Harness — Long-Running Agent Framework

Executable protocol enabling any agent task to run continuously across multiple sessions with automatic progress recovery, task dependency resolution, failure rollback, and standardized error handling.

Design Principles

1. Design for the agent, not the human — Test output, docs, and task structure are the agent's primary interface
2. Progress files ARE the context — When context window resets, progress files + git history = full recovery
3. Premature completion is the #1 failure mode — Structured task lists with explicit completion criteria prevent declaring victory early
4. Standardize everything grep-able — ERROR on same line, structured timestamps, consistent prefixes
5. Fast feedback loops — Pre-compute stats, run smoke tests before full validation
6. Idempotent everything — Init scripts, task execution, environment setup must all be safe to re-run
7. Fail safe, not fail silent — Every failure must have an explicit recovery strategy

Commands

/harness init <project-path>     # Initialize harness files in project
/harness run                     # Start/resume the infinite loop