Agents Best Practices

An agent harness is the control plane around a model. The model proposes; the harness validates, authorizes, executes, records, and returns observations.

Start With The Boundary

Identify:

• domain and user;
• autonomy level: answer-only, draft-only, approval-gated action, or autonomous within policy;
• risk level: read-only, internal write, external communication, financial, legal, healthcare, security, destructive, or privileged;
• state duration: single turn, session, resumable workflow, or long-running goal;
• tool surface;
• validation signal.

Minimal Harness Shape