But harness is relatively easy to code yourself?
They're just system prompt composer, with some tool functions that the LLM can invoke. I've vibe coded my own in just one day.
But harness is relatively easy to code yourself?
They're just system prompt composer, with some tool functions that the LLM can invoke. I've vibe coded my own in just one day.
But is there anything preventing them from putting their own proprietary wolfram alpha/prolog/super duper expert system in there?
I guess... but I think, at its core, a good coding harness usually includes:
- well-crafted system prompt that follows best practices
- good contextual reminder prompts (when an llm got stuck in an infinite loop and times out, forgets how to use tools, or needs recurring best practice reminders, etc)
- well-written ergonomic tools the llm can use (read/write files, read diffs, browse the internet, etc)
I dont think these are anything special. The deepest moat I can think of is, proprietary models can be specifically trained to use their proprietary harnesses, so they are more token-efficient and make less tool call and file editing mistakes.
However in my experience, I'm as comfortable working with my own homemade harness as with Claude Code, so I don't think it's a deep moat...
Only that it would just slow down the model and make it dumber.
You can't tool and harness a weak model into strength and you probably don't improve top models with boondoggles.