Dev Rewrites Agent Harness in Shell, Cuts 10k+ Lines

Engineer remilouf detailed his 'shell maximalism' approach, deleting over 10,000 lines from his agent harness by replacing custom tools, MCP, and subagents with plain shell primitives, running everything directly in the terminal with a wrapper command for sandboxing.

2026-09-08 ~ 2026-09-08 · 4 related posts

• He deleted 10,000+ lines of agent code after realizing shell primitives suffice — remilouf · 2026-09-08
• Shell maximalism: tools, MCP and subagents all as shell primitives — remilouf · 2026-09-08
• "Shell maximalism": replace MCP, custom tools and subagents with plain shell commands — remilouf · 2026-09-08
• Driving AI agents from the plain terminal with a wrapper command, no TUI — remilouf · 2026-09-08