Dark Factory

Dark factory names a software factory (a system where triggers, not a person, start coding-agent sessions) where nobody reads the code it produces. The term is documented in Matt Pocock's AI Coding Dictionary (aicodingdictionary.com, open-sourced on GitHub as mattpocock/dictionary-of-ai-coding). Humans can still write the issues that start the work, but no person asks for each individual change or looks at it afterward. The name comes from "lights-out" manufacturing, where a factory runs with no people on the floor and so needs no lights.

A dark factory extends vibe coding, accepting AI-written code without reading it, from a single change to a whole area of a codebase. In ordinary vibe coding, a developer chooses not to read one change they asked for, but knows the change exists. In a dark factory, the team makes that choice once, for the full area. After that, no person asks for or sees each change as it lands. Changes arrive as fast as the triggers that start them. Automated checks and automated review become the only gates: whatever they fail to catch ships into the code.

The dictionary flags the resulting failure mode. When something breaks, nobody knows what changed, because nobody read the changes, and the cause could be in any of many candidates that each passed its checks. It also draws a boundary against overuse of the term: agent sessions that run unattended (AFK) while a human still reviews the resulting pull requests make a software factory, not a dark factory.