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What Is a Harness?

earendil.com

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Re: What Is a Harness?

#21

Post by throwup238 »

jrflo wrote: post #15
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

I've never used Pi but I don't see why you can't use stock codex or claude code for the same purpose, what makes Pi special? I've built plenty of custom harnesses on top of claude code and codex using custom skills or simple markdown instructions and subagents. Never had any issues or limitations with that approach. I do agree that harnesses are going to extend AI capabilities a lot in the next year, but after readin…

For one you can ask Pi to create a TUI extension, so along with the agent interface you can add whatever custom TUI you need, such as portfolio stock tickers, alerts, whatever you want.

Many of my harnesses eventually turn into customized UIs around the chat interface.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#22

Post by theturtletalks »

dominotw wrote: post #10
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

i think its the opposite. claude code apparently removed hundreds of lines of system prompt because its not relavent anymore with newer models. also i think its hard to build general harnesses if they were trained on specific harness architecture.

Yes but Pi has had a minimal system prompt since inception. Skills and Pi extensions let you make a hyper specific harness for specific use cases. For general conversation, harnesses are overkill most times.

There’s evidence of harnesses making a smaller, weaker model perform better than SOTA and some benchmarks ban harnesses because it becomes too easy.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#23

Post by webdoodle »

I thought this was the next evolution of the smartphone. One so smart that it does all the thinking for you. You don't even have to be conscious, you just do whatever it tells you too. Oh wait, that's what they do already.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#24

Post by tosh »

i also like the backpack analogy

the harness is what you take with you on a trip/task

whatever you take with you is not free (system prompt, tools, skills …)

some models are really good even if you bring almost no skills, tools or system prompt

the harness is the complement to the model

the better the model the more minimal the harness can be

harnesses like pi [0] and smol [1]are on the more minimal end of things

[0] https://github.com/earendil-works/pi

[1] https://github.com/smol-env/smol

Re: What Is a Harness?

#25

Post by grey-area »

mpawelski wrote: post #11
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

> Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” I really though this comment was a satire ...

Sadly, many people have bought into the cult that LLMs will lead to AGI. I guess if that is your worldview then all this babbling about new frontiers makes more sense.

They probably used an LLM to come up with this bizarre metaphor.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#26

Post by theturtletalks »

sejje wrote: post #12
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

What did you bring over from prime-agent? (I use prime-agent as my daily since it launched) I primarily like how it manages sessions, and how agents can easily reference other sessions.

Something like this since Prime Intellect uses RLM under the hood:

https://github.com/manojlds/pi-rlm

Re: What Is a Harness?

#27

Post by romanhounds »

amelius wrote: post #20
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

> If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” (...) the harnesses will be the actual value providers. Don't get ahead of yourself. Harnesses are not exactly rocket science and will be a commodity. The real value providers here are the hardware, then the LLM as a distant second, and at a much larger distance the harness.

[dead]

Re: What Is a Harness?

#29

Post by conmod278 »

amelius wrote: post #20
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

> If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” (...) the harnesses will be the actual value providers. Don't get ahead of yourself. Harnesses are not exactly rocket science and will be a commodity. The real value providers here are the hardware, then the LLM as a distant second, and at a much larger distance the harness.

https://www.latent.space/p/attention-interface

Labs are now post-training models with Harness so that Harness now gets absorbed into the weights.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#30

Post by lebek »

jrflo wrote: post #15
theturtletalks wrote: post #3

Harnesses are the next frontier. If LLMs are electricity, harnesses are the “electronics.” Right now, it’s like an AC vs DC between Claude and ChatGPT, but once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers. And Pi is the best harness because of the amazing extension system. You can build extensions that turn Pi into a stock trader, software factory, anything. I tried switching to another harness but…

I've never used Pi but I don't see why you can't use stock codex or claude code for the same purpose, what makes Pi special? I've built plenty of custom harnesses on top of claude code and codex using custom skills or simple markdown instructions and subagents. Never had any issues or limitations with that approach. I do agree that harnesses are going to extend AI capabilities a lot in the next year, but after readin…

Codex and Claude historically had more bloat in their system prompt and tools. Pi is minimal by design so more adaptable. But to be fair Claude Code is moving in the Pi direction with a small system prompt.
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