> The factory of the future isn’t a coding agent, an IDE plugin, or a model API. It’s a full-stack service that accepts a spec from a brand and delivers running software continuously. That means model orchestration, code creation, hosting, implementation, testing, deployment, monitoring, maintenance, evolution. End to end.

> Nobody has built this yet. But the pieces are falling into place fast. A factory isn’t a demo you vibe code in a weekend. It’s harnesses and production ownership — deep, compounding infrastructure that becomes exponentially harder to compete with once it’s running.

Definitely a direction that I'm sure people are working towards, but I think this underestimates how crucial human expertise is in building software.

Basically, I don't think software will ever become as commoditized as sneakers are.

At a complex level of requirements (which will increasingly be the case with future software), software engineering becomes about architecture and constraint satisfaction where finding a really-out-of-the-box idea which you build into the software at the ground up that makes everything else possible becomes disproportionately important.

I think people with a combination of technical & market expertise directly working on the software with full context of the project will continue to beat "brands" outsourcing software entirely to "factories".

(That said, 100% automated "factories" will probably be relevant in automatically fast-following competitors or rapidly catching up to existing moats. This could make swathes of software un-monetizable, sort of like drug development without patents. You could spend a lot of effort finding a software design only for people to copy your "formula" and produce "generics" without any of your R&D effort.)

The configuration capability of factories is only there such that you can then go on to run the repeatable process. No one would build configurable factories if you were only going to run one unit.

With that out the window, the factory analogue breaks down entirely. Think of something else.

I've seen this in the consulting world with long term relationships between a brand and a consulting company, where the consulting company is the technology partner.

I don't think there's anything to stop that from happening with agents; it's just a different means of producing software.

It exists for decades and it sucks. You send your specs, the company forward it to a bunch of indians, the work is done, you pay. You missed something. You send new specs, the company forward it to a bunch of indians, the work is done, you pay.

Evolution ? Bug fix ? You got it. Price went up, because why not. You have no other options than to pay or to not fix the bug / have the new feature.

Bug/feature are now competing with the business directly: fixing this bug will cost us that amount. What is the ROI ?

Bugs are not fixed. Features are not implemented. Products dies. Let's make a big project to replace everything with another company (which send the specs to the same indians ..)

Been like that for decades, nothing new.