So then is Claude Code a dark factory? The terminology here, with factories and harnesses and so on, is all evolving fast, so there aren’t any reliable definitions yet. But Claude Code did not start life as a dark factory, because you were generally supposed to watch it while it works. It’s making overtures in that direction with subagents and agent teams, but they keep the lights off intentionally, presumably because it’s a consumer-facing product and it keeps it simpler.
Gas City takes a different approach: all agent workers are equally visible and addressable. The lights are on. Normally for the ephemeral Polecat workers, you don’t bother looking at them. But unlike with coding-agent subagents, if you want to talk to your polecats, you absolutely can.
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Is Claude Code a dark factory? dim - observability -- higher