Harness Engineering in 2026: 7 core skills and a resource list for building agent systems
blaizedsouza · x · 2026-11-05
A widely reposted take: most people are learning how to use AI, but the real edge is building systems around AI — dubbed Harness Engineering. The post lists seven core concepts:
- Context Engineering: give agents the right information at the right time
- Tool Orchestration: let agents interact with APIs, terminals, external systems
- Memory Systems: retain and retrieve useful information
- Sandboxing: controlled execution environments
- Evaluations: verify agents actually do what they should
- Observability: track failures, tool calls, latency, costs
- Guardrails: keep autonomous systems safe and predictable
It also bookmarks resources including OpenAI's Harness Engineering docs, the OpenAI Agents SDK, and Microsoft Agent materials — a usable roadmap for moving from using AI to engineering around it.
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