You could say the same thing of hands. What really distinguishes capital from labor is not what counts as a tool, but market power. A large number of non-unionized workers are inherently at a disadvantage against a small number of employers with exorbitantly costly infra.

But for the software developer, the tool is also the factory.

That’s not true. The actual means of production are the data centers. It’s true they didn’t use to be hugely expensive either, but now with AI being the backbone of everything we now have really expensive data centers again.

if we're just going to loop this properly, the modern means of production is the stock market's inflated capital. Most of AI floats on cash that does not exist for any purpose except market speculation.

Thats capital, not means of production.

The means of producing an AI is a huge data centre for training. Having a lot of money but no chips of any kind wouldn't get you an AI. We had money 10 years ago, but they did not make AIs out of them.

data, infrastructure, IP, etc You typically don't serve business from your laptop. Without that stuff your code is worthless.