Essays · Series
Agent harness design
The product concerns that decide whether an agent is reliable enough to ship.
An agent harness is the layer between the model and the world: the loop, the tools, the memory, the permissions, the trace. The model sets the ceiling on what an agent can do. The harness sets the floor on how reliably it does it, and the floor is what decides whether you can put it in front of real users.
Almost every decision in the harness that looks like an engineering choice is really a product choice about behaviour, risk and trust. This series takes the floor apart, one concern at a time. Each piece stands on its own.
- 01The cushions an agent loses in productionThe opening case. Production removes the supports your laptop quietly provided, one at a time, and the model was never the hard part.
- 02The authority surfaceWhat the agent may do alone, what needs a human, and what it must never do. Drawing that line, action by action, is a design, not a setting.