Most agent teams should tune the harness before touching model weights
hwchase17 · x · 2026-07-26
- The post argues that most teams should not train models early: only a very small share of agent use cases have enough data and usage for weight updates to make economic sense.
- For most internal-facing agents, the recommendation is to first squeeze the harness—tools, prompts, orchestration, and context—before moving to weight changes later in the product lifecycle.
- It also notes that open-source models can already be used effectively without fine-tuning, and that this will become even more true as models get stronger and more steerable through natural language and tools.
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