# Software Factories, Light and Dark

DevFeed: [Software Factories, Light and Dark](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/software-factories-light-and-dark-28501.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://addyosmani.com/blog/software-factories/>)

Author: Addy Osmani

Published: 2026-07-20T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Addy Osmani](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/addy-osmani.md>)

Topics: [Loop Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/loop-engineering.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>)

Tags: [agentic](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agentic.md>), [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [build](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/build.md>), [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [loops](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/loops.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>)

## AI overview

The article revisits the idea of software factories as repeatable, instrumentable production systems and describes light and dark factories based on how much human oversight they retain. It presents loop engineering as the design of agentic systems that repeatedly gather context, act, check results, and continue until a condition is met, with harnesses providing tools, memory, sandboxes, and completion gates.

## Source excerpt

A software factory is harnessing loops at scale - the system that builds your software instead of you. You can run the loop with humans in it (light factory) or you can ignore the humans (dark factory) and let those agents scope, build and ship code, without anyone really reading the details. But if people stop reading, they'll stop understanding your software. Your hardest job now is knowing which checks to build and how much autonomy to delegate.