Harness engineering: a new term for an old problem

The term harness engineering has been making the rounds. I even like it. But it only confuses things. We already have the words to describe the problem.

21 hrs ago • Ronald Ashri

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March 2026

CIAO👋 Core Components: Orchestration — Coordinating Conversations, Interfaces, and Agents

Orchestration requirements come from two places: the problem you're solving and the architecture you chose. Understanding both is essential to getting…

Mar 31 • Ronald Ashri

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August 2025

CIAO👋 Core Components: Agents - How to Design AI Agents by Starting with the Problem, Not the Technology

We're building sophisticated systems on shaky conceptual foundations - separating problem space from solution space helps bring order.

Aug 6, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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July 2025

CIAO👋 Core Components: Interfaces

In this article we discuss Interfaces and explore using the Conversational Turn as the constant across any type of Interface - forming the contract…

Jul 7, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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Understanding AI Agents through the Generality - Accuracy - Simplicity (GAS) Framework

Understanding and clearly articulating challenges and trade-offs is key to successful AI Agent deployments. A recent paper provides a great framework…

Jul 4, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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June 2025

You're Building AI Agents Backwards

Why agents as abstractions matter more than agents as technologies

Jun 26, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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May 2025

How a Simple Question Exposes Claude 4’s Shortcomings: "Claude, can you write a game?"

The answer, my friends, is "no" - but Claude 4 doesn't know it and Anthropic chooses to leave things this way.

May 25, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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Super-Assistants Vs The World: Why LLM Wrappers, traditional SaaS tools and Specialist AI Agents all need to worry.

The big LLM companies are launching do-everything super assistants. Where does that leave LLM Wrappers, specialist AI Agents and traditional SaaS tools?

May 24, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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CIAO Core Components: Conversations

CIAO (Conversations - Interfaces - Agents - Orchestration) is an architectural framework for designing AI powered agent-based applications. In this…

May 20, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

CIAO Design Principle #2: Explicit Rules in Code Beat Implicit Rules in Prompts

CIAO (Conversations-Interfaces-Agents-Orchestration) is an AI application framework that is not afraid to clearly say that explicit code is better than…

May 12, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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CIAO 👋 - A Unifying Architectural Framework for AI-powered applications

We are creating a new type of software application.

May 9, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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Changing tack ⛵️

Time to complain less and offer a clearer alternative vision for AI-powered applications starting with answering the question of why we need any new…

May 6, 2025 • Ronald Ashri

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