Sign-In
Cart
Harness Engineering: Building Reliable AI Agents That Actually Deliver
Paperback
Series: AI and Agentic Engineering, Book 2
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jun 15 2026
Pages: 170
Weight: 0.52
Height: 0.36 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Everyone in the room saw the agent work. That is the problem.
In production it fails one run in twelve, never the same way twice, and you carry the pager. You are not stuck because the agent cannot do the work. You watched it do the work. You are stuck because doing it once, on stage, with you watching is the easy part, and doing it every time, while you sleep, is the job nobody named for you.
Harness Engineering names that gap: the demo cliff, and the climb back up. This is not a book about building an agent. You already built one. This is the book about making it deliver: the evals, verification, guardrails, observability, and recovery that turn an impressive toy into a production LLM application you would put your name on the pager for.
The engineer's toolkit for reliable AI agents that actually deliver:
- Reliability as a number: a success rate against a fixed task set, tracked run over run, so better is a measurement instead of a feeling.
- The eval gate: agent evals run like CI, blocking a bad change before it ships.
- The verification wall: cheap checks first, expensive ones behind them, catching wrong output before a user ever does.
- The recovery path for the failures you cannot prevent: retry with judgment, fall back, escalate, roll back.
- Run records: LLM observability and monitoring that capture what the agent actually did, so a bad run is a query instead of an archaeology dig.
- The reliability budget for one real agent: a target you can defend and the guardrails that hold it.
Read it and you will measure your agent instead of demoing it, ship changes behind an eval gate, catch wrong answers before your users do, and answer the 3 AM page with a query instead of a guess. A reliable agent still fails. Its failures are rare, cheap, caught before the user, and survivable when they are not. That is software reliability engineering, the discipline SRE brought to servers, applied to agents. This book is the engineering.
For software, ML, and platform engineers who already run agentic loops and now own one in production. Part of the AI and Agentic Engineering series.
Also from
Halloran, Wes
Claude Code in Action: Real Agentic Workflows, /goal Loops, and Shipping Products Fast
Halloran, Wes
Paperback
The New Way to Build Software: Practical Agent Orchestration and Harnesses in 2026
Halloran, Wes
Paperback
Also in
Programming
Interactive Theorem Proving and Program Development: Coq'art: The Calculus of Inductive Constructions
Bertot, Yves
Castéran, Pierre
Hardcover
Seven Databases in Seven Weeks: A Guide to Modern Databases and the Nosql Movement
Redmond, Eric
Wilson, Jim
Perkins, Luc
Paperback
The Legend of Zelda(tm) Tears of the Kingdom - The Complete Official Guide: Collector's Edition
Piggyback
Hardcover
Python Crash Course, 3rd Edition: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
Matthes, Eric
Paperback
Crisis Engineering: Time-Tested Tools for Turning Chaos Into Clarity
Dickerson, Mikey
Nitze, Marina
Weaver, Matthew
Paperback
Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software with Genai, Chat, Agents, and Beyond
Yegge, Steve
Kim, Gene
Paperback
Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations
Forsgren Phd, Nicole
Humble, Jez
Kim, Gene
Paperback
The Legend of Zelda(tm) Tears of the Kingdom - The Complete Official Guide: Standard Edition
Piggyback
Paperback
Embedded Systems with ARM Cortex-M Microcontrollers in Assembly Language and C: Fourth Edition
Zhu, Yifeng
Paperback
Fundamentals of Software Architecture: A Modern Engineering Approach
Richards, Mark
Ford, Neal
Paperback
I Have an App Idea: The Essential Guide to Building an App Without Tech Skills
Spann, Amanda
Paperback
AI Projects with Raspberry Pi: High-Performance Artificial Intelligence for Robotics, Security, Home Automation, and Vision
Hattersley, Lucy
Jepson, Brian
Paperback
The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
Fournier, Camille
Paperback
Make: Electronics: Learning by Discovery: A Hands-On Primer for the New Electronics Enthusiast
Platt, Charles
Paperback
The Devops Handbook, 2nd Edition: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations
Debois, Patrick
Kim, Gene
Humble, Jez
Paperback
Building Applications with AI Agents: Designing and Implementing Multiagent Systems
Albada, Michael
Paperback
The Developer's Guide to AI: A Field Guide for the Working Developer
Orshalick, Jacob
Reghunadh, Jerry M.
Thompson, Danny
Paperback
Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
McDowell, Gayle Laakmann
Paperback
The New AI Cold War: Liberty vs. Tyranny in the Age of Machine Empires
Maginnis, Ltc Robert L.
Paperback
Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to Html, Css, Javascript, and Web Images
Robbins, Jennifer
Paperback
The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change
Reilly, Tanya
Paperback
Software Architecture: The Hard Parts: Modern Trade-Off Analyses for Distributed Architectures
Richards, Mark
Sadalage, Pramod
Ford, Neal
Paperback
The Official Raspberry Pi Handbook 2026: Astounding Projects with Raspberry Pi Computers
Makers of Raspberry Pi Official Magazine, The
Paperback
Linux Basics for Hackers, 2nd Edition: Getting Started with Networking, Scripting, and Security in Kali
Occupytheweb
Paperback
SQL QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner's Guide to Managing, Analyzing, and Manipulating Data With SQL
Shields, Walter
Hardcover
The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition
Thomas, David
Hunt, Andrew
Hardcover
Generative AI Design Patterns: Solutions to Common Challenges When Building Genai Agents and Applications
Hapke, Hannes
Lakshmanan, Valliappa
Paperback
Forecasting: Principles and Practice, the Pythonic Way
Athanasopoulos, George
Hyndman, Rob J.
Paperback
Observability Engineering: Achieving Production Excellence
Fong-Jones, Liz
Miranda, George
Majors, Charity
Paperback
Head First Design Patterns: Building Extensible and Maintainable Object-Oriented Software
Freeman, Eric
Robson, Elisabeth
Paperback
The Return on AI: From Promise to Profit in the Age of Intelligent Business
Sawhney, Mohanbir
Mittal, Ashwin
Paperback
Frictionless: 7 Steps to Remove Barriers, Unlock Value, and Outpace Your Competition in the AI Era
Forsgren, Nicole
Noda, Abi
Paperback
Arduino Programming for Beginners: A Comprehensive Beginner's Guide to Learn the Realms of Arduino Programming from A-Z
Protosmith, Ada
Paperback
Building AI-Powered Products: The Essential Guide to AI and Genai Product Management
Nika, Marily
Paperback
Grokking Algorithms, Second Edition: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
Bhargava, Aditya Y.
Paperback
Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science
Graham, Ronald
Patashnik, Oren
Knuth, Donald
Hardcover
Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems
Agans, David J.
Paperback
Learning Generative AI Tools for Excel: Speed Up Your Everyday Tasks with Microsoft Excel, Copilot, Chatgpt, and Beyond
Duca, Angelica Lo
Paperback
Learning Domain-Driven Design: Aligning Software Architecture and Business Strategy
Khononov, Vlad
Paperback
This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World
Stickdorn, Marc
Lawrence, Adam
Hormess, Markus Edgar
Paperback
The Software Architect Elevator: Redefining the Architect's Role in the Digital Enterprise
Hohpe, Gregor
Paperback
Computer Science from Scratch: Building Interpreters, Art, Emulators and ML in Python
Kopec, David
Paperback
Python Programming for Young Coders: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Coding for Beginners, Kids, and Teens
Pandey, Anand
Paperback
Learning Php, MySQL & JavaScript: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Dynamic Websites
Nixon, Robin
Paperback
Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time
Winters, Titus
Manshreck, Tom
Wright, Hyrum
Paperback
Pro C# 10 with .Net 6: Foundational Principles and Practices in Programming
Japikse, Phil
Troelsen, Andrew
Paperback
Living a Jewish Life, Revised and Updated: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today's Families
Diamant, Anita
Cooper, Howard
Paperback
Prompt Engineering for Llms: The Art and Science of Building Large Language Model-Based Applications
Ziegler, Albert
Berryman, John
Paperback
Articulating Design Decisions: Communicate with Stakeholders, Keep Your Sanity, and Deliver the Best User Experience
Greever, Tom
Paperback
Adobe Photoshop, 2nd Edition: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features
Laskevitch, Stephen
Paperback
Kubernetes in Action, Second Edition: Deploying and Managing Containers and Cloud-Native Applications
Conner, Kevin
Luksa, Marko
Paperback
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
Beyer, Betsy
Murphy, Niall Richard
Jones, Chris
Paperback
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
Zegart, Amy B.
Paperback
Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It
Monteiro, Mike
Paperback
Electronic Music and Sound Design - Theory and Practice with Max 9 - Volume 1 (Fifth Edition)
Maurizio, Giri
Cipriani, Alessandro
Paperback