Is it too soon to built software factories?

4 pointsBnowako23h ago2 comments

I keep hearing about “software factories” / background coding agents that can autonomously work on production repos. It seems like the capabilities are there, but not sure if we have the right tools yet.

There are already some companies providing software for this like ona/factory/codex/claude/cursor

Open-source alternatives - https://github.com/ColeMurray/background-agents

Big companies like stripe/ramp/uber/spotify built their own background-agents infrastructure

But nothing seems to be mature enough to just work fine. Is it too soon?

2 comments

adamzwasserman23h ago

No it is not too soon, but it is contingent upon understanding how factories actually work, and what distinguishes industrial production from artisanal production. Even AI generated code is artisanal.

As afar as I know, my book "The Chaos Factory" is the only book that does this.

BnowakoOP22h ago

This answer seems very vague, buzzwordy and promotional. Not sure if a book from 2019 could explain the issues from the post.