Google's free AI Harness Crash Course interactively breaks down agent engineering
datawithsuman · x · 2026-10-27
Google launched a free AI Harness Crash Course. Built around a single task — "add an export button so users can download data as CSV" — it interactively shows how the harness (everything around the model) works, in four parts:
- 01 Context & Memory: how session, state, and memory keep constraints like "only names + emails" alive across steps and days
- 02 Tools & Flow: decisions don't change files, tools do; a graph decides what's next — editfile, unit + browser tests, MCP build logs, then human review
- 03 Runtime & Security: sandboxed project copy with fake data, no prod DB or credentials, limited network; a prompt injection in README is treated as data, not instructions; approvals gate tool calls
- 04 Evaluation: deterministic checks, LLM-as-judge, and human feedback each play a role
Each part ships with codelabs and Colab labs. Tagline: "The model writes the code. The harness does everything else."
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