Getting to the Dark Software Factory
How to build a dark software factory in practice — machine-derivable intent, lanes and qualifiers, the forager that cherry-picks work, and why attention becomes engineering's real constraint.
Articles
Considered writing on AI-assisted development, the dark software factory, Claude Code, and building human. By Stephan Schmidt.
Dark Software Factory
Yes, You Can Run a Dark Factory on Your Codebase
You can run a dark software factory on your codebase today. Six categories of work already ship autonomously — what works now, what's next, and how to start this week.
Beyond the Dark Factory
Level 6 is a self-optimizing factory that tunes its own harness. Level 7 is a factory that sources its own intent by talking to customers and reading telemetry. Each level pulls more meta-work inside the machine. Here is what each one unlocks, what it still cannot do, and where the product human goes from here.
What is a Dark Software Factory?
The dark software factory is the category for fully autonomous AI software delivery: agents write, test, and ship code while humans stay on intent, policy, and outcome review. Origin, five levels, StrongDM example, critiques, and where humans belong in the stack.