Viewpoint
Harness customization exists on a spectrum
Harness customization exists on a spectrum
Chase says organizations can range from using an off-the-shelf harness to adding middleware and hooks or building a highly controlled cognitive architecture, depending on task distribution and control requirements.
- Speaker
- Harrison Chase
- Source timestamp
- 21:02
More from this interview
- Agents combine a harness, model, and context
- A harness brings context to the model when needed
- Most agents share a simple model-and-tools loop
- Middleware can customize the core agent loop
- Start general and specialize as requirements become clearer
- Out-of-distribution tasks require more harness customization
- Custom harnesses should preserve model-native tool patterns
- Mission-critical agents should have task-specific benchmarks
- Agent benchmarks should measure more than accuracy
- Poor context often causes agent failures
- Detailed traces are necessary for debugging agents
- Production traces can drive continuous agent improvement
- Agent UX can generate useful implicit feedback
- Trace data can improve every major agent component
- Agent improvement can be partially automated from traces
- Benchmark comparisons can reveal techniques worth adopting
- Predictability can justify more controlled agent architectures