{
  "id": "dark-factory",
  "code": "PTL-0225",
  "term": "Dark Factory",
  "aliases": [
    "software factory",
    "dark software factory"
  ],
  "category": "agents",
  "definition": "A dark factory, or software factory, is a way of building software in which AI coding agents write, test and ship code from specifications and test scenarios with no human writing or reviewing the code, while people design the specifications, validation and environment the agents work in.",
  "description": "Dan Shapiro used the name in January 2026 for the top level of his five levels of AI-assisted programming, borrowing it from lights-out manufacturing plants run by robots. StrongDM described its practice the following month under two rules, that code must not be written by humans and must not be reviewed by humans. Because nobody reads the code, confidence comes from validation instead. StrongDM keeps end-to-end scenarios outside the codebase, where the coding agents cannot see them, much like a holdout set in model training, and has an LLM judge whether the software satisfies them. It also tests against agent-built behavioral clones of the third-party services the software depends on. Unlike vibe coding, which also skips reading the code, the approach depends on substantial testing infrastructure. Its practicality beyond small, specialized teams is disputed.",
  "example": null,
  "broader": [],
  "narrower": [],
  "related": [
    "coding-agent",
    "vibe-coding",
    "harness-engineering",
    "spec-driven-development",
    "evals",
    "llm-as-a-judge"
  ],
  "introduced": 2026,
  "added": "2026-10-27",
  "sources": [
    {
      "title": "Software Factories And The Agentic Moment",
      "authors": "McCarthy (StrongDM)",
      "year": 2026,
      "url": "https://factory.strongdm.ai/"
    },
    {
      "title": "How StrongDM's AI team build serious software without even looking at the code",
      "authors": "Willison",
      "year": 2026,
      "url": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/"
    }
  ],
  "url": "https://protologue.com/t/dark-factory/",
  "citation": "Protologue. (2026). Dark Factory. In Protologue: A Taxonomy of Prompting and LLM Techniques (v1.4.0, PTL-0225). https://protologue.com/t/dark-factory/"
}