Build an Agent Harness in 30 Minutes

Hosted by Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana

Mon, Aug 3, 2026

9:30 AM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI Engineering Bootcamp and Certificate: Build and Ship Production AI Agents
Dr. Aki Wijesundara and Manu Jayawardana
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What you'll learn

Identify the five parts of an agent harness

Map each part to a failure you have already hit, so you know which layer is actually breaking.

Wrap an unreliable model call in real controls

Add retry, validation and state to a bare call and watch the failure rate drop live.

Decide what belongs in the harness, not the prompt

Use a simple rule to stop patching system behaviour with longer and longer instructions

Why this topic matters

Everyone is still tuning prompts. The teams shipping agents that survive real users havemoved on to the system around the model: workflow control, context, permissions,evaluation and persistent state. That system is the harness, and it is now the thing thatseparates a demo from production. If your agent works in testing and falls over on realinputs, the harness is what you are missing.

You'll learn from

Aki Wijesundara

AI Advisor | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Aki Wijesundara is an AI leader with a PhD in Machine Learning and extensive experience mentoring startups at Google’s AI Accelerator. With a career spanning both research and applied AI, Aki has taught 5,000+ students worldwide how to design and deploy production-ready AI systems.

He has worked across cutting-edge areas of applied AI, from LangChain and RAG pipelines to observability and large-scale deployment. As a researcher and educator, Aki bridges the gap between theory and practice, making complex systems approachable and actionable for engineers, founders, and product leaders.

Aki is also a frequent speaker and advisor to organizations adopting AI, helping them transition from experimentation to production at scale.

Manu Jayawardana

AI Founder | CEO at TAI Labs | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Manu Jayawardana is a serial entrepreneur with multiple AI startup successes.

He is also the Co-Founder of Snapdrum, an AI consultancy helping companies integrate and automate their businesses using AI. Through Snapdrum, Manu has worked with top startups and enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, advising on automation, product development, and AI strategy.

Currently, Manu is the Co-Founder & CEO of Krybe, an AI voice agent startup in London transforming how businesses automate customer interactions. His experience spans fundraising, scaling products, and leading teams to deliver production-grade AI solutions adopted globally.

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