The repository is the system of record. Chat is not. State that must survive a session lives in files; a fresh session recovers it by reading them, not by guessing. Based on Learn Harness Engineering.

Init (once per repo, skip files that already exist)

Copy from templates/ next to this file, then adapt — never leave placeholders:

.agents/progress.md — session log + current verified state.
.agents/features.json — every user-visible feature with id, priority, status, verification steps and evidence. Write real features from the repo's README/issues/code; all start not_started.
Optional for large sessions: templates/session-handoff.md → .agents/handoff.md.

Dependencies are installed by the devcontainer features, not here; the baseline is the CI status on the repo's dev forge (GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps), which the hook prints. Put each feature's real verification steps in .agents/features.json. Commit the files as one change. Once .agents/progress.md or .agents/features.json exists, the SessionStart hook prints the state and the Stop hook checks the handoff.

harness

Init (once per repo, skip files that already exist)

Session start