Agent skill: set up OpenAI's harness engineering methodology in any repo. Works with Copilot, Codex, Claude, Cursor.
Overview
An agent skill that sets up OpenAI's harness engineering methodology in any repository. Works with any AI coding agent — Copilot, Codex, Claude, Cursor, or others. Transforms any repo into an agent-first engineering environment: - — ~100-line progressive disclosure map (not an encyclopedia) - — mechanically enforced dependency boundaries - — test runner, utilities, architecture boundary tests - — lint, typecheck, test, build on every PR - — canonical DO/DON'T patterns for the codebase - — weekly automated scans for anti-pattern drift - — catch violations before they reach CI Works with any stack.
README
harness-engineering
An agent skill that sets up OpenAI’s harness engineering methodology in any repository. Works with any AI coding agent — Copilot, Codex, Claude, Cursor, or others.
What It Does
Transforms any repo into an agent-first engineering environment:
- AGENTS.md — ~100-line progressive disclosure map (not an encyclopedia)
- Architecture layers — mechanically enforced dependency boundaries
- Testing infrastructure — test runner, utilities, architecture boundary tests
- CI pipeline — lint, typecheck, test, build on every PR
- Golden principles — canonical DO/DON’T patterns for the codebase
- Garbage collection — weekly automated scans for anti-pattern drift
- Pre-commit hooks — catch violations before they reach CI
Supported Stacks
Works with any stack. The skill auto-detects and adapts:
| Stack | Test Runner | Linter |
|---|---|---|
| React/Vue/Svelte (Vite) | Vitest | ESLint |
| Next.js/Nuxt | Vitest/Jest | ESLint |
| Node.js/Express | Vitest/Jest | ESLint |
| Python/Django/FastAPI | pytest | Ruff |
| Go | go test | golangci-lint |
| Rust | cargo test | clippy |
| Ruby/Rails | RSpec | RuboCop |
Install
npx skills add charlesanim/harness-engineering
Or to install globally (user-level, available in all repos):
npx skills add charlesanim/harness-engineering -g
Usage
Once installed, just ask your agent:
“Set up harness engineering in this repo”
Or any of these triggers:
- “Make the repo agent-ready”
- “Add architectural boundaries”
- “Set up testing and CI”
- “Adopt agent-first engineering”
What is Harness Engineering?
Coined by OpenAI after shipping ~1 million lines of agent-generated code in 5 months with zero manually-written code. The core insight: don’t write better prompts — design better environments.
8 Principles:
- Engineers become environment designers
- Give agents a map, not an encyclopedia
- If agents can’t see it, it doesn’t exist
- Enforce architecture mechanically, not through instructions
- Boring technology wins
- Entropy management is garbage collection
- Throughput changes merge philosophy
- Agent-to-agent code review
Read the original: openai.com/index/harness-engineering
License
MIT
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Install
npx skillfish add charlesanim/harness-engineering