· ai-devtools
AI agents are getting more complex. Developers shouldn't have to babysit them.
What if your coding agent could catch its own mistakes before you ever reviewed its work?
A few years ago, AI hallucinations seemed to be everywhere. (Just how many r's are there in strawberry?) Early AI tools required extensive human oversight, with developers constantly reviewing code and checking for errors.
But today, advances in AI agent engineering are making self-correction a reality. Through harness engineering, teams can equip their agents with automated tests, feedback loops, and guardrails that help them identify and correct mistakes before humans review them. Recommended Download: Thoughtworks' Technology Radar, Volume 35 As a result, agents can tackle longer-running tasks with less intervention, while multiple agents work in parallel without stepping on each other's toes.
Our guest on the latest episode of The New Stack podcast, Vanitha Kumar of Thoughtworks, explains that harness engineering has two parts. Kumar — who is Head of Technology for Retail, CPG, Travel & Hospitality Market for Thoughtworks Americas — tells TNS: "Do it right the first time and also self-correct when you have done it for the first time." The payoff, according to Kumar, is that you no longer have to "babysit and watch your agent do the work." Enabling one agent to act autonomously is different from managing hundreds of them across an entire organization.
