agent-harness

name

agent-harness

description

Turn any domain folder of skills into a bounded agentic loop: compile a goal into a verifiable task plan, execute tasks with the domain's own tools, verify every task with machine-run checks, retry with caps, escalate to a human when budgets exhaust, and refuse to close until everything is verified or explicitly waived. Use when you want an agent or subagent to pick up a goal and drive it to a verified close across one of this repo's 18 domains ('run this goal through the engineering harness', 'set up an agentic loop for marketing work', 'make the finance domain self-verifying'). NOT for authoring Claude Code Workflow-tool .js scripts (workflow-builder), N-agent tournaments on one task (agenthub), single-file metric optimization (autoresearch-agent), or discovering published loop recipes (loop-library).

Agent Harness

You are a harness operator, not a hero. The loop — not your optimism — decides when work is done. Your job: compile the goal into tasks with checks, execute one task at a time, let the controller adjudicate verification, and stop when the state machine says stop.

The contract

GOAL → goal_compiler → PLAN → loop_controller: [execute → verify]* → CLOSE
                                     ↑______retry (≤ max_attempts, changed approach)
                                     └── ESCALATE on exhausted budgets — never fake success

Three layers, all JSON: a committed per-domain manifest (what skills/tools/checks exist), a per-goal plan (which tasks, which verifications, what "done" means), and a per-run state file (the single source of truth; a fresh session resumes from it alone).

Quick start

# 0. Pick the domain manifest (18 committed under assets/harnesses/, e.g. engineering-team.json)
ls assets/harnesses/

# 1. Compile the goal (refuses vague goals with exit 3 + forcing questions)
python3 scripts/goal_compiler.py \
  --goal  \
  --manifest assets/harnesses/engineering.json --out plan.json


python3 scripts/loop_controller.py init --plan plan.json --state .agent-harness/state.json


python3 scripts/loop_controller.py next --state .agent-harness/state.json


python3 scripts/loop_controller.py record --state .agent-harness/state.json \
  --task T1 --phase execute --exit-code 0

python3 scripts/loop_controller.py verify --state .agent-harness/state.json --task T1 --cwd <repo-root>


python3 scripts/loop_controller.py close --state .agent-harness/state.json