Building a Structured Harness for AI-Assisted Software EngineeringBuilding a Structured Harness for AI-Assisted Software Engineering
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Building software with AI requires more than a good prompt.
I've been developing my own Autonomous Engineering Harness to structure how I build software with AI.
The idea is simple: instead of relying on AI to generate code one task at a time, I wanted a more structured process that connects specifications, task planning, implementation, code review, and QA.
The harness organizes the workflow into clear stages:
- Specifications: define what needs to be built.
- Task planning: break requirements into manageable units.
- Implementation: coordinate AI-assisted development.
- Review: check the result against the intended requirements.
-QA: validate the software before considering the work complete.
The goal isn't to make AI autonomous for the sake of it. It's to make AI-assisted engineering more structured, repeatable, and easier to validate.
I'm applying this approach to my own projects and continuing to refine the framework as I learn what works in practice.
I wrote more about the approach, the engineering decisions behind it, and how the framework works on my website.
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Kapil's avatar
I'd carry acceptance criteria from the spec into QA as explicit checks, with a result attached to each one. When the spec changes mid-build, does the workflow flag which completed tasks and QA results need to be revisited?
Yitsy's avatar
In my Autonomous Engineering Harness, the Product Agent generates tickets from specs, including explicit Acceptance Criteria and a Definition of Done. Code Review and QA use these to validate the implementation against the ticket's requirements.
Specs aren't changed mid-build....
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