Harness — The Team-Architecture Factory for Claude Code
Harness is a team-architecture factory for Claude Code. Say "build a harness for this project" (English) or "하네스 구성해줘" (한국어) or "ハーネスを構成して" (日本語), and the plugin turns your domain description into an agent team and the skills they use — picked from six pre-defined team-architecture patterns.
Overview
Harness leverages Claude Code's agent team system to decompose complex tasks into coordinated teams of specialized agents. Say "build a harness for this project" and it automatically generates agent definitions (.claude/agents/) and skills (.claude/skills/) tailored to your domain.
Category — Where Harness Sits
Harness lives at the L3 Meta-Factory layer of the Claude Code ecosystem — the layer that generates other harnesses rather than being one. Inside L3, we pick a specific sub-layer: Team-Architecture Factory.
| Layer | What it does | Neighbors we coexist with |
|---|---|---|
| L3 — Meta-Factory / Team-Architecture Factory (us) | Domain sentence → agent team + skills, via 6 pre-defined team patterns | — |
| L3 — Meta-Factory / Runtime-Configuration Factory | Deterministic, repeatable runtime configurations | coleam00/Archon |
| L3 — Meta-Factory / Codex Runtime Port | Same concept, Codex runtime | SaehwanPark/meta-harness |
| L2 — Cross-Harness Workflow | Standardize skills/rules/hooks across multiple harnesses | affaan-m/ECC |
Archon generates deterministic runtime configurations. Harness generates team architectures (pipeline, fan-out/fan-in, expert pool, producer-reviewer, supervisor, hierarchical delegation) plus the skills agents use. Different sub-layers of the same L3. Pick Archon for runtime determinism, Harness for team architecture, or combine them.
Star History
Key Features
- Agent Team Design — 6 architectural patterns: Pipeline, Fan-out/Fan-in, Expert Pool, Producer-Reviewer, Supervisor, and Hierarchical Delegation
- Skill Generation — Auto-generates skills with Progressive Disclosure for efficient context management
- Orchestration — Inter-agent data passing, error handling, and team coordination protocols
- Validation — Trigger verification, dry-run testing, and with-skill vs without-skill comparison tests
Workflow
Phase 1: Domain Analysis
↓
Phase 2: Team Architecture Design (Agent Teams vs Subagents)
↓
Phase 3: Agent Definition Generation (.claude/agents/)
↓
Phase 4: Skill Generation (.claude/skills/)
↓
Phase 5: Integration & Orchestration
↓
Phase 6: Validation & Testing
Installation
Via Marketplace
Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add revfactory/harness
Install the plugin
/plugin install harness@harness-marketplace
Direct Installation as Global Skill
# Copy the skills directory to ~/.claude/skills/harness/
cp -r skills/harness ~/.claude/skills/harness
Plugin Structure
harness/
├── .claude-plugin/
│ └── plugin.json # Plugin manifest
├── skills/
│ └── harness/
│ ├── SKILL.md # Main skill definition (6-Phase workflow)
│ └── references/
│ ├── agent-design-patterns.md # 6 architectural patterns
│ ├── orchestrator-template.md # Team/subagent orchestrator templates
│ ├── team-examples.md # 5 real-world team configurations
│ ├── skill-writing-guide.md # Skill authoring guide
│ ├── skill-testing-guide.md # Testing & evaluation methodology
│ └── qa-agent-guide.md # QA agent integration guide
└── README.md
Usage
Trigger in Claude Code with prompts like:
Build a harness for this project
Design an agent team for this domain
Set up a harness
Execution Modes
| Mode | Description | Recommended For |
|---|---|---|
| Agent Teams (default) | TeamCreate + SendMessage + TaskCreate | 2+ agents requiring collaboration |
| Subagents | Direct Agent tool invocation | One-off tasks, no inter-agent communication needed |
Architecture Patterns
| Pattern | Description |
|---|---|
| Pipeline | Sequential dependent tasks |
| Fan-out/Fan-in | Parallel independent tasks |
| Expert Pool | Context-dependent selective invocation |
| Producer-Reviewer | Generation followed by quality review |
| Supervisor | Central agent with dynamic task distribution |
| Hierarchical Delegation | Top-down recursive delegation |
Output
Files generated by Harness:
your-project/
├── .claude/
│ ├── agents/ # Agent definition files
│ │ ├── analyst.md
│ │ ├── builder.md
│ │ └── qa.md
│ └── skills/ # Skill files
│ ├── analyze/
│ │ └── SKILL.md
│ └── build/
│ ├── SKILL.md
│ └── references/
Use Cases — Try These Prompts
Copy any prompt below into Claude Code after installing Harness:
Deep Research
Build a harness for deep research. I need an agent team that can investigate
any topic from multiple angles — web search, academic sources, community
sentiment — then cross-validate findings and produce a comprehensive report.
Website Development
Build a harness for full-stack website development. The team should handle
design, frontend (React/Next.js), backend (API), and QA testing in a
coordinated pipeline from wireframe to deployment.
Webtoon / Comic Production
Build a harness for webtoon episode production. I need agents for story
writing, character design prompts, panel layout planning, and dialogue
editing. They should review each other's work for style consistency.
YouTube Content Planning
Build a harness for YouTube content creation. The team should research
trending topics, write scripts, optimize titles/tags for SEO, and plan
thumbnail concepts — all coordinated by a supervisor agent.
Code Review & Refactoring
Build a harness for comprehensive code review. I want parallel agents
checking architecture, security vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks,
and code style — then merging all findings into a single report.
Technical Documentation
Build a harness that generates API documentation from this codebase.
Agents should analyze endpoints, write descriptions, generate usage
examples, and review for completeness.
Data Pipeline Design
Build a harness for designing data pipelines. I need agents for schema
design, ETL logic, data validation rules, and monitoring setup that
delegate sub-tasks hierarchically.
Marketing Campaign
Build a harness for marketing campaign creation. The team should research
the target market, write ad copy, design visual concepts, and set up
A/B test plans with iterative quality review.
Coexistence — Harness and Neighbors
Harness is not alone in the Claude Code / agent-framework ecosystem. The following repos live in adjacent layers; each is described in a parallel "X is …, Harness is …" form so you can pick the one that fits your need or combine several.
| Repo | Their position | Relationship to Harness |
|---|---|---|
| coleam00/Archon | "harness builder" — deterministic, repeatable runtime configurations | Same L3, neighbor sub-layer. Archon is a Runtime-Configuration Factory, Harness is a Team-Architecture Factory. Pick Archon for runtime determinism, Harness for team architecture, or combine them. |
| SaehwanPark/meta-harness | Codex port of the same concept | Same L3, different runtime. Use Harness on Claude Code, meta-harness on Codex. |
| affaan-m/ECC | "Agent harness performance & workflow layer" (sits on top of existing harnesses) | Different layer. ECC is a standardization layer across harnesses; Harness is a factory that generates harnesses. Serial combination possible. |
| wshobson/agents | Subagent / skill catalog (182 agents, 149 skills) | Factory ↔ parts supply. wshobson is a catalog to shop from; Harness designs the team. Absorb wshobson entries as parts inside a Harness-generated team. |
| LangGraph | State-graph orchestration, LLM-agnostic | Different track. LangGraph is for long-running, state-recoverable orchestration; Harness is for fast Claude-Code-native team design. |
Built with Harness
Harness 100
revfactory/harness-100 — 100 production-ready agent team harnesses across 10 domains, available in both English and Korean (200 packages total). Each harness ships with 4-5 specialist agents, an orchestrator skill, and domain-specific skills — all generated by this plugin. 1,808 markdown files covering content creation, software development, data/AI, business strategy, education, legal, health, and more.
Research: A/B Testing Harness Effectiveness
revfactory/claude-code-harness — A controlled experiment across 15 software engineering tasks measuring the impact of structured pre-configuration on LLM code agent output quality.
| Metric | Without Harness | With Harness | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average Quality Score | 49.5 | 79.3 | +60% |
| Win Rate | — | — | 100% (15/15) |
| Output Variance | — | — | -32% |
Key finding: effectiveness scales with task complexity — the harder the task, the greater the improvement (+23.8 Basic, +29.6 Advanced, +36.2 Expert).
Exact phrasing to use everywhere: +60% avg quality (49.5 → 79.3), 15/15 win-rate, −32% variance (n=15, author-measured A/B, third-party replications pending).
Full paper: Hwang, M. (2026). Harness: Structured Pre-Configuration for Enhancing LLM Code Agent Output Quality.
Requirements
- Agent Teams enabled:
CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1
FAQ
Q1. Isn't "+60%" oversold?
A. The +60% figure comes from an author-measured A/B (n=15, 15 tasks, measured on the sister repo claude-code-harness). Every citation in this repo pairs the number with the disclosure "n=15, author-measured, third-party replications pending" in the same sentence. For adoption decisions, we recommend running a 2–4 week internal pilot and measuring your own numbers.
Evidence:
- Author A/B: revfactory/claude-code-harness
- Paper: Hwang, M. (2026). Harness: Structured Pre-Configuration for Enhancing LLM Code Agent Output Quality
Q2. Why "harness factory" and not "harness builder"? Isn't this competing with Archon?
A. Archon generates deterministic runtime configurations — it's a Runtime-Configuration Factory. Harness generates agent team architectures (team structure, message protocols, review gates) — it's a Team-Architecture Factory. They are neighbor sub-layers of the same L3 Meta-Factory and serve different needs. Pick Archon for runtime determinism, Harness for team-architecture patterns, or combine them (design architecture with Harness → deploy runtime with Archon).
Evidence:
- Archon self-definition: clawfit docs/reference-levels.md
- Sub-layer declaration: see the Category — Where Harness Sits section above
- Archon repo: github.com/coleam00/Archon
Q3. Isn't "Claude Code only" too narrow? What about Gemini/Codex?
A. Currently the official runtime is Claude Code only. A Codex port of the same concept — SaehwanPark/meta-harness — is already public, so Codex teams can start there. Harness chose "Claude-Code-native, deep" over "multi-runtime, shallow"; cross-runtime collaboration with sibling repos (meta-harness, harness-init, OpenRig) is on the roadmap.
Evidence:
- Codex port: github.com/SaehwanPark/meta-harness
- Cross-runtime scaffolder: github.com/Gizele1/harness-init
License
Apache 2.0