Build, Configure, or Use As-Is: The Agentic Harness

What it is — Argues ~80% of agent harnesses are identical, so decide what to build vs configure vs use off-the-shelf for the other 20%.

Key points

• Tools and catalogs are mostly YAML — configure, don’t build.
• Skills are markdown recipes; the memory layer is the piece worth custom-building.
• Safety must live in a deterministic layer, not in prompts.