Live data from Hacker News

Towards a harness that can do anything

eardatasci.github.io

21–30 of 121 posts

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#21

[flagged]

> Awesome work! This is really impressive. I gave a GitHub star. { aislop pitch} > Again, great work. i can bet you didnt actually read the op. i hate these comments so much. selfish and rude.

I did indeed read every word. And read the code. Don't be rude.

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#22

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

I don't think we're necessarily in disagreement here: I agree that determinism should be taken as far as possible, but once we zoom out of the software engineering world I think things tend to get a lot less easy to automate if that makes sense.

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#23

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

I’m definitely on the deterministic code train as well. All of my success for long running tasks has been around wrapping the agentic harness (cc, codex-cli, etc.) in a deterministic workflow with deterministic gates. We need a name for this outer layer. In my mind that is the true harness because it constrains the agents failure mode. I think flow engineering has been proposed. Maybe it’s the agentic exoskeleton?

I believe they call it "loop engineering"

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#24

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

I know it's a type of blasphemy here, but deterministic workflows such as what you describe is where langgraph really shines imo.

It is not blasphemy if langgraph is trying to do that. As I understand langgraph manages orchestration in custom built agents. I usually stay away from systems which already make it seem as if building agents is a ritual.

What I am saying is the opposite - use Claude Code or whatever else - generate actual "programs". Basically scripts. We have tons of ways for "programs" to interact with each other. Then have clearly defined edge case handlers - think "try/catch". How far do you want to go down the rabbit hole in the "catch"? Do you want to re-write a new version of the "program" itself? I do not know, but this type of a system is what Unix already is, with the addition of programs themselves reaching out to LLMs in well defined edge case handlers.

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Awesome work! This is really impressive. I gave a GitHub star. { aislop pitch} > Again, great work. i can bet you didnt actually read the op. i hate these comments so much. selfish and rude.

I did indeed read every word. And read the code. Don't be rude.

you read the whole article and the only thought you had about it is "great work" ?

your comment exclusively about your aislop project

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#26

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

100% agree that the more deterministic code the better up to the limit where you need the LLM's ability to be non-deterministic to kick in. There is this ACM blog post called "Manual Work is a Bug" [0] that was originally written to help humans automate processes using code. I find it just as applicable today as when it was written. You and the LLM look at what has to be done and then figure out the scripts/tools to…

This is an interesting share, thanks. Yes, that is my mental model. Use coding agents to generate more "programs" (scripts) to automate everything. Have edge case handlers - and these handlers can develop/update the original scripts.

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#28

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

I’m definitely on the deterministic code train as well. All of my success for long running tasks has been around wrapping the agentic harness (cc, codex-cli, etc.) in a deterministic workflow with deterministic gates. We need a name for this outer layer. In my mind that is the true harness because it constrains the agents failure mode. I think flow engineering has been proposed. Maybe it’s the agentic exoskeleton?

I call it tool-response engineering -- the tool-response JSON object itself and any content supplied, plus the available mechanisms after an initial tool call has been made.

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#29

I kind of have a different idea of agents. I totally believe in a deterministic scaffold but I really think that an agent should be as deterministic as possible - the more code, the better. Think of a typical loop we may ask of Claude Code today (assume we are not using TDD): run some test suite with fail fast mode, diagnose if the failure is due to recent feature changes (pass reference to backend/frontend, github i…

One of my policies for agentic coding is to spend much effort in developing tests, coded tests not LLM based vibes. My projects have around 1:1 LOC between code and tests. Tests are like skin, when the skin is pricked it hurts, agents need to feel pain too.

OP's idea "everything is a text file" is good and I use it too. My plans are saved as task.md files, numbered and named. Work items are checkboxes inside the file, closed work items are checked and a comment is added on the same line to provide feedback about the implementation.

I also keep a current-state-of-the-world document, it should be Something I never saw anyone else do - I save all user messages in a chat_log.md file which is referenced for intent alignment and state recovery. I consider the chat log on the one hand, and coded tests on the other hand as the two walls, the agent works in the mid section between them.

https://horiacristescu.github.io/claude-playbook-plugin/docs...

Re: Towards a harness that can do anything

#30

How much do the labs post-train on the harness inputs & outputs? That's a critical piece to understand if a "generic" harness is at all possible

https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/4/better-models-worse-tools/ says already too much to use foreign tools.
Post reply on HN