Harness Engineering: Building Reliable AI Systems

AI models are getting smarter. The hard part is everything around them. Agents need context. They need evaluation. They need guardrails, observability, testing, and workflows that help them operate reliably in production. In short, they need a harness. Join Steve Yegge and Dru Knox for a fireside conversation on the emerging discipline of Harness Engineering—the systems and practices that make AI agents effective, trustworthy, and useful in real-world software development. Together, they'll explore how engineering teams can move beyond experimentation and build AI-powered systems that are ready for production, followed by audience Q&A and community networking. Agenda 18:00 Venue opens, drinks & networking 18:30 Fireside Chat: Harness Engineering: Building Reliable AI SystemsGuy Podjarny & Steve Yegge, facilitated by Tessl 19:15 Audience Q&A 19:45 Networking, drinks & conversation 21:00 Event close Speakers Steve Yegge, Advisor & Consultant Steve Yegge is ex-Geoworks, ex-Amazon, ex-Google, ex-Grab, and ex-Sourcegraph, with over 30 years of tech industry experience, 40 years coding total. Dru Knox, Head of Product & Design at Tessl Dru Knox is Head of Product & Design at Tessl, where he leads the development of AI-native tools purpose-built for developers. A seasoned product manager, Dru has spent his career working on deeply technical and developer-facing products at companies like Google and Airtable. Over the past several years, he’s focused on machine learning and generative AI at scale, driving product innovation at Grammarly, his own startup, and the AI-native social network Cantina. Dru is passionate about making LLM-powered products that are fast, useful, and intuitive, especially in the codegen space. He brings a thoughtful, pragmatic approach to building tools that serve real developer needs, grounded in experience across both big tech and startups.Outside of work, Dru’s interests include improv comedy, Dungeons & Dragons, and philosophy. His favorite podcasts are Cortex, The Adventure Zone, and Sharp Tech. Originally from Virginia, he’s currently based in London and still counts winter (and snow) as his favorite season. This event is brought to you as part of the AI Native Dev Community. Consider subscribing to the Mailing List, Podcast, and joining our Discord Community