Observability

Reading Group July 2026 - Loop Engineering

Reading Group July 2026 - Loop Engineering

This session provides an in-depth exploration of Loop Engineering, a paradigm shift from manual AI prompting to designing autonomous systems that orchestrate AI agents. Speakers share practical experiences, from building production-grade platforms with automated code generation and adversarial AI reviews to experimental loop structures and foundational infrastructure layers. Key discussions address challenges like managing token costs, preventing agent chaos, and implementing robust verification mechanisms for industrializing software development.

When to Build Your Own Agent Harness | Harrison Chase, LangChain

When to Build Your Own Agent Harness | Harrison Chase, LangChain

Harrison Chase, co-founder of LangChain, delves into the critical role of the 'harness' in LLM agents, explaining how it orchestrates models and context. He covers customizing harnesses with middleware and sub-agents, the trade-offs between off-the-shelf and custom solutions for in- and out-of-distribution tasks, and the importance of evaluations and observability for continuous agent improvement. The discussion culminates in the 'data flywheel' concept and the `LangSmith Engine` for automating agent intelligence through iterative refinement.

Evolution of agentic surfaces — Gagan Bhat & Isabella Kai He, Anthropic

Evolution of agentic surfaces — Gagan Bhat & Isabella Kai He, Anthropic

Anthropic's Gagan Bhat and Isabella Kai He discuss how agent harnesses must evolve rapidly to keep pace with fast-improving LLMs. They introduce Claude Managed Agents, an architecture that decouples the agent's 'brain' (reasoning) from its 'hands' (tool execution) to address issues like stale assumptions, latency, and reliability. This approach enables dynamic adaptation, secure tool execution, and features like 'dreaming' for self-improving agents and 'outcomes' for goal-oriented task completion, ultimately aiming to close the gap between model capabilities and product offerings.

Always-on agents run production without the on-call tax — Justin Smith, Resolve AI

Always-on agents run production without the on-call tax — Justin Smith, Resolve AI

Justin Smith from Resolve AI discusses how AI agents address the increasing operational burden on engineers, highlighting that 70% of an engineer's time is spent running code. He introduces Resolve AI's background agents, which autonomously monitor deployments, perform health checks, generate reports, and answer engineering questions by leveraging deep production context and a self-learning knowledge system, effectively reducing the "on-call tax" and managing system complexity.

From Agent Traces to Agent Simulations — Rustem Feyzkhanov, Snorkel AI

From Agent Traces to Agent Simulations — Rustem Feyzkhanov, Snorkel AI

Rustem Feyzkhanov discusses the critical need for companies to build private, production-aligned benchmarks for AI agents. He explains how to turn agent traces into repeatable simulations, why public benchmarks are insufficient, and how a CI pipeline for agents, integrating observability and experimentation, can ensure reliable evaluation, continuous improvement, and effective release management, moving beyond simple pass rates to measure cost, latency, and policy adherence.

How Two French Engineers In New York Built The Company That Monitors The Entire Cloud

How Two French Engineers In New York Built The Company That Monitors The Entire Cloud

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel shares his journey, emphasizing the company's evolution from a DevOps insight to a public tech giant. He discusses the resilience required to overcome early rejections, his hands-on leadership style focused on raw customer feedback, and how Datadog is rapidly adapting to the AI revolution by prioritizing automation and faster iteration in product development and internal processes. Pomel also offers candid advice on co-founder relationships and the critical importance of moving quickly in both hiring and firing.