AX Engineering Console
Experimental · learning project

AX Engineering Harness

A reusable engineering layer for reliable AI-assisted software development.

  • Context
  • Agents
  • Skills
  • MCP
  • Guardrails
  • Quality gates
  • Evals

The mental model

  1. Human
  2. Harness
  3. Agent
  4. Tools
  5. Software
  6. Verification
  7. Feedback

Reliable AI-assisted engineering is more than asking a model to generate code. It is a human directing an agent that works through defined procedures, using controlled tools, against a project whose changes are verified and evaluated.

What it is
A vendor-neutral core of contracts: project configuration, stack profiles, roles, procedures, capability policy, quality gates and evaluations.
Why it exists
An agent is only as reliable as the context, boundaries and verification around it. Those belong in the repository, not in a prompt.
How it works
A project declares .ax/project.yaml. The harness resolves it against a profile, then plans the gates that a change must pass.

Stack profiles

Status as each profile declares it

  • fullstackA repository holding a backend and a frontend in separate directories, each resolved by its own profile.
    Experimental
  • harness-toolingThis repository's own Node and TypeScript workspace, which hosts the vendor-neutral Harness package.
    Implemented
  • java-springJava and Spring Boot services built with Maven or Gradle. Supplies build and test command defaults; other gates must be declared by the project.
    Experimental
  • nextjs-reactNext.js App Router and React applications on Node. Supplies only the commands such a project reliably has, which is fewer than it first appears.
    Experimental

Building blocks (29 definitions)

  • Agent roles8
    • Experimental8
  • Skills10
    • Experimental10
  • Vendor adapters2
    • Implemented2
  • Evaluations1
    • Experimental1

What this does not do

  • This console runs nothing. Gate execution lives in the command line tool.
  • It executes no agent and runs no evaluation, and connects to no tool.
  • It reads no repository file. This console renders an allowlisted catalog only.
  • It reports no measurement that was not taken, and labels every example as one.