Software Factories and the Agentic Moment

5 comments

• simonw 16 minutes ago
  This is the stealth team I hinted at in a comment on here last week about the "Dark Factory" pattern of AI-assisted software engineering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46739117#46801848

  I wrote a bunch more about that this morning: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/

  This one is worth paying attention to to. They're the most ambitious team I've see exploring the limits of what you can do with this stuff. It's eye-opening.

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  • enderforth 4 minutes ago
    This right here is where I feel most concerned

    > If you haven’t spent at least $1,000 on tokens today per human engineer, your software factory has room for improvement

    Seems to me like if this is true I'm screwed no matter if I want to "embrace" the "AI revolution" or not. No way my manager's going to approve me to blow $1000 a day on tokens, they budgeted $40,000 for our team to explore AI for the entire year.

    Let alone from a personal perspective I'm screwed because I don't have $1000 a month in the budget to blow on tokens because of pesky things that also demand financial resources like a mortgage and food.

    At this point it seems like damned if I do, damned if I don't. Feels bad man.
• easeout 20 minutes ago
  > A problem repeatedly occurred on "https://factory.strongdm.ai/".
• navanchauhan 10 minutes ago
  (I’m one of the people on this team). I joined fresh out of college, and it’s been a wild ride.

  I’m happy to answer any questions!

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  • simonw 6 minutes ago
    I know you're not supposed to look at the code, but do you have things in place to measure and improve code quality anyway?

    Not just code review agents, but things like "find duplicated code and refactor it"?

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    • navanchauhan 3 minutes ago
      A few overnight “attractor” workflows serve distinct purposes:

      * DRYing/Refactoring if needed

      * Documentation compaction

      * Security reviews
• beklein 1 hour ago
  Relevant blog post from simonw: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Feb/7/software-factory/
• mellosouls 2 hours ago
  Having submitted this I would also suggest the website admin revisit their testing; its very slow on my phone. Obviously fails on aesthetics and accessibility as well. Submitted for the essay.
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  • navanchauhan 8 minutes ago
    Anything special thing about your browser setup? Javascript disabled / browser extension?
  • pityJuke 27 minutes ago
    Haha yeah if I scroll on my iPhone 15 Pro it literally doesn’t load until I stop.
  • foolserrandboy 20 minutes ago
    I get the following on safari on iOs: A problem repeatedly occurred on (url)