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Agents combine a harness, model, and context
Agents combine a harness, model, and context
Chase describes an agent as three main components: a harness that orchestrates a model and its context, and argues that owning an organization's intelligence involves control over all three.
- Speaker
- Harrison Chase
- Topic
- Agent Harnesses
- Source timestamp
- 1:09
More from this interview
- 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
- Harness customization exists on a spectrum
- Predictability can justify more controlled agent architectures