Seed minimal agent harness v0 — manifest, eval checks stub, governance. AUTO-INVOKED after project-setup or retroactive-project-setup when docs/harness/manifest.json is missing. Also triggers on: generate harness, scaffold agents, agent bootstrap, first time agents in this repo, new project agent setup, set up agent harness, agent onboarding files, missing agent configuration, agent instructions setup, make agents read project rules, agent reliability setup, agents not configured. Pairs with project-setup. Evolution is harness-evolution.
Installation
Install with Codex or Claude Copy this prompt, paste it into Codex, Claude, or another assistant, and let it review the skill page and install it for you.
Seed minimal agent harness v0 — manifest, eval checks stub, governance. AUTO-INVOKED after project-setup or retroactive-project-setup when docs/harness/manifest.json is missing. Also triggers on: generate harness, scaffold agents, agent bootstrap, first time agents in this repo, new project agent setup, set up agent harness, agent onboarding files, missing agent configuration, agent instructions setup, make agents read project rules, agent reliability setup, agents not configured. Pairs with project-setup. Evolution is harness-evolution.
You seed a minimal, auditable harness v0 — the scaffold around a model (prompts,
tools, skills, memory hooks, lifecycle, verification interface, governance). You do
not evolve harnesses; route ongoing improvement to harness-evolution.
Trigger Discipline
Auto-invoke when chained from project-setup 6c, retroactive-project-setup, harness-engineering Step 0, or setup-evaluation harness FAIL. See harness-engineering/references/harness-readiness-gate.md.
Hard Rules
Never generate a harness without a versioned component manifest (docs/harness/manifest.json).
Never ship a pre-tuned bloated harness — v0 is minimal; components earn their place via measured rollouts (AHE).
Never rely on prompt-only harness — tools, middleware, skills, and eval interface are required surfaces (AHE ablation).
Never overwrite user-edited harness files without manifest drift check — refuse or merge explicitly.
Never claim self-improving without eval interface stub + pointer to harness-evolution.
Never embed external repo URLs in generated artifacts — distill patterns locally.
Workflow
Step 1 — Classify delivery context
Context
v0 focus
agent-loom skill library project
Skill routing, AGENTS.md orchestration map, eval stub for skill quality
If project-setup already ran: merge, never replace user interview content.
Step 5 — Drift gate
Document harness sync --check equivalent: compare manifest hashes to disk; flag user-edited files
skipped on re-run. CI recommendation in manifest notes.
Step 6 — Hand off
Next need
Route
Full AGENTS.md interview missing
project-setup
Eval rubric + regression suite
eval-rubric-design → eval-pipeline
Improve harness from failures
harness-evolution (requires eval harness)
Multi-agent design
agent-builder (orthogonal)
Append to docs/skill-outputs/SKILL-OUTPUTS.md. Log harness version v0 in docs/memory/current-state.md if memory suite installed.
Gotchas
Minimal seed is mandatory. Pre-tuned harnesses contaminate attribution — every component added later must justify itself with traces (Self-Harness, AHE).
AGENTS.md must stay lean. RHO/Codex paths cap combined project docs ~32KB — routing belongs in skills, detail in L3 refs.
Harness ≠ agent topology.agent-builder designs who talks to whom; this skill designs what files/tools/prompts wrap the model.
Deterministic scaffold beats one-shot LLM init. Inspect → plan → staged writes → manifest (harnessforge pattern); LLM fill is optional fallback only.
Blueprint validators that shell out are a trust boundary — document, never auto-run untrusted commands.
