With rafa

Today

Grow Box and rafa do not call each other. You can run a rafa loop inside a Grow Box sandbox by cloning the project and setting SANDBOX_RUN_CMD to the command you want, as on Getting started.

Coming: the rafa-sandbox add-on

rafa's repository plans an addons/ folder for modules rafa does not bundle (rafa#1257, add-ons in their own folder). Grow Box stays its own repository; the add-on is the bridge.

rafa-sandbox would answer, for each service a project's work needs, where it comes from. A service is anything a run needs beside the code: a CI pipeline, a container runtime, a database, a browser for visual checks. Each service would take one of four sources:

Source	Where the service comes from
docker	containers on this machine
project	a Grow Box sandbox of the project's own
global	the machine's shared Grow Box sandbox
remote	the real service, its address and secret named in the environment

Before a loop starts, rafa would check that each service answers. When one is missing, the project's onMissing setting decides: ask stops the run and names the command that brings the service up, and build builds the sandbox first. A sandbox it builds stays for the next run.

The services would be listed in Grow Box's own project file, .grow-box/config. This is the example from the spec; nothing reads it yet:

seed: clone
onMissing: ask
services:
  ci: { source: project, preset: lg }
  db: { source: docker, image: postgres:16 }
  hub: { source: remote, urlEnv: RAFA_HUB_URL, tokenSecret: rafa.hub.token }

[verify: not run; no tool reads .grow-box/config yet.]

Who each piece is for

Step	Planned use
A project that needs nothing	no services listed, nothing changes
One person	a database in a container on the laptop
A team	visual checks in an lg sandbox each project builds once
A shared runner	every project points at the machine's global box

design-to-code's planned add-on, rafa-d2c, would use rafa-sandbox for its visual check in an lg box (rafa#1262).