Harness Engineering for AI Agents: Context Over Custom Code

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The Agent Factory podcast this week explored the concept of 'agentic harness engineering,' a term coined by engineer Ryan Lopopolo. Lopopolo explained how smaller feedback loops can be shaped into long-horizon agentic workflows without manually writing all the code. Engineer Billy Jacobson provided a walkthrough of a simple harness, covering both linear and closed-loop approaches. Smitha Kolan outlined a three-layer stack using Gemini 3.8 Flash, Antigravity Boost, and Google Skills to manage memory, tools, and guardrails. A key takeaway from the discussion was that many best practices used in scaling software engineering teams apply equally well to coding agents.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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