Martinfowler iconMartinfowlerOct 13, 2026

Are Harnesses Worth the Cost?

Naresh Jain compares coding agents building the same API service with and without a behavioral harness. A frontier model, GPT-6 Sol, passed every external evaluation either way. But a cost-optimized model, GPT-6 Luna, succeeded in only 3 of 10 unharnessed runs and all 10 with the harness. While adding the harness incre

Are Harnesses Worth the Cost?

Share this story

Send the public story page.

Keep reading in the app

Open the app view to save this story, compare related coverage, and continue from the same source.

Open in app