---
type: entity
subtype: person
title: "Dan Shapiro"
description: "Applied the 'dark factory' term to codebases and generative AI, and authored the blog post mapping AI coding autonomy to self-driving-car levels."
tags: [dark-factory, ai-coding, autonomy]
videos: [the-best-ai-coding-setup-isnt-the-most-autonomous-one-heres-why, im-building-an-ai-dark-factory-that-ships-its-own-code-public-experiment]
created: 2026-07-21
updated: 2026-07-21
---

# Dan Shapiro

Dan Shapiro is the writer Cole credits with two connected framings that anchor how this catalog talks about autonomy in coding. First, he is the person who carried the manufacturing metaphor over to software: "Dan Shapiro was the one to apply this to code bases and generative AI" ([0:02:19]), giving Cole the vocabulary for the [Dark Factory](../../concepts/dark-factory.md) experiment. Second, and more influential day to day, he authored the analogy Cole reaches for whenever the question is how much to trust an agent: "I really love Dan's blog post here because he gives a really good analogy comparing the different levels of self-driving cars to using generative AI for coding" ([0:02:54]).

That self-driving-levels model is why Dan sits behind Cole's central caution that the most autonomous setup is not the best one. Cole introduces the whole argument through him: "the best explanation I found for the different ways we can use coding agents is from Dan Shapiro. So in this blog post" ([0:00:00]). The framing maps directly onto [Human in the Loop](../../concepts/human-in-the-loop.md), the choice between [Deterministic Workflows](../../concepts/deterministic-workflows.md) and full autonomy, and the design of an [AI Coding Harness](../../concepts/ai-coding-harness.md) that dials autonomy up or down per task. It is a load-bearing reference for [Agentic Workflow Engineering](../../concepts/agentic-workflow-engineering.md) and for reading [The Evolution of AI Coding](../../concepts/the-evolution-of-ai-coding.md) as graduated levels rather than a single leap.

## Related

- [Dark Factory](../../concepts/dark-factory.md) - A self-evolving codebase where autonomous workflows build and improve a product with minimal human touch.
- [The Evolution of AI Coding](../../concepts/the-evolution-of-ai-coding.md) - How AI coding assistants moved from novelty to daily driver, and where the landscape, adoption, and commentary are heading.
- [Human in the Loop](../../concepts/human-in-the-loop.md) - Keeping a human as the approver and steerer of agentic work rather than fully automating, so AI augments engineers instead of replacing them.
- [Deterministic Workflows](../../concepts/deterministic-workflows.md) - Encoding known steps as fixed code paths and reserving the LLM for the genuinely fuzzy decisions, trading autonomy for reliability.
- [AI Coding Harness](../../concepts/ai-coding-harness.md) - The surrounding scaffolding (prompts, tools, rules, validation) that turns a raw model into a reliable coding system.
- [Agentic Workflow Engineering](../../concepts/agentic-workflow-engineering.md) - Designing repeatable AI workflows as engineered systems with defined steps, orchestration, and background execution rather than ad-hoc prompting.
- [Cole Medin](./cole-medin.md) - AI engineer and educator whose YouTube channel and Dynamous community teach agentic coding; creator of Archon and the source of this entire knowledge base.

## Sources

- [I'm Building an AI Dark Factory That Ships Its Own Code (Public Experiment)](../../sources/im-building-an-ai-dark-factory-that-ships-its-own-code-public-experiment.md) - "[0:02:54] I really love Dan's blog post here because he gives a really good analogy comparing the different levels of self-driving cars to using generative AI for coding."
- [The Best AI Coding Setup Isn't the Most Autonomous One (Here's Why)](../../sources/the-best-ai-coding-setup-isnt-the-most-autonomous-one-heres-why.md) - "[0:00:00] the best explanation I found for the different ways we can use coding agents is from Dan Shapiro. So in this blog post."
