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Execution Harness
/harness
A governing scaffold that constrains sequencing, context budgets, checkpoints, and stop conditions.
Strata: L4
Axes: Orchestration
Status: complete
Explainer
A harness sits at L4 (Orchestration) and defines how work is done, not just what to do. It wraps an agent or pipeline with lifecycle controls — sequencing steps, enforcing context budgets, persisting checkpoints, and triggering stop conditions. Examples include execution harnesses (GSD, BMAD), test harnesses (Superpowers), and CI/CD harnesses (Harness.io). Not to be confused with the agent or the tools it calls — the harness is the governing scaffold around them.
Anti-Patterns
- Bolting agent execution onto generic container orchestrators without native lifecycle support leads to fragile systems that crash mid-task.
Mitigations
- Utilize a dedicated agent runtime harness that natively provides durable execution, state isolation, and lifecycle management from day one.