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CONCEPT

Harness

The scaffolding layer around a language model that turns it into a working agent — tools, prompts, memory, execution environment, and safety checks. A common formulation holds that the model is a small part of an agent's practical capability and the harness the larger part, making it a distinct engineering object.

Origin

The word entered agent discourse to name the scaffolding — tools, memory, safety — wrapped around a raw model to make it act.

category
Agent abstraction layer (tools, prompts, memory, security)
definition
Agentic harness: memory, skills, tools, connectors and orchestration around the model
role
Layer that DeepSeek sums up with the equation "Agent = Model + Harness": the model is *"the soul of the agent"*, the harness is what lets it understand its environment, use tools, and keep working under real conditions. DSH offers an operational definition of it through plugin composition and a single log, rather than a feature catalog
usage
Puts the production of interactive HTML/CSS/JS within reach of non-developers
equation
Agent = Model + Harness; model ~10%, harness ~90%

Related entities

Fiches (5)