Agents & Automation
Harness Engineering
Definition
The practice of designing, testing, and improving the software around an AI model that controls agent behavior, tool use, context, state, permissions, and recovery.
Why it matters for your business
Agent reliability depends on this surrounding system as well as the model. Better stopping rules, feedback, and recovery can matter more than switching models.
In practice
A team improves its coding agent by adding reproducible test commands, progress checkpoints, and clear rules for escalating blocked work.
How it differs from related terms
Prompt engineering focuses on instructions. Context engineering manages the information supplied to a model. Harness engineering covers the wider execution loop and controls that make an agent work as a system.