Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

In this special ShipTalk episode, host Dewan Ahmed (Principal Developer Advocate, Harness) sits down with @Harnessio Field CTO Nick Durkin for spicy—but practical—2026 predictions across AI, software delivery, DevSecOps, MLOps, and developer experience. Will we see the first “AI-caused meltdown”? Are AI “confidence scores” even trustworthy? Is 2026 the year of AI cleanup crews and recovery engineering? Nick’s take: the answer isn’t more gates—it’s guardrails, policy in the pipeline, and teams operating with the same “rulebook.”

In this episode of the ShipTalk Podcast, host Dewan Ahmed (Principal Developer Advocate at Harness) sits down with Evgeny Ilinykh (Founder of GuidedMind.ai and former Tesla Engineering Manager) to move past the AI hype and get into the engineering reality of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). If your AI agents are hallucinating, the problem probably isn't your model—it’s your retrieval layer. Evgeny breaks down how to turn the "black box" of LLMs into a transparent, production-ready system that developers can actually trust.

Learn how to capture and use response data from network calls to build smarter and more reliable AI-driven tests. This walkthrough covers the full workflow from configuring user actions to extracting backend responses, validating data, and creating dynamic test flows. You will also see how response data improves debugging visibility and supports data-driven automation. The video includes Ideal for developers, testers, and platform engineers looking to improve the accuracy and resilience of AI-powered test suites.