Thoughtworks Technology Podcast Key themes in Technology Radar Vol.34
91 snips
Apr 15, 2026 
Jim Gumbley, Business Information Security Officer focused on architecture and agentic AI security. Alessio Ferri, software developer expert in platform modernization and harness engineering. They discuss evaluating tech in an agentic world. They cover harness engineering, putting coding agents on a leash, risks of permission-hungry agents and tradeoffs between agent power and blast radius.
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Too Young To Blip Is A Practical Trust Filter
- The Radar introduced "too young to blip": many promising projects are simply too new to evaluate meaningfully for adoption guidance.
- Fast repo creation by developers and coding agents means maturity, maintainer commitment, and production use become the key trust signals.
Require Maintenance Signals Before Adoption
- Demand evidence before adopting new tools: prefer offerings with clear maintenance paths, vendor backing, or production use rather than one-off weekend projects.
- Budget total cost of ownership and verify who's responsible for long-term support before inclusion.
Raise Your Judgment Bar For Dependencies
- Raise your judgment bar when choosing dependencies: prefer libraries seen in sustained production and with active, intentional maintainers.
- Experiment with very young tools in low-risk contexts, then scale once trust is built.