The Anatomy of an Agent Harness (3 minute read)
TLDR AI
•
Generative AI
AI Research
This post breaks down the agent harness, the full software infrastructure that transforms an LLM into a goal-directed, tool-using agent. Production harnesses use layered memory, verification loops, subagent orchestration, and structured tool execution to prevent context loss, errors, and silent failures. Frameworks like Claude Code, OpenAI Agents SDK, and LangGraph show that harness design alone can shift agent performance by 20+ ranks, making it the critical engineering layer around any