Why software factories fail when harness engineering is not enough
dhorthy · hn · 2026-07-23
Why software factories fail with coding agents
This essay argues that “harness engineering” alone is not enough to make agentic software factories work.
- The failure mode is not just model quality; it is the full system around context, orchestration, and workflow design.
- Treating coding agents like a simple automation layer misses the harder engineering problem: giving them the right context at the right time.
- The piece frames “advanced context engineering” as the missing layer for making agent-driven development reliable.
The overall message is that building usable software factories requires more than wrappers and prompts; it needs deliberate system design around how agents see, choose, and act.
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