grows with you.
-
Engineers and tickets
Your engineers write the code. Maintenance lives in tickets, spreadsheets and quarterly reviews.
With MaintenanceOS
MaintenanceOS takes the recurring work off the backlog. Engineers approve changes and handle the exceptions.
-
AI-assisted engineering
Engineers ship faster with AI assistants. More code, the same team to maintain it.
With MaintenanceOS
MaintenanceOS keeps pace with what ships, and your assistants get Draftt’s context through MCP.
-
Agentic software factory
Coding agents build, test and ship around the clock. Change never stops.
With MaintenanceOS
MaintenanceOS gives your agents the right maintenance work, governs it, and verifies every change.
MaintenanceOS™
Same loop. Same policies. Same proof. At every stage.
Plug and play
No lock-in. Any vendor, model, cloud or process.
Your software factory will keep changing what it runs on. Maintenance doesn’t go away when it does. MaintenanceOS is agnostic to your stack and fits the process you already have, so switching a vendor, a model or a cloud never means rebuilding how maintenance works.
-
Vendors
Your scanners, registries, developer portal and ticketing stay. MaintenanceOS reads from them instead of replacing them.
-
LLM models
Hand fixes to the coding agent and model you use today, and switch tomorrow without changing how maintenance runs.
-
Clouds
AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Kubernetes in one inventory, one lifecycle view and one set of policies.
-
Technologies
Operating systems, runtimes, databases, frameworks, images, certificates and AI models, whatever versions you run.
-
Processes
Work lands in Jira, ServiceNow, Azure DevOps, Slack or Teams, under your approvals and change management.
MaintenanceOS™
Read-only API access. Nothing to install on your hosts. No code changes.
In an AI software factory
Agents write the change. The maintenance layer decides, governs and proves it.
-
Find the work
General-purpose coding agents Start from the task, ticket or prompt you assign.
MaintenanceOS Continuously detects maintenance obligations across cloud accounts, repos, registries and runtimes, ahead of each vendor’s lifecycle timeline.
-
Know the business context
General-purpose coding agents Context from the repos and tools you connect.
MaintenanceOS Ownership, blast radius, cost of waiting and compliance scope for every finding.
-
Decide what matters first
General-purpose coding agents Work in the order it’s assigned.
MaintenanceOS Prioritizes by impact and sequences prerequisites across teams and environments.
-
Write the change
General-purpose coding agents Their core strength, including migrations and upgrades you assign.
MaintenanceOS Opens the pull request itself, or hands a scoped task to the agent you already run.
-
Govern execution
General-purpose coding agents Within each tool’s own guardrails.
MaintenanceOS Your policies decide what runs autonomously; production stays gated on a human.
-
Prove it’s done
General-purpose coding agents A merged pull request and passing CI.
MaintenanceOS Re-checks live production state, keeps the evidence, and reports cost per verified task.
| The job | General-purpose coding agents If your teams run them | MaintenanceOS
The maintenance layer |
|---|---|---|
| Find the work | Start from the task, ticket or prompt you assign. | Continuously detects maintenance obligations across cloud accounts, repos, registries and runtimes, ahead of each vendor’s lifecycle timeline. |
| Know the business context | Context from the repos and tools you connect. | Ownership, blast radius, cost of waiting and compliance scope for every finding. |
| Decide what matters first | Work in the order it’s assigned. | Prioritizes by impact and sequences prerequisites across teams and environments. |
| Write the change | Their core strength, including migrations and upgrades you assign. | Opens the pull request itself, or hands a scoped task to the agent you already run. |
| Govern execution | Within each tool’s own guardrails. | Your policies decide what runs autonomously; production stays gated on a human. |
| Prove it’s done | A merged pull request and passing CI. | Re-checks live production state, keeps the evidence, and reports cost per verified task. |
FAQ
Software factory, answered.
What is a software factory?
A software factory is an organization’s end-to-end system for producing software: the people, platforms, pipelines and practices that take work from plan to design, build, review, test and ship. Like a manufacturing line, it aims for a repeatable, largely automated path to production.
What is an AI software factory?
An AI software factory is a software factory where coding agents do a growing share of the planning, building, testing and shipping, within human approvals and policy guardrails. It produces more software, faster, which also means more software to maintain.
What is a maintenance line?
The maintenance line is the part of a software factory that keeps everything already shipped current, secure and compliant: upgrades, end-of-life migrations, vulnerability fixes, certificate rotation, configuration drift, and the evidence that proves each change is done. It runs alongside the build line, and it never stops, because everything shipped keeps aging.
Who maintains a software factory?
Usually platform and engineering teams, with security and compliance setting the requirements. In practice the work is spread across teams in tickets and spreadsheets, which is why it falls behind. A maintenance layer gives it one system that knows what runs, who owns it and what to fix first.
How is a maintenance layer different from scanners and coding agents?
Scanners find issues and coding agents write changes. A maintenance layer sits between them: it knows what you run, where each component is in its lifecycle and who owns it, decides what to fix first, hands the work to engineers or agents under your policies, and verifies the fix is running in production.
Will Draftt lock us into a vendor, model or cloud?
No. MaintenanceOS is agnostic to your vendors, LLM models, clouds, technologies and processes. It connects through read-only APIs to the tools you already run across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Kubernetes, hands work to the engineers or coding agents you choose, and routes it through your existing ticketing and approvals. Swap a vendor, a model or a cloud, and maintenance keeps running the same way.
Does MaintenanceOS replace our scanners or coding agents?
No. MaintenanceOS connects to the tools you already run, with read-only API access and nothing to install, and turns their output into prioritized, owned and verified work for your engineers and agents.
Every software factory needs a maintenance layer.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell us where maintenance hurts in your software factory today, and we’ll show you how MaintenanceOS would take it off your team’s plate.