The software factory is already here.

Give a coding agent a clean machine and it will start making choices before it starts making software. Those choices are part of the build, whether you govern them or not.

AI can get you to working software fast. That is useful. It is also the point where the expensive part begins.

Put agents into the delivery process you already have and you will get more code. You will not get a software factory. You will get the same human system with a much faster loading dock.

Putting an agent's hands inside your network does not put its brain under your control. It solves a real problem. It also leaves the bigger dependency exactly where it was.

The agent can keep changing code long after your team can explain it. That is not proof the code is healthy. It is proof your old warning signal disappeared.

A pull request is a terrible place to discover why the system changed. By then, the important decisions have already been made and buried in a diff.

An agent can run every test you give it and still prove the wrong thing. The missing piece is often not another test. It is a system worth testing against.

If another company can switch off your software factory by changing a contract, that company is part of your control plane. Design accordingly.

If an agent breaks the same rule twice, the problem is no longer the agent. The factory saw a pattern and chose to leave it as advice.

Agents are making code cheaper. They are not making complexity cheaper. If anything, they are giving complexity a faster engine.

The end of programming does not mean the end of engineering. It means typing code stops being the center of the job, and the machinery around it finally becomes impossible to ignore.

A harness that starts every job with the same mistakes is not infrastructure. It is a reset button with tools attached.