| name | every-harness |
| description | Use when Codex should delegate scoped work to an installed external agent harness, inspect an Every Harness mailbox, or cancel active delegated work through the `every-harness` CLI. |
Every Harness Skill
every-harness is the local CLI for delegating bounded Codex work to another installed harness. This Skill is a Codex playbook: run the CLI yourself when delegation is useful, and keep the user-facing summary short.
Every Harness does not register slash commands, MCP servers, hooks, or hidden defaults. The CLI is the source of truth for command syntax:
every-harness --help
every-harness run --help
every-harness status --help
every-harness cancel --help
Execution Model
- Codex remains the planner and coordinator.
- The selected harness owns the scoped task passed to
run.
- Every Harness owns the local mailbox, status rendering, cancellation, and adapter routing.
- External harness CLIs must already be installed and authenticated on the machine.
Common Commands
every-harness run --harness <id> [--background] [--write|--read-only] [--model <model>] [--effort <effort>] [--prompt-file <path>] <task text>
every-harness status [--harness <id>] [--all] [--wait]
every-harness cancel [--harness <id>]
When To Use
Use every-harness run when a separate harness should execute a scoped implementation, review, exploration, or model-specific pass.
Use every-harness status when you need to inspect active or completed delegated work.
Use every-harness cancel when delegated work is stale, wrong, or explicitly stopped by the user.
Rules
- Choose the concrete harness with
--harness; do not rely on hidden defaults.
- Preserve the user's intent in the task text. Add only the context needed for the target harness to execute safely.
- Use
--write only when the delegated harness should modify files.
- Use
--background only when you intend to continue locally and check back with every-harness status.
- Keep user-facing summaries short: report the harness used, outcome, and any follow-up work.
- Do not expose internal job IDs, process IDs, log paths, or stored mailbox records unless the user explicitly asks for internals.