Local agent testing: model choice beats harness, coding-focused harnesses win across tasks
dh7net · reddit · 2026-11-16
A Reddit user shared findings from testing local model/harness combinations:
- Model matters more than harness: Qwen Flash Next beats Qwen 3.8 27B even at low quantization.
- Inference engine matters more than harness: context window size dramatically affects performance, and speed is the difference between usable and unusable.
- Coding-optimized harnesses (OpenCode, PI) outperform general agents (OpenClaw, Hermes) even on mundane tasks like reading email, making purchases, or complex vision.
The author included a comparison chart of model/harness combinations.
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