Sounds to me like people understand different things under a software factory.

I believe a software factory is just the next step in the mantra everything is code.

One wants to write a feature description and acceptance criteria into the "box" as fuzzy and with least details as much as possible.

To enable this, one creates for the factory access to information of the domain, requirements and software stack as required by the environment.

And this one attempts all with tools, documentation and processes optimized for the ai.

All with the goal use less tokens, context and speed up every action taken by an agent as much as possible.

That's why there is a trend to plugin based self evolving harnesses which try to automate this with opionated solutions.

Therefore I don't see a reason why building tools for easier testing and less tokens usage is a waste of time especially because one learns more a more areas in ones work one can automate and because depending on your tool choice it can be done without your input and one misses the chance to experiment if ones input in that regard will improve the factory or not.