How StrongDM’s AI team build serious software without even looking at the code

7th February 2026

Last week I hinted at a demo I had seen from a team implementing what Dan Shapiro called the Dark Factory level of AI adoption, where no human even looks at the code the coding agents are producing. That team was part of StrongDM, and they’ve just shared the first public description of how they are working in Software Factories and the Agentic Moment:

We built a Software Factory: non-interactive development where specs + scenarios drive agents that write code, run harnesses, and converge without human review. [...]

In kōan or mantra form:

Why am I doing this? (implied: the model should be doing this instead)