Juan Felipe Ruales noguera@PipeRuales

Most agent teams let the author check their own work. We banned it. Our dark factory is three seats in one Band room: a lead that coordinates, an implementer that writes every line, and a reviewer that is the only seat allowed to test. The implementer builds from the spec and never runs a single check, so every defect has to survive an independent reviewer who measures it, reproduces it and rejects it in the open. We pointed it at Pocketful, a wallet and payments service. After two dispatches and nothing else from a human, it delivered all four stages, each in its own buildable folder, passing the shipped checks in isolated mode. Six rejections changed the code. The best one: every shipped check was green when the reviewer's own tests showed that a new sign-up overwrote a seeded user and the wallets stopped adding up. No shipped check would have found it. Every rule in the factory comes from a recorded run: 18 of them, one shared monitor, append-only raw data. The whole four-stage run cost about 4.5 USD at list prices. What failed is documented too. The mandates are generic, so another team can aim the same factory at a different problem using FACTORY.md and the mandates folder.

🌎 Online Hackathon | 💻 Online Build: Sept 26 - Oct 5, 2026 A virtual, global hackathon. Build from anywhere in the world. Dark Factory is the official hackathon of WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, presented by BAND, but you don't need to be in San Jose to take part. For one week, you build a software factory in BAND Desktop: a band of coding agents that plans work, implements it and checks its own results. 🎟️ Bonus for sign-ups: you are eligible for a free ticket to WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America in San Jose (Sep 23–25). If you do go, stop by the BAND booth: a surprise is waiting for you.