Single-tool harness matches complex production agents on Terminal-Bench Lite
yb2698 · x · 2026-10-14
While testing different harnesses, the author found that a single-tool harness using only ipython can tie some complex production-grade harnesses on Terminal-Bench Lite. The takeaway: less scaffolding leads to better small agents.
- Terminal-Bench Lite from the openthoughts team was chosen as the evaluation proxy because it is fast and gives the same signal as Terminal Bench 2.0 while being easier, making it better suited for small models.
- The benchmark was built by the authors, with a release blogpost explaining the work.
- The author is exploring this "less scaffolding, better small agents" direction in a thread and inviting the community to join.
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