SkillsAdd

lauraflorentin/skills-marketplace

harness-engineer

A complete harness engineering toolkit for agent-first development — scaffold harnesses, diagnose failures, garbage collect stale docs, and orient fresh sessions.

First seen May 1, 2026

Installation

$ npx skills add lauraflorentin/skills-marketplace --skill harness-engineer
View on skills.sh ↗ GitHub repository ↗

Summary

  • A complete harness engineering toolkit for agent-first development — scaffold harnesses, diagnose failures, garbage collect stale docs, and orient fresh sessions.
  • Use when user says: 'set up a harness', 'my agent is stuck', 'agent loop broke', 'clean up the harness', 'start a new session', 'harness for this project', 'agent keeps failing', 'circuit breaker', 'garbage collect my docs', or 'agent made a mess'.

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More details

Agent compatibility

Declared targets from SKILL.md / docs. Unmarked agents are not listed — the skill may still install via the CLI.

Claude Code Declared
Cursor Not declared
Codex Not declared
GitHub Copilot Not declared
Windsurf Not declared
Gemini CLI Not declared
Cline Not declared
OpenCode Not declared

Repository health

Stars 1
License MIT
Default branch master
Open issues 0
Status Active

Skill metadata

Parsed from SKILL.md frontmatter.

Declared agents claude-code

Package contents

Files included with this skill beyond the listing page.

  • skill md SKILL.md 3,884 B
  • docs SUMMARY.md 437 B

History

  1. First seen on skills.sh
  2. First recorded snapshot · 2 installs

SKILL.md

Harness Engineer Plugin

A complete harness engineering toolkit synthesized from OpenAI, Anthropic, and LangChain's 2026 research. Prevents stuck loops, orients fresh agents, repairs failures, and fights entropy.

Plugin Map

Skill Command Trigger
harness-init /harness-engineer:init New project, new repo, needs harness scaffold
harness-doctor /harness-engineer:doctor Agent failed, loop broke, session went wrong
harness-gc /harness-engineer:gc Docs stale, constraints violated, features inconsistent
harness-onboard Auto (SessionStart hook) Every new Claude Code session in a harness project
harness-engineering /harness-engineer:theory Theory, CLASS metrics, Constitutional AI, evaluation design

Orchestrator Agent

For multi-stage workflows, the orchestrator (agents/orchestrator.md) classifies requests, sequences skills, and synthesizes outputs. Three operation modes:

  • Guided (default) — single command, no orchestration
  • Supervised — orchestrator recommends, user confirms
  • Autonomous — orchestrator diagnoses + executes with circuit breaker safety rails

Circuit Breaker System

Three deterministic hooks wired via .claude/settings.json:

Hook File Fires
Circuit Breaker hooks/circuit-breaker.sh PostToolUse Write/Edit — hard stash at 10 edits
Dead Man's Switch hooks/dead-mans-switch.sh PostToolUse * — auto-stash at 30min no-commit
Watchdog hooks/watchdog.sh PostToolUse * every 10 calls — env health + lock cleanup
Pre-Completion settings.json Stop hook Before agent exits — forced verification

Quick Start

# Install into any project
bash .claude/plugins/harness-engineer/install.sh

# Scaffold a new harness
/harness-engineer:init

# After an agent failure
/harness-engineer:doctor

# Weekly maintenance
/harness-engineer:gc

Examples

Input: "My Claude Code agent went into a loop and corrupted three files before I stopped it."

What happens: Run /harness-engineer:doctor — the skill analyzes the last 20 tool calls, identifies the loop trigger, proposes harness constraints to prevent recurrence, and outputs a CONSTRAINTS.md patch ready to apply.

Input: "Starting a new project and want to set up a proper agent harness from scratch."

What happens: Run /harness-engineer:init — scaffolds HARNESS.md, PROGRESS.md, FEATURES.md, CONSTRAINTS.md, and wires the three-layer circuit breaker hooks into .claude/settings.json.

Input: "My harness docs are stale — constraints reference files that no longer exist."

What happens: Run /harness-engineer:gc — audits all harness docs against the current codebase, removes stale references, updates feature states, and outputs a clean diff.

Research Foundation

  • OpenAI (Feb 13 2026): Context engineering, architectural constraints, garbage collection agents
  • Anthropic (Nov 26 2025): Dual-agent architecture, progress files, JSON feature lists, git checkpoints
  • LangChain (Feb 17 2026): LoopDetectionMiddleware, PreCompletionChecklist, reasoning sandwich, trace analysis

Read individual skill SKILL.md files for deep implementation details.

References

  • [PLUGIN-README.md](references/PLUGIN-README.md) — Full installation guide, hook wiring, and advanced configuration