Archon and Build Dark Factory: AI coding setup

The Build Dark Factory skill turns a PRD into a coding workflow that plans work, implements changes, reviews pull requests and deploys approved code. The tutorial explains installation and an interview that establishes the application's scope, desired autonomy and validation strategy. The speaker recommends starting in an empty folder; he says he has not tested applying the skill to an existing codebase.

His example uses GitHub issues as specifications and a cron job that runs every 30 minutes. Issue labels track progress. The queue prioritizes fixes and reviews before new implementation work, with configurable escalation to a human when an agent gets stuck. He uses Archon, an open source harness builder, but says the skill can work with other coding agents in headless mode.

The remaining setup covers blue-green deployment and separate files for global conventions, factory constraints and mission goals. A validator reviews the builder's work independently. Holdout scenarios define expected behavior before implementation and remain hidden from the builder, which can still use unit and integration tests.

The speaker demonstrates a tower defense game and describes a chat application built with this approach. He calls dark factories experimental and presents human involvement in planning and validation as the more reliable approach for general coding work.