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harness-engineering

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Set up or update the agent-first engineering harness for any repository. Implements the complete scaffolding that makes AI coding agents effective: knowledge maps (AGENTS.md as a concise TOC), structured documentation, architecture boundaries, enforcement rules (.harness/*.yml specs), quality scoring, and process patterns for agent-driven development. Use this skill whenever someone wants to make a repo agent-ready, set up AGENTS.md or docs/ structure, define domain boundaries or golden principles, generate .harness/ configuration, audit agent readiness, or update an existing harness. Also trigger when a user reports problems with agent effectiveness, context management, or architectural drift — these are symptoms of a missing or stale harness. Trigger on: "harness this repo", "set up harness", "agent-first setup", "make this agent-ready", "update the harness", "assess agent readiness", "set up AGENTS.md", "organize for agents", or any discussion about structuring a codebase for AI agent workflows.

skills/.experimental/harness-engineering/SKILL.md

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222
Repository last updated
Aug 15, 2026
License
MIT

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# Harness: Agent-First Engineering Scaffolding

The harness is the scaffolding that makes coding agents effective in a repository.
It encodes the knowledge, boundaries, and rules that an agent needs to reason
about the full business domain directly from the repo itself.

The philosophy: **agents execute, humans steer**. The engineer's job is not to
write code but to design environments, specify intent, and build feedback loops.
The harness is what makes this possible.

## Why It Matters

From the agent's point of view, anything it can't access in-context while running
effectively doesn't exist. Slack discussions, Google Docs, tacit team knowledge —
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