Harness Engineering: A New Approach for Coding Agents
Harness engineering focuses on the structure surrounding coding agents, providing engineering solutions to prevent recurring mistakes. It redefines agent failures as configuration issues.
Harness engineering treats the structure built around a coding agent as a real artifact. Mistakes made by the agent are addressed through engineering solutions that prevent recurrence. This discipline focuses on the design of the scaffolding around the model rather than the model selection itself. Coined by Viv Trivedy, this approach encourages engineers to view agent failures as configuration issues rather than model problems.