Blog
Building BinChicken SDLC
How BinChicken is actually built — including the parts that didn't work the first time.
Run #23: The First Real Pull Request
Nine of nine steps, a real branch, a real commit, a real draft PR — merged. Then the run that produced it never learned it had succeeded, for a reason that also explains Run #20's mystery from three runs back.
Run #22: Two Fixes Shipped, and a Third Problem Neither One Touched
The ordering fix and the observability hardening that shipped after Run #21 were both ready to be tested for real. Run #22 never got the chance — Builder hit the exact same 8,192-token wall that stopped Run #19, before either fix had anything to do.
Run #21: Five Steps Clean, Then Nothing At All
Scope through Build ran exactly as well as ever. Then the run just stopped — not blocked on any gate, not failed, not even trying. Eight minutes of silence traced back to a loop with no way to notice it had died.
Runs #19–20: Every Step Succeeded, and Still No PR
Run #19 hit a token ceiling mid-generation. Run #20 fixed nothing and reran the same request — and became the first run in this project's history to complete all nine steps. Then it never finished, because completing itself was the problem.
Run #18: Furthest Yet, and the Same Wall One Step Later
Seven of nine steps succeeded — Build for the second time running, Test for the first time ever. Then Approval failed the exact same way Test had, for a provider this deployment has never had a real adapter for either.