Skip to main content
Editor

Better Harness

Analyze project engineering practices with the Better Harness Skill in Editor.

What is Agent Harness

Agent Harness is the context, tools, execution boundaries, verification methods, and feedback that support an agent’s work. Better Harness reviews these mechanisms and identifies weaknesses affecting task delivery.

How Better Harness works

Invoke Better Harness with /better-harness in an Editor Agent conversation to analyze your project and get improvement suggestions. The analysis uses project content and agent configuration within the permitted scope to identify problems, explain evidence, and suggest improvements. Specify the project boundary, exclude historical sessions, or request analysis without file changes. Check coverage and evidence limitations when information is missing.

What it evaluates

  • Task understanding: clear goals, context, and project instructions.
  • Controlled execution: execution entry points, tool permissions, and boundaries.
  • Change validation: tests, builds, and other checks that verify results.
  • Reliable delivery: acceptance evidence and appropriate recovery mechanisms.
  • Learning capture: reusable knowledge in Rules, Skills, Hooks, and other project assets.

Use it in Editor

  1. Open the project in Editor and select Agent mode.
  2. Enter /better-harness in chat and confirm that it is recognized as a Skill.
  3. Add the analysis scope, objective, and constraints, then send. For example:
/better-harness Review this project’s engineering rules and test workflow. Provide evidence and recommendations only. Do not modify files or read other projects or historical sessions.
  1. Review tool or terminal requests according to your current permission settings.
  2. Read the analysis in the conversation and check its evidence and coverage gaps.
If the client does not recognize the Skill, check its availability in Skills/Plugins.

Read the results

Review the scope, findings, evidence, recommendations, and incomplete checks. An empty project or insufficient evidence cannot support a full project assessment.

Fix and verify

After reviewing the recommendations, specify the issue to address, files that may change, and acceptance checks in the conversation. Ask the agent to make the agreed improvements, review the changes, and run relevant verification. Analysis may involve tool calls or report generation. State explicitly if you require read-only analysis; invoking the Skill does not mean authorizing every proposed repair.

Run another analysis

After improvements or structural changes, invoke /better-harness again and identify what to recheck. Compare the findings and verify the new evidence.