Description. Shipyard is the internal task-tracking application used by Fig Studio LLC in the management of its own product development. It is a small native macOS application written in SwiftUI, with a local SwiftData store and an embedded Model Context Protocol server which exposes the task store to a language-model agent (presently Claude). No task is transitioned, deleted, or marked complete without the express approval of a human operator. The agent proposes; the practitioner disposes.

Purpose. Shipyard exists to keep indie projects pointed at their north star and to refuse the bloat which kills them. It is opinionated against features that do not advance shipping. It is opinionated in favor of small, gated, human-verified tasks. It is opinionated against agents acting unilaterally on the work of the studio.

Anatomy of the Application. The application presents three principal surfaces:

1. The Sidebar. A list of projects ("ships"), each with a brief disposition (e.g. in dock, under sail, shipped, quietly retired).
2. The Board. A column-based work surface for the active ship: Backlog, Up Next, In Progress, Awaiting Review, and Shipped. Tasks are dragged between columns by a human, or proposed by the agent and approved by a click.
3. The Session Strip. A persistent bottom rail showing the current MCP session: which agent is connected, which tools it is permitted to call, and the queue of pending proposals awaiting a human disposition.

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Shipyard           [ Flare ]  [ BMB ]  [ Shipyard ]  [ Drydock ]  |
+----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
|          |  BACKLOG     UP NEXT     IN PROG.    REVIEW     SHIP'D |
|  SHIPS   |  --------    --------    --------    --------   ------ |
|  Flare   |  o item 1    o item 4    * item 7    @ item 9   x ok   |
|  BMB     |  o item 2    o item 5    * item 8    @ item 10  x ok   |
|  Shipyd. |  o item 3    o item 6                            x ok   |
|  Drydock |                                                        |
|          |                                                        |
+----------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| MCP SESSION: claude-haiku-4-5  ::  3 proposals awaiting approval. |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

Model Context Protocol. Shipyard ships its own MCP server, which exposes the task store to the agent as a small set of tools: list_tasks, read_task, propose_task, propose_transition, read_session_log. The agent has read access to the entire store at all times. The agent has no write access. Every state change is surfaced as a proposal in the Session Strip, where it remains until the human accepts, edits, or rejects it.

This arrangement is the central conviction of the application. The studio takes the view that an agent which can write directly to its own task list will, in time, accumulate small judgements which compound into a project that is no longer the one its author intended. Shipyard is a velocity-limiting valve placed between the agent and the work.

Working Method. A typical session:

1. The practitioner opens a ship and reviews the Backlog, deleting items which the studio is no longer interested in.
2. The agent is asked to propose what should move into Up Next for the coming week, given the north star, the recent commit history, and the contents of the backlog.
3. The practitioner reviews the proposals one by one. Most are accepted; some are edited; a few are rejected outright.
4. Work proceeds. As tasks complete, the agent proposes transitions to Awaiting Review and Shipped.
5. At the end of the day a brief log is written, by the human, in plain prose. The agent reads it the following morning.

Privacy & Storage. All task data is stored locally on the practitioner's machine, in a SwiftData store backed by SQLite. Nothing is sent to a remote server by Shipyard itself. When the agent is invoked, only the data necessary to answer the present question is forwarded to the language-model provider.

System Requirements.

• Apple Macintosh computer, Apple Silicon or Intel.
• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
• An MCP-capable agent of the practitioner's choosing.
• Approximately 40 megabytes of free disk space at first run.

Roadmap. Shipyard is not scheduled for public release at this time. Items under consideration: a "drydock" review of long-dormant ideas, multi-machine sync via iCloud, and a printable weekly summary suitable for posting on a refrigerator.

Inquiries. Write to andre@figstudiollc.com. Replies within seven business days.