# Let anyone prototype inside your engineering guardrails

> Early access: let product and design teams vibe code prototypes inside your guardrails, sandboxed, reviewed against your rules and deployed by your pipeline.

Early access, for founders.

SHIP turns an idea from product, design or operations into a working prototype on a preview. Every build runs in a sandbox, is reviewed against your rules and deploys through your pipeline.

- **For:** Founders and engineering leads whose product and design teammates already vibe code.
- **Instead of:** Prototypes built in tools outside your review and deploy pipeline.
- **Runs today:** Hand an issue to SHIP from Linear or GitHub Issues, and every build is sandboxed, reviewed against your rules, previewed by your own pipeline and logged.

Runs today: this ship.yml holds every mission after the plan and after the review until an engineer resumes it.

```
agents:
  planner:
    checkpoint: true
  reviewer:
    checkpoint: true
```

## Turn ideas into prototypes engineering can approve

1. **Describe the idea where you already work.** Write it as an issue in your tracker, or ask an assistant connected to SHIP to file it. The Planner turns it into a plan with acceptance criteria before anything is built.
2. **Build it inside your rules.** The Builder works in an isolated sandbox, the Reviewer applies your repository's own conventions, and the Tester checks the prototype on a preview.
3. **Promote what works.** Every prototype is a pull request. Engineering merges the ones worth keeping, through the same review as any other change.

## Give engineering the controls

- **Run every build in an isolated sandbox.** Agents never see your keys. SHIP holds the credentials, adds them to each outgoing request, and gives each task short-lived access scoped to that task.
- **Block CI changes nobody approved.** A change to your CI configuration is blocked unless a person authorizes it, and checkpoints hold a run after the plan or the review.
- **Review against your house rules.** Reviewer and Tester instructions live in your repository, pinned to the base branch, so a prototype cannot rewrite the rules that judge it.
- **Deploy only through your pipeline.** Previews come from your own delivery pipeline with your own secrets, so a prototype is deployed only where your pipeline would deploy it.
- **Audit every prompt and change.** Each run keeps a session log of what every agent read, ran and decided, so the audit trail is there before anyone asks for it.
- **Cap the spend per prototype.** A mission pauses at 2 credits, or 6 agent-hours, until a member of your organization approves continuing.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is governed prototyping available today?

Partly. The guardrails are live, and a teammate can hand an issue to SHIP from Linear or GitHub Issues today and get the prototype back as a pull request. A workspace built for non-engineers to describe and iterate on prototypes is in early access.

### What is governed vibe coding?

Governed vibe coding lets people outside engineering build prototypes with AI while engineering keeps control of what runs and what merges. With SHIP, each prototype is built in a sandbox, reviewed against your repository's rules and merged only by someone with merge rights.

### Who approves a prototype?

Someone with merge rights on the repository, as for any pull request. Checkpoints can also hold a run after the plan or the review so an engineer reads it before it moves on. [Checkpoints](https://letsship.ai/docs/configuration/human-in-the-loop)

### Where does a prototype run?

On a preview your own delivery pipeline deploys, with your own credentials, so SHIP holds no cloud credential of yours. A project without previews still gets tested: the Tester builds and serves the prototype inside its own sandbox. [Deployments](https://letsship.ai/docs/configuration/deployments)

### What does a prototype cost?

Each prototype is one mission: one credit covers up to 3 agent-hours, and feedback on its open pull request continues the same mission. A mission pauses at 2 credits until a member of your organization approves continuing. Credits come back when a mission ends in failure or needs attention with no pull request.

## Open prototyping to your whole company

Join early access and keep every prototype inside the rules engineering already trusts.

Source: https://letsship.ai/platform/governed-prototyping