Why task-specific harnesses beat generic ones in mature agent workflows
bendee983 · x · 2026-07-20
General harnesses are useful when you are exploring AI use cases or doing one-off tasks, but as an application matures the prompts, tools, and skills usually become more specialized.
The post argues that at that point it is worth building task-specific harnesses or optimizing a harness around a specific workflow, especially when you care about accuracy, cost, and latency. It also notes that harness engineering is hard, and points to self-improving frameworks where the agent uses the underlying model’s reasoning to refine its own code.
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