Prompt Kit
Prompt Kit: The Dark Factory Gap — From Level 2 to Level 5
This kit operationalizes the five levels of AI-assisted development. It helps you honestly assess where your team stands today, write specifications rigorous enough for autonomous agents, redesign your org chart for a world where coordination is friction, build a migration roadmap from legacy systems to dark factory patterns, and evaluate whether your engineering talent strategy matches where the industry is heading.
How to use this kit
These five prompts are designed for different audiences and can be used independently — you don't need to run them in sequence. Prompt 1 (Level Assessment) is the starting point for anyone. Prompt 2 (Specification Writing) is for engineers and technical leaders ready to move toward Level 4-5 workflows. Prompt 3 (Org Redesign) is for engineering leaders and executives rethinking team structure. Prompt 4 (Legacy Migration Roadmap) is for organizations with existing codebases that can't start from scratch. Prompt 5 (Talent Strategy) is for hiring managers, engineering leaders, and individual contributors planning their careers.
Run these in ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. The prompts that involve deep analysis of your specific situation will benefit from thinking-capable models. Be honest in your answers — the whole point of this framework is that self-deception about where you stand is the biggest obstacle to progress.
Prompt 1: AI Development Level Assessment
Job: Diagnoses exactly where your team or organization sits on the five levels of AI-assisted development — and identifies what's actually keeping you from moving up.
When to use: When you suspect your team is stuck at Level 2 while believing they're at Level 3+. When leadership asks "how AI-native are we really?" When planning investment in AI development tooling and you need an honest baseline.
What you'll get: A level-by-level diagnostic of your current state, an honest gap analysis showing what's blocking advancement, a comparison of your self-perception vs. likely reality, and a prioritized list of the 3-5 changes that would move you up one level.
What the AI will ask you: How your developers currently use AI tools, your code review process, how specifications get written, your testing strategy, team size and structure, and what your developers believe about their own AI productivity.
Prompt 2: Agent-Grade Specification Writer
Job: Transforms a feature idea, product requirement, or system behavior into a specification rigorous enough that an AI agent could implement it without asking clarifying questions — the core skill of Level 4-5 development.
When to use: When you're moving from "developer reviews every diff" to "developer evaluates outcomes." When you keep getting wrong output from AI coding agents because your specs are ambiguous. When you want to practice the skill that separates Level 3 from Level 5.
What you'll get: A complete, agent-ready specification with behavioral scenarios (not traditional tests), edge cases, integration boundaries, and explicit statements about what the system should NOT do — written so an autonomous agent can implement without human clarification.
What the AI will ask you: What you're building, who it's for, what systems it interacts with, what "done" looks like, and what you're most worried about going wrong.
Prompt 3: Org Chart Redesign for AI-Native Development
Job: Analyzes your current engineering organization structure and designs what it should look like when coordination becomes friction instead of value — mapping which roles transform, which contract, and which new capabilities emerge.
When to use: When your engineering org was designed for humans writing code and you're moving toward AI-driven development. When you notice standups, sprint planning, and code review ceremonies feel increasingly performative. When you're an engineering leader trying to plan headcount and structure for the next 2-3 years.
What you'll get: A current-state analysis of where coordination overhead lives in your org, a target-state org design, a role-by-role transformation map, and a phased transition plan that accounts for the human reality of restructuring.
What the AI will ask you: Your current org structure, team sizes, key roles, development processes, and which ceremonies feel productive vs. performative.
Prompt 4: Legacy System Migration Roadmap
Job: Creates a phased plan to move an existing brownfield codebase from its current state toward AI-agent-compatible development — starting with the specification and documentation work that must happen before any dark factory patterns are possible.
When to use: When you have a legacy system that carries real revenue and real users, and you can't start from scratch. When you know you can't "dark factory your way through" an existing codebase but need a path forward. When the documentation is wrong, the tests cover 30% of the code, and the real spec lives in people's heads.
What you'll get: A phased migration roadmap that starts with specification extraction (the unglamorous work nobody wants to do), progresses through testing strategy redesign, and maps the path to AI-agent-compatible development — with honest timelines and clear identification of what requires human institutional knowledge vs. what AI can help with.
What the AI will ask you: The age, size, and architecture of your system; the state of your documentation and tests; where institutional knowledge lives; and what your team's current AI adoption level is.
Prompt 5: Engineering Career and Talent Strategy for the AI-Native Era
Job: Builds a concrete strategy for either an individual engineer navigating the talent shift or an engineering leader redesigning their hiring, development, and team composition for a world where implementation is automated and judgment is the scarce resource.
When to use: When you're an engineer wondering what skills to invest in as junior roles collapse and the bar rises. When you're a hiring manager whose job descriptions were written for a world where humans write code. When you're planning a team's skill development for the next 2-3 years.
What you'll get: For individuals: an honest skills assessment, a prioritized development plan, and a career positioning strategy. For leaders: a talent strategy covering hiring profiles, team composition, skill development programs, and how to rebuild the junior pipeline.
What the AI will ask you: Whether you're an individual or a leader, your current skills and role, and what kind of engineering work your team or organization does.