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What Is Harness Engineering — Designing the Reins for AI Agents In Part 1 of this series, I talked about the decline of prompt engineering. With CLI-based tools on the scene, the value of manually crafting elaborate prompts was fading. But as 2026 unfolded, I realized that what replaced prompt engineering wasn't simply "better tools." Prompt engineering gave way to context engineering, and now context engineering is giving way to an entirely new paradigm: harness engineering . In this post, I'll break down what harness engineering is, why it matters right now, and what its key components look like. A Harness for a Horse, a Harness for an Agent A harness originally refers to the tack fitted onto a horse. Bridle, saddle, stirrups — equipment designed not to suppress the horse's power, but to channel it in the right direction. In AI, the term means exactly the same thing. A harness is the entire external system that controls and directs an AI agent's power...

How AI Coding Changed Completely in 18 Months — Is Prompt Engineering Dead? In late November 2024, I used AI for the first time. Eighteen months later, the changes I've witnessed aren't just about better tools. The entire way of working has transformed — and the pace of that transformation is accelerating. At first, a new paradigm emerged roughly every six months. Then every three months. Now, something new drops almost every week. AI has moved past its infancy and entered a full-blown transition period. Standing in the middle of it, I thought it was worth looking back at these 18 months. The Past — Copy-Paste and Prompt Engineering The Chat Window Era To be precise, it started with asking ChatGPT about code. I'd paste a function or an error message, get a response, copy it, and move it to my editor. The novelty of asking AI instead of searching Google was refreshing, and I was genuinely impressed by the accuracy. But fundamentally, the workflow wasn't all that d...