In spite of this, I actually kind of did build a "software factory". The main reason why was because there is a number of things I build that really are just means to an end, tools where I could not give a shit less if the code sucks or anything as long as it does roughly what I want. This stuff will most likely never be posted anywhere, but that's not the point, because it still has quite a bit of utility. Having a "software factory" to build and maintain it seemed a lot less annoying than being a "meat proxy" all day just to maintain some tools that aren't very important.

I could be misunderstanding what a "software factory" is but I think whatever I have done fits the criteria. I have a custom agent that goes around implementing software and maintaining private repositories completely autonomously and I can communicate with it using issues and comments.

It seems like a useful pattern, just maybe not what people had in mind. I think people figured that you'd build an AI Microsoft or something. I don't think that's true because most of what a company like that does isn't really software engineering anyway, but there is probably still something to this pattern.