Thin Harnesses

A thin harness keeps the agent runtime focused on the model loop, file access, context management and safety. Garry Tan's "thin harness, fat skills" approach puts reusable procedures in skills and reliable operations in deterministic tools (Tan, 2026).

Source: Garry Tan, "Thin Harness, Fat Skills".

Related: Building an agent harness from scratch to pass Ian Goodfellow's intelligence test.