What makes a harness a harness: necessary and sufficient conditions for an agent harness
A new paper published on arXiv proposes a formal definition for "agent harness," a term used in software engineering for systems that wrap language models to create coding agents. The authors trace the term's origins and differentiate it from related concepts like agent frameworks and SDKs. Their proposed definition aims to provide a consistent vocabulary for engineering practice and scientific comparison of agentic systems, which they test against several existing harnesses. AI
IMPACT Provides a standardized definition for agent harnesses, aiding in the development and comparison of AI coding assistants.