This article explores the concept of an "agent harness," the essential software infrastructure that wraps around a Large Language Model (LLM) to enable autonomous, goal-directed behavior. While foundation models provide the core reasoning capabilities, the harness manages the orchestration loop, tool integration, memory, context management, state persistence, and error handling. The author breaks down the eleven critical components of a production-grade harness, drawing insights from industry leaders such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and LangChain. By comparing the harness to an operating system and the LLM to a CPU, the piece provides a technical framework for understanding how to move from simple demos to robust, production-ready AI agents.
Salute is a JavaScript library designed for controlling Large Language Models (LLMs) with a React-like, declarative approach. It emphasizes composability, minimal abstraction, and transparency – ensuring you see exactly what prompts are being sent to the LLM. Salute offers low-level control and supports features like type-checking, linting, and auto-completion for a smoother development experience. The library's design allows for easy creation of chat sequences, nesting of components, and dynamic prompt generation. It's compatible with OpenAI models but is intended to support any LLM in the future.
This article details how to use Ollama to run large language models locally, protecting sensitive data by keeping it on your machine. It covers installation, usage with Python, LangChain, and LangGraph, and provides a practical example with FinanceGPT, while also discussing the tradeoffs of using local LLMs.
sudo for AI agents - allow, deny, or ask before any tool runs. AI agents run tools autonomously, but some calls are too risky to run unchecked. agentpriv gives you a permission layer to control what goes through.
The article discusses the evolution from RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to 'context engineering' in the field of AI, particularly with the rise of agents. It explores how companies like Contextual AI are building platforms to manage context for AI agents and highlights the shift from prompt engineering to managing the entire context state.
LLMs are powerful for understanding user input and generating human‑like text, but they are not reliable arbiters of logic. A production‑grade system should:
- Isolate the LLM to language tasks only.
- Put all business rules and tool orchestration in deterministic code.
- Validate every step with automated tests and logging.
- Prefer local models for sensitive domains like healthcare.
| **Issue** | **What users observed** | **Common solutions** |
|-----------|------------------------|----------------------|
| **Hallucinations & false assumptions** | LLMs often answer without calling the required tool, e.g., claiming a doctor is unavailable when the calendar shows otherwise. | Move decision‑making out of the model. Let the code decide and use the LLM only for phrasing or clarification. |
| **Inconsistent tool usage** | Models agree to user requests, then later report the opposite (e.g., confirming an appointment but actually scheduling none). | Enforce deterministic tool calls first, then let the LLM format the result. Use “always‑call‑tool‑first” guards in the prompt. |
| **Privacy concerns** | Sending patient data to cloud APIs is risky. | Prefer self‑hosted/local models (e.g., LLaMA, Qwen) or keep all data on‑premises. |
| **Prompt brittleness** | Adding more rules can make prompts unstable; models still improvise. | Keep prompts short, give concrete examples, and test with a structured evaluation pipeline. |
| **Evaluation & monitoring** | Without systematic “evals,” failures go unnoticed. | Build automated test suites (e.g., with LangChain, LangGraph, or custom eval scripts) that verify correct tool calls and output formats. |
| **Workflow design** | Treat the LLM as a *translator* rather than a *decision engine*. | • Extract intent → produce a JSON/action spec → execute deterministic code → have the LLM produce a user‑friendly response. <br>• Cache common replies to avoid unnecessary model calls. |
| **Alternative UI** | Many suggest a simple button‑driven interface for scheduling. | Use the LLM only for natural‑language front‑end; the back‑end remains a conventional, rule‑based system. |
- Isolate the LLM to language tasks only.
- Put all business rules and tool orchestration in deterministic code.
- Validate every step with automated tests and logging.
- Prefer local models for sensitive domains like healthcare.
| **Issue** | **What users observed** | **Common solutions** |
|-----------|------------------------|----------------------|
| **Hallucinations & false assumptions** | LLMs often answer without calling the required tool, e.g., claiming a doctor is unavailable when the calendar shows otherwise. | Move decision‑making out of the model. Let the code decide and use the LLM only for phrasing or clarification. |
| **Inconsistent tool usage** | Models agree to user requests, then later report the opposite (e.g., confirming an appointment but actually scheduling none). | Enforce deterministic tool calls first, then let the LLM format the result. Use “always‑call‑tool‑first” guards in the prompt. |
| **Privacy concerns** | Sending patient data to cloud APIs is risky. | Prefer self‑hosted/local models (e.g., LLaMA, Qwen) or keep all data on‑premises. |
| **Prompt brittleness** | Adding more rules can make prompts unstable; models still improvise. | Keep prompts short, give concrete examples, and test with a structured evaluation pipeline. |
| **Evaluation & monitoring** | Without systematic “evals,” failures go unnoticed. | Build automated test suites (e.g., with LangChain, LangGraph, or custom eval scripts) that verify correct tool calls and output formats. |
| **Workflow design** | Treat the LLM as a *translator* rather than a *decision engine*. | • Extract intent → produce a JSON/action spec → execute deterministic code → have the LLM produce a user‑friendly response. <br>• Cache common replies to avoid unnecessary model calls. |
| **Alternative UI** | Many suggest a simple button‑driven interface for scheduling. | Use the LLM only for natural‑language front‑end; the back‑end remains a conventional, rule‑based system. |
"Talk to your data. Instantly analyze, visualize, and transform."
Analyzia is a data analysis tool that allows users to talk to their data, analyze, visualize, and transform CSV files using AI-powered insights without coding. It features natural language queries, Google Gemini integration, professional visualizations, and interactive dashboards, with a conversational interface that remembers previous questions. The tool requires Python 3.11+, a Google API key, and uses Streamlit, LangChain, and various data visualization libraries
Analyzia is a data analysis tool that allows users to talk to their data, analyze, visualize, and transform CSV files using AI-powered insights without coding. It features natural language queries, Google Gemini integration, professional visualizations, and interactive dashboards, with a conversational interface that remembers previous questions. The tool requires Python 3.11+, a Google API key, and uses Streamlit, LangChain, and various data visualization libraries
This article discusses Model Context Protocol (MCP), an open standard designed to connect AI agents with tools and data. It details the key components of MCP, its benefits (improved interoperability, future-proofing, and modularity), and its adoption in open-source agent frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, and AutoGen. It also includes case studies of MCP implementation at Block and in developer tools.
Scaling a simple RAG pipeline from simple notes to full books. This post elaborates on how to utilize larger files with your RAG pipeline by adding an extra step to the process — chunking.
This repository contains the source code for the summarize-and-chat project. This project provides a unified document summarization and chat framework with LLMs, aiming to address the challenges of building a scalable solution for document summarization while facilitating natural language interactions through chat interfaces.
