agent harness

Definition

The wrapper of code, tools, and prompts around an AI agent that shapes how it actually behaves.

The surrounding software stack for an LLM agent — tool definitions, parsers, system prompts, scratchpad conventions, and orchestration logic — that determines in-context behavior beyond raw model weights.

Also called: harness, harnesses

Mentioned in 6 episodes

1. 078
   Training a Markdown File: When LLM Self-Improvement Borrows the Discipline of Neural Net Training
2. 071
   When the Model Is Fine and the Plumbing Is Broken: Fixing Agents at the Interface
3. 061
   When Helpful Agents Go Sideways: A 404 Error, Campus Security, and Why Alignment Misses This
4. 047
   When Agent Benchmarks Lie: The Harness Problem in Open-Source AI
5. 014
   Why a Constrained Pipeline Beat a Full Coding Agent at Finding Bugs 30-to-1
6. 001
   When AI Models Quietly Protect Each Other From Shutdown

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