How do you stop micromanaging a custom agent harness? A Reddit dev's research-task dilemma
dangerous_inference · reddit · 2026-11-07
Reddit user dangerousinference shares their custom research/task harness and asks for help:
Already in place:
- Real-time rendered system prompt that can adapt to nearly any circumstance;
- An effective skills system — instructions for any task are trivial to write and picked up as needed;
- Tools including web search, a Chromium browser instance, and a sandbox.
The problem: asked to research something, the agent does two quick web searches and returns trivial "sales pablum"; nudging helps only slightly. The author feels stuck micromanaging every step and asks: how do you define when to stop and what information is actionable? Must you really write skills like "bring back no fewer than 12 sources of this type," or is there a better way to let the model's own intelligence make that call?
The thread is a practical discussion on agent harness design — acceptance criteria, skill quality, and avoiding micromanagement on longer tasks.
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