Dark factory
A plant automated to the point that the lights can stay off — borrowed from manufacturing to name what is happening to software.
Also called dark factory software, lights-out manufacturing
Manufacturing calls a plant that can run without people on the floor a dark factory. If no one is working inside, the lights can stay off.
Software is moving in that direction, though not because one model became smart enough to replace an engineer. Writing code became cheap. Deciding what should exist and checking whether it is correct did not.
I write about the field itself at darkfactory.dev. What lands here is the other half: what it is like to actually run one, at small scale, alone, with twenty-five years of habits that mostly no longer apply.
The lights are not off. Some rooms need fewer people now, while others need more attention than before. Claims of a fully automated software factory are still sales pitches.
See also Harness and Agent estate.