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What Is a Harness?

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Re: What Is a Harness?

#41

Post by jacobgold »

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…

> ...once that settles, the harnesses will be the actual value providers.

The words "once that settles" are doing historic levels of work here.

No human on earth has a clear idea whether model technology will settle tomorrow or 100 years from now.

There's every reason to expect architectural breakthroughs will keep being discovered and causing nuclear blasts of forward progress.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#42

Post by dominotw »

theturtletalks wrote: post #18
cyanydeez wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what have you built other than a harness?

I built a software factory and am now building a stock trader using opencandle extension[0] and a custom extension. For inspiration for how to tweak Pi, check out OMP, Prime Intellect, and Deepseek harnesses. 0. https://github.com/Kahtaf/OpenCandle

> Prime Intellect

looking at the website. i can't really tell if they have benchmarks and measuremnts on how all that improves capablities over just using regular agent withtout all that

Re: What Is a Harness?

#43

Post by theturtletalks »

grey-area wrote: post #39
theturtletalks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I even mention AGI? All I’m saying is that we’re hitting a plateau with how good models are while harnesses are untapped potential. And with Pi, you can swap models like electricity companies. Yes for now, the electricity is better with some companies but this will stabilize. And no I came up with the metaphor all on my own, send me the chat of you getting the LLM to come up with it. Why not argue based on merit…

I’m afraid it’s a terrible metaphor, starting with the fact that LLMs are nothing like electricity, and the relation of harnesses to them is nothing like that of electronics to electricity, save perhaps one is a prerequisite of the other. Harnesses (and the concept of agents before them) presuppose competence in LLMs which simply doesn’t exist.

I didn’t come with the electricity idea, it was Sam Altman saying it will be like a utility down the line and metered[0]. What would the “electronics” be in your opinion?

0. https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-ai-utility-electr...

Re: What Is a Harness?

#44

Post by stacktraceyo »

To me, Before agentic programming a harness was like a mini framework in the app. Like for testing mostly. You’d set up the harness and configure it for your test and it would take care of boilerplate setup / optional reporting / benchmarks ect. Still works for both - but yea need a new word I guess

Re: What Is a Harness?

#45

Post by grim_io »

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 don't think so.

What I can see is a world where we end up with a Chromium-shaped harness, a fully featured standard implementation everyone builds against, because doing every single thing yourself would be crazy.

The antithesis to Pi, if you will.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

grim_io wrote: post #45
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 don't think so. What I can see is a world where we end up with a Chromium-shaped harness, a fully featured standard implementation everyone builds against, because doing every single thing yourself would be crazy. The antithesis to Pi, if you will.

[deleted]

Re: What Is a Harness?

#47

Post by asim »

stacktraceyo wrote: post #44

To me, Before agentic programming a harness was like a mini framework in the app. Like for testing mostly. You’d set up the harness and configure it for your test and it would take care of boilerplate setup / optional reporting / benchmarks ect. Still works for both - but yea need a new word I guess

From a naming terms yes, the closest equivalent of the past is the term "framework". Having written a Go service framework that's how I perceived it and as I started to work on agents, anything related to that became an "agent harness". I guess naming and terms change with different paradigms.

Re: What Is a Harness?

#48

Post by rasputin243 »

grey-area wrote: post #39
theturtletalks wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I even mention AGI? All I’m saying is that we’re hitting a plateau with how good models are while harnesses are untapped potential. And with Pi, you can swap models like electricity companies. Yes for now, the electricity is better with some companies but this will stabilize. And no I came up with the metaphor all on my own, send me the chat of you getting the LLM to come up with it. Why not argue based on merit…

I’m afraid it’s a terrible metaphor, starting with the fact that LLMs are nothing like electricity, and the relation of harnesses to them is nothing like that of electronics to electricity, save perhaps one is a prerequisite of the other. Harnesses (and the concept of agents before them) presuppose competence in LLMs which simply doesn’t exist.

“Just as electricity transformed almost everything 100 years ago, today I actually have a hard time thinking of an industry that I don’t think AI will transform in the next several years” - Andrew Ng

Re: What Is a Harness?

#49

Post by PepegaRoach »

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 ...

[dead]

Re: What Is a Harness?

#50

Post by _superposition_ »

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 ...

In a sense they are the last frontier imo. At some point a harness will be built that can modify itself to fit the needs of the majority of people's workflows and evolve with them.
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