Harness acquires select Augment Code assets to accelerate AI-driven software engineering

Bengaluru, Oct 9 : Harness, a company specialising in autonomous software development lifecycle (SDLC) platforms, on Friday announced the acquisition of select assets of Augment Code, including its Cosmos and Auggie CLI products, Code Context Engine and related technologies, to accelerate software engineering automation.

The acquisition will bring the teams behind these products into Harness, strengthening the company's efforts to automate the entire software development lifecycle, from ideation and coding to software delivery, security testing, deployment and production operations.

As part of the integration, Cosmos will be rebranded as Harness Cosmos Software Factory Agent, with a focus on automating engineering tasks from concept to code. Harness's existing agents for software delivery, security testing, runtime protection and cost management will subsequently take over, enabling a coordinated, agent-driven workflow across the software lifecycle.

Harness said integrating Augment Code's Code Context Engine with its Software Delivery Knowledge Graph would provide insights across the development lifecycle by combining an understanding of codebases with information on software delivery and production performance.

The integration is expected to enable Cosmos to make better-informed code changes from the outset. Meanwhile, downstream Harness agents will feed back findings from testing, security checks and deployment, helping identify, correct and verify issues.

"AI's impact on software will not be measured by how much code it generates, but by how much valuable software reaches customers," said Jyoti Bansal, founder and chief executive officer of Harness.

He said the acquisition would combine code context with delivery and production insights, enabling AI agents to make better changes from the beginning. When downstream agents identify issues during testing, security checks or deployment, they can relay findings to Cosmos along with the context needed to address them, he added.

Igor Ostrovsky, co-founder and chief technology officer of Augment Code, said the company had aimed to bring AI into the entire software development lifecycle, beginning with context-aware coding.

Joining Harness was the next step towards that vision, enabling increasingly autonomous engineering workflows in which engineers could focus on tasks requiring human judgement, he said.

Ostrovsky added that the combination would bring the benefits of software factories to teams already using the Harness platform, as well as those planning to adopt it.

The acquisition marks Harness's latest move to expand the role of AI agents beyond code generation towards a more integrated approach to software development, delivery and operations.