Symphony¶

Symphony is an autonomous implementation framework by OpenAI that turns project work into isolated, autonomous implementation runs, allowing teams to manage work instead of supervising individual coding agents.

When to use it¶

When you want to move from micro-managing coding agents to managing high-level work items.
In codebases that have adopted harness engineering.
When you need isolated environments for agentic implementation tasks.

When not to use it¶

In small projects where manual agent supervision is not a bottleneck.
In environments where "harness engineering" (comprehensive testing and CI) is not yet established.

Key Features¶

Autonomous Implementation Runs: Spawns agents to handle tasks from a work board (e.g., Linear).
Proof of Work: Agents provide CI status, PR review feedback, complexity analysis, and walkthrough videos.
Safe Landing: Agents can land PRs safely once accepted.
Spec-Driven: Can be implemented in any language following the Symphony Spec.

Getting started¶

Requirements¶

A codebase with established CI and testing harnesses.
An environment capable of running the Symphony reference implementation (Elixir-based).

Installation¶

Symphony offers two primary paths:

Reference Implementation: Use the experimental Elixir-based implementation provided in the official repository.
Custom Implementation: Use the Symphony Specification to build your own implementation in your preferred programming language.

Sources / References¶

Contribution Metadata¶

Last reviewed: 2026-03-09
Confidence: high