Reading up on StrongDM

The article proposes an 8-level ladder of AI-assisted coding autonomy, from manual prompting to fully autonomous multi-agent software factories.

AI has entered a new agentic era where models can autonomously complete hours of human work, and exponential capability improvements are now driving radical organizational experiments like StrongDM's "Software Factory" that ships code without human touching it.

Effective agentic coding requires a robust test harness, letting AI explore ideas freely, and maintaining a scratch pad of learnings between sessions.

StrongDM's AI-driven 'software factory' replaces human code writing and review with agent teams, using scenario holdouts for validation, but faces skepticism around cost, security, and validation limits.

StrongDM describes building a Software Factory where agents write code from specs and scenarios, validated by a Digital Twin Universe, without any human-written or reviewed code.