Building An Agentic Harness That Outlasts The Model
Source
Shopify Engineering
Author
Shopify Engineering
Date
Terms in this piece · Glossary
agent harness — The scaffolding around a model that turns it into a working agent — the loop, the tools it can call, and the rules for when to stop.
grounding — Tying a model's answers to checkable sources — retrieved documents, live data, tool results — instead of letting it answer from memory alone.
Why it matters
A groundingTying a model's answers to checkable sources — retrieved documents, live data, tool results — instead of letting it answer from memory alone.Full definition → counterweight to model-upgrade optimism in security scanning: stronger models raise candidate volume, and the validation agent harnessThe scaffolding around a model that turns it into a working agent — the loop, the tools it can call, and the rules for when to stop.Full definition → that proves findings with real tests is what determines whether any of it is usable.
