# Towards an AI Software Factory for Data Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.36323 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36323/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 17 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [ShinkaEvolve: Towards Open-Ended And Sample-Efficient Program Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19349/) (2025)
- [Barbarians at the Gate: How AI is Upending Systems Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.06189/) (2025)
- [Supporting Our AI Overlords: Redesigning Data Systems to be Agent-First](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.00997/) (2025)
- [GraphMind: From Operational Traces to Self-Evolving Workflow Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17617/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

AI-assisted coding tools deliver significant acceleration of coding, but only limited impact across the end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC)--an Amdahl's law effect! In this paper, we discuss our progress towards building an AI SW Factory that accelerates all the stages of SDLC-Targeting, Coding, Reviewing, and Ops. The AI SW Factory produces a metadata exhaust that enables self-improvement by fine-tuning model weights and updating our World Model (a rich data substrate). We focus on Data Systems and the important class of Evolutionary Coding Tasks (i.e., those with a measurable objective to hill-climb) and report on 1) scaled deployments at Microsoft (tens of repositories) leading to 3x engineering efficiency above agentic coding and up to 22x token efficiency, and 2) several open challenges.