---
name: factory-maintain
description: Improve factory tools, workflows, dependencies, or infrastructure from observed friction, an owner correction, or research into new capabilities. Use for corrective maintenance or opportunity evaluation; use factory-work for product changes and grow-factory for initial setup.
---

# Improve the next run

Read the [shared baseline](../grow-factory/assets/baseline.md) and [maintenance loop](../grow-factory/references/maintenance.md). Use the owner-authorized maintenance path for corrective work or a bounded opportunity evaluation.

1. Pick a recurring cause, an owner correction, or a credible new capability worth researching. For opportunities, verify current primary sources, release dates, and availability; identify the factory task it could improve. No prior failure is required to investigate a useful new capability.
2. Choose the smallest correction or bounded trial. Prefer simplification and executable checks over more instructions. Use [factory-stack](../factory-stack/SKILL.md) for technology decisions.
3. Record the baseline, expected benefit, and time/spend limit. Run the scoped change or comparison within existing authority; research does not authorize a migration.
4. Exercise the representative scenario and inspect the result. Use independent review for substantial changes, and fresh-session observation when claiming changed instruction behavior.
5. Adopt, revise, revert, watch, or reject based on evidence; mark untested benefit unverified. Report and stop. Schedule only when a useful manual pass and recurring need earn it.

Use [emerging options](../../references/emerging.md) for candidate context and [landscape scouting](../../references/landscape-scouting.md) for a proposed discovery process. That process is not running in this kit. When changing guidance, apply the maintenance reference's authoring rules. Regenerate adapters with `just adapters` after metadata/baseline changes, then run `just check`; those are structural checks, not proof of operational benefit.