Harness engineering can scale development of Indonesia’s digital economy
Harness engineering is a method to build the software tools, guidelines and feedback mechanisms around an AI model to help it operate as a reliable, autonomous agent.
Indonesia is home to a robust digital economy, with an estimated value exceeding $100 billion in 2026 and poised to reach up to $360 billion by 2030. The nation boasts a high level of AI adoption, with 89% of employees regularly using AI tools, the highest in the region. This strong foundation presents an opportunity to accelerate economic development through harness engineering, a method for building software tools, guidelines, and feedback mechanisms around AI models to enable them to operate as reliable, autonomous agents.
OpenAI and Anthropic, leading AI companies, have been instrumental in developing the concepts behind harness engineering. OpenAI introduced a new software production method in February 2026, while Anthropic shared its work on 'harness design' shortly thereafter. This shift in approach sees humans focusing on building and orchestrating AI agents rather than designing, coding, and testing software themselves.
The result is a more efficient division of labor, where machines perform the bulk of the work, and humans supervise and regulate.
Companies across various sectors have already begun to harness the power of AI. Bank Mandiri, a leading financial institution, reports a 25% faster software development process and a 30% increase in code quality using an AI coding assistant. In the payments sector, DANA's adoption of agentic AI has led to a 57% growth in operational productivity. Meanwhile, Halodoc, a health tech company, has reduced costs by 35% and settled claims 70% faster by leveraging AI and cloud technology.
Harness engineering's value extends beyond efficiency gains. The approach allows firms to embed regulatory requirements directly into their systems, ensuring compliance from the outset. This is achieved through a 'critique' agent that stress-tests recommendations against policy and regulation, automatically applying local guidance, KYC, and data protection rules.
The system also includes a 'control tower' that logs every action, detects drift, and raises alerts, coupled with a human-in-the-loop interface for message and warning exchange between agents and humans.
The implementation of harness engineering in Indonesia's digital economy is poised to bring numerous benefits, including faster AI development, repeatable, reliable, and high-quality AI iteration, and improved quality in production. As the cost of producing code continues to fall, the potential for a 'software abundance' scenario emerges, where more applications can be developed and tailored to the needs of Indonesian users and local businesses.
Written by urgent.news from The Jakarta Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
