# Alchemist Tickets: Autonomous Development

How the Alchemist platform turns a ticket into planned, implemented, reviewed, verified, and deployed software.

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The Alchemist platform at [build.avcodex.com](https://build.avcodex.com) is an autonomous development system. You describe what you want as a **ticket**. A team of AI agents plans the work, writes the code in an isolated sandbox against your project's real repository, reviews and security-checks it, verifies it against your acceptance criteria, merges it, and deploys it to your live app. You watch the whole thing happen and stay in control of budget and approvals.

> **Note:** "Alchemist" names two related things. This guide covers the **Alchemist platform**: the ticket-driven autonomous development system behind ADaaS custom app builds. The **Alchemist copilot** is the chat assistant inside the AVCodex agent builder. See [The Alchemist Copilot](/docs/guides/the-alchemist-copilot).

## Why this matters for AV work

Most integrator software needs are too small to justify a development contract and too specific to buy off the shelf. A proposal generator that knows your line card. A commissioning checklist tool that matches your SOPs. A rack elevation validator. Alchemist is how those get built without a dev team.

## Dispatching a ticket

A ticket is a title plus a description of what you want: a feature, a fix, a refactor, or an investigation. The better the description states the goal and how you would judge it done, the better the result. You can dispatch one:

- **From the dashboard** at build.avcodex.com, on your project's Tickets page.
- **From a connected AVCodex agent.** Any AVCodex app connected to your Alchemist workspace can dispatch tickets mid-conversation, so "file a ticket to fix that" works from chat.
- **Programmatically over MCP.** The platform exposes `dispatch_ticket`, `list_tickets`, `get_ticket`, and related tools to any MCP client authenticated with your tenant API key.

Tickets get a reference like `PROJ-42` and show up immediately in the Tickets list.

## What happens to a ticket

Each ticket runs as a graph of specialized nodes, visible live on the ticket detail page:

1. **Research and contract.** Agents read your codebase and docs, then commit to a testable definition of done before writing any code.
2. **Implement.** One or more implementation nodes write the code in an isolated sandbox on a dedicated git branch, with checkpoint commits as they go.
3. **Review, security, and verification.** Independent nodes review the diff, adversarially security-check it, and verify the contract's assertions, including runtime checks against a running instance of your app.
4. **Land and deploy.** The branch merges into your project's `staging` branch and deploys through the normal pipeline. The deployment appears in your project's Deployments view.

The ticket detail page shows the node graph, a live session audit of every agent turn, per-phase reports, and running cost against the ticket's budget.

## Budgets and approvals

Every ticket runs under a budget. If a plan cannot fit its budget, the ticket does not silently fail or silently overspend. It parks and asks you to approve the higher amount, and only proceeds once you do. Rejecting closes the ticket with the decision recorded.

## Reviewing the work

- **Work Review** collects completed tickets' diffs and reports for you to inspect.
- **QA** surfaces verification evidence: what was tested, what passed, and any screenshots the verifier captured.
- Failed or blocked tickets say why, with the failing node's report attached, and can be retried.

## When you'd rather do it by hand

Some changes are easier to just make yourself. Your project's repository is yours: clone it, edit in Claude Code or Cursor, and push. Pushes deploy through the same pipeline as agent merges and are coordinated with in-flight agent work. See [Clone Your App's Code and Develop Locally](/docs/guides/alchemist-local-development), which also covers debugging your deployed app straight from your editor.

## FAQ

**Do agents and my own pushes conflict?** No. Base-branch changes are serialized through a merge lease, and deployments are deduplicated by commit, so the same change never ships twice and nothing races.

**Can a ticket depend on another ticket?** Yes. Tickets can declare dependencies, and larger scopes fan out into multiple coordinated tickets.

**What does a ticket cost?** Cost is metered per ticket from actual model and sandbox usage and shown live on the ticket detail page, with the budget ceiling alongside it.

**What if a ticket goes wrong?** Cancel it any time from the ticket page or over MCP. Nothing lands on your app until the land step completes, and everything that does land is a git commit you can inspect or revert.

*AVCodex · Your AV expertise. Amplified by AI.*