diff --git a/docs/getting-started/overview.mdx b/docs/getting-started/overview.mdx index a01bb9913..5a0d18ed7 100644 --- a/docs/getting-started/overview.mdx +++ b/docs/getting-started/overview.mdx @@ -3,3 +3,75 @@ title: "Overview" description: "Why Arc?" --- +Arc is the software factory for small teams of expert engineers. It replaces the prompt-wait-review loop with version-controlled workflow graphs that orchestrate AI agents, shell commands, and human decisions into repeatable, long-horizon coding processes. + +## The problem + +AI coding agents have transformed software engineering productivity, but the surrounding toolchain hasn't kept up: + +- **Developers work for the agents.** The prompt-wait-review loop idles engineers while agents run, then demands constant babysitting to course-correct. +- **Unpredictable agents force oversight.** Non-deterministic guardrails create an explosion of failure modes. Engineers compensate by watching every step. +- **Verification is overwhelmed.** Agent throughput exceeds human review capacity. CI pipelines designed for pass/fail signals can't keep pace with the volume or nuance of AI-generated code. +- **Token costs are primed to explode.** ROI per token diverges wildly across tasks, models, and harnesses. Every unnecessary frontier token is one that can't be spent where it matters. +- **The continuous improvement loop broke.** Data is lost at every sub-process boundary. Organizations can't train LLMs the way they train people, and memory files make no guarantees. + +## How Arc solves this + +Arc gives you a deterministic harness around non-deterministic AI. You define **workflow graphs** in DOT files that specify exactly what happens, in what order, with which models, and where humans weigh in. Arc handles orchestration, parallelism, model routing, verification, and observability. + + + + Define workflows as code in Graphviz DOT. Nodes are agents, shell commands, or human input gates. Fan out, loop, branch, and resume — all traceable and repeatable. + + + Route tasks to the right model using CSS-like stylesheets. Cross-critique with fresh eyes, delegate simple tasks to fast models, and fail over automatically when providers go down. + + + Steer while the agent runs, not after. Approval gates, interviews, and steering let you intervene at the right moments without waiting for a pull request. + + + Combine LLM-as-judge, test suites, third-party tools, and human review. Verifications act as an eval suite tailored to your organization, building confidence over time. + + + Every tool call, agent turn, and shell command is captured in a unified event stream. Query run data with SQL via DuckDB and generate automatic retrospectives. + + + Licensed under AGPL. Written in Rust with minimal dependencies. Runs on a single node with no databases to set up. + + + +## What a workflow looks like + +Workflows are defined in Graphviz DOT, a simple graph description language: + +```dot +digraph PlanImplement { + graph [goal="Plan, approve, implement, and simplify a change"] + + start [shape=Mdiamond, label="Start"] + exit [shape=Msquare, label="Exit"] + + plan [label="Plan", prompt="Analyze the goal and codebase. Write a step-by-step plan.", reasoning_effort="high"] + approve [shape=hexagon, label="Approve Plan"] + implement [label="Implement", prompt="Read plan.md and implement every step."] + simplify [label="Simplify", prompt="Review the changes for clarity and correctness."] + + start -> plan -> approve + approve -> implement [label="[A] Approve"] + approve -> plan [label="[R] Revise"] + implement -> simplify -> exit +} +``` + +This workflow plans a change, asks a human to approve it, implements the plan, and simplifies the result. If the human rejects the plan, the agent revises it. The entire process is version-controlled, repeatable, and resumable. + +## Next steps + + + Install Arc and run your first workflow in minutes. +