create-harness

name	create-harness
description	Scaffold your own focused AI agent harness — pick host (Claude Code, Codex, pi.dev, Hermes), template, agents, skills, and ship a npm-publishable harness with its own npx CLI. Use when a user asks to "create my own agent harness", "scaffold a harness", "make a custom Claude Code plugin like ruflo", or "build a vertical AI assistant for X".

create-harness

This skill scaffolds an AI agent harness — your own focused, branded harness with its own npx <name> CLI, MCP server registration, memory namespace, learning loop, and marketplace identity.

When to use this skill

Use this skill when the user wants any of:

• A custom MCP-server-backed AI assistant (legal, trading, support, ops, …)
• A Claude Code plugin that bundles their own agents/skills/prompts
• A Codex skill that wraps a kernel + tools
• A pi.dev extension or Hermes agent runtime config
• A standalone npm package they can npm publish under their own scope

How to invoke

/create-harness

The skill asks for:

1. Harness name (kebab-case, e.g. legal-redline)
2. Description (one line)
3. Host(s) — Claude Code, Codex, pi.dev, Hermes (multi-select)
4. Template — minimal (default), vertical:trading, vertical:support, vertical:devops, vertical:legal, vertical:research, or eject-from-ruflo
5. Memory backend — AgentDB (default), SQLite-only, in-memory
6. Routing strategy — 3-tier (default) or single-tier
7. Marketplace — independent (no ruflo branding) or powered-by

Under the hood

Calls npx create-agent-harness <name> with the user's choices, copies the chosen template into the current directory, runs the post-generation smoke test, and emits a .harness/manifest.json so future updates can harness upgrade cleanly (copier-style regenerate-diff-merge).

Outputs

File	Purpose
package.json	The harness's npm package, ready to npm publish
bin/<name>.js	The CLI binary your users invoke
.claude/settings.json (if Claude Code host)	MCP + hooks wiring
.codex/config.toml (if Codex host)	MCP table in TOML
AGENTS.md + SYSTEM.md (if pi.dev host)	Pi extension instructions
cli-config.yaml (if Hermes host)	Hermes runtime config
.harness/manifest.json	Generator state — drives drift detection (ADR-008)
witness.json	Ed25519-signed provenance manifest (ADR-011)

After scaffolding

The user can:

cd <name>
npm install
npm test
npm publish              # ship their harness to npm
# their users: npx <name> init

Notes for the model

• This is a deterministic operation — defer to create-agent-harness for the actual file creation, do NOT generate harness file contents yourself
• The witness manifest is required — do not skip it
• If the user asks for "ruflo for X" or "my own ruflo", recommend vertical:<X> templates first and offer minimal as the fallback
• Multi-host is supported but increases the harness's surface area — recommend single-host for first-time users unless they explicitly need multi-host