The Problem
Managing coding agents can be a nightmare. Sure, they're great at writing boilerplate and churning out code snippets, but someone still has to babysit them—reviewing their pull requests, managing CI, ensuring their code doesn't blow up production, and generally holding their digital hands. It's like hiring interns who never become full-time employees. Enter Symphony, which flips the script: instead of micromanaging agents, you manage the work itself. Symphony takes the "coding agent" concept and weaponizes it with automation, turning your project tasks into autonomous, self-contained execution runs.
What This Does
Symphony is an Elixir-powered framework for automating project workflows. It takes tasks from tools like Linear and spawns agents to tackle them autonomously. These agents don't just code—they also manage their own CI, write PR descriptions, handle reviews, and even generate walkthrough videos. Want to see the magic? Check out the .codex/skills/ directory, where you'll find skills like commit, land, push, and debug defined and documented. For example, codex/skills/land/landwatch.py is part of the pipeline that ensures your PR gets merged safely. No hand-holding required.
The main brains of the operation live in elixir/lib/symphonyelixir/. Files like agentrunner.ex and orchestrator.ex manage the lifecycle and coordination of these agents. Meanwhile, the elixir/lib/symphonyelixirweb/ folder powers a neat status dashboard (statusdashboard.ex and dashboardlive.ex) to keep your team updated on progress. And yes, there's a demo video in the .github/media/ folder that shows this thing in action.
Real-World Use
Imagine you're a lead dev managing a project with a team of human developers and a few coding agents. Your team uses Linear to track tasks. Symphony monitors the Linear board, picks up tasks, spawns agents, and cranks out work autonomously. For instance, the agent might create a branch, write the code, run tests, and open a PR—all while documenting its proof of work (see elixir/test/fixtures/statusdashboard_snapshots/ for how it tracks progress). You can then focus on higher-level decisions instead of chasing down rogue agents that forgot to lint their code.
The Bottom Line
Symphony is ambitious, maybe even audacious. If you're already drowning in agent chaos, this could save your sanity. But let's be real: this isn't for your side hustle or a 3-person team. It's built for orgs that are already deep into automation and need a way to scale it intelligently. Good for those who love Elixir and don't mind the "engineering preview" vibe; bad for anyone looking for plug-and-play simplicity.