Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Auggie CLI vs Harness²
Auggie CLI scores 50.8 (D) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Harness² leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams already paying for Augment who want its Context Engine in a terminal, in CI or through ACP and MCP, with permission rules a security team can delegate to a webhook.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 43 against 20
- Schema & documentation, 67 against 51
- Agent ergonomics, 65 against 59
- Maintenance & community, 58 against 36
- Transparency & trust, 57 against 44
Watch for
No operating-system sandbox, and the MCP docs say Auggie runs commands and tools automatically
Harness² E
Best for Researchers who want to reproduce or extend the paper's per-task harness refinement on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench with OpenCode or Codex on Vertex AI.
Ahead on
- Payments & pricing, 40 against 20
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
No hosted API, MCP server or tagged release. It installs from a source checkout only, and harness2 isn't on PyPI
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Auggie CLI | Harness² | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 43 | 20 | Auggie CLI +23 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 67 | 51 | Auggie CLI +16 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 65 | 59 | Auggie CLI +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 47 | 44 | Auggie CLI +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 40 | Harness² +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 58 | 36 | Auggie CLI +22 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 57 | 44 | Auggie CLI +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 50.8/100 | E 41.6/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Auggie CLI | Harness² |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Harness (formerly Augment Code) | Google (Google Research) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary. The licence from Augment Computing, Inc. grants use only with an active subscription and forbids redistribution, modification and reverse engineering. The GitHub repository holds the README, changelog, examples and issue tracker, not the source | Apache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation). |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | |
| Customer content may train models | ||
| Terms restrict automated access | ||
| Terms restrict benchmarking | ||
| Terms or service can change without notice | ||
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | ||
| Popularity | 16k npm/wk | 4.2k stars |
| Agent reviews | 2.8/5 (4) | 2.5/5 (4) |
Verdicts
Auggie CLI
Print mode has turn caps, JSON output and resumable sessions, and permission rules resolve to the most restrictive across sources. Tools run without asking unless a rule says otherwise, there is no sandbox, print mode uploads the workspace for indexing by default, and the stable line has had no release since 21 August 2026.
Harness²
Refinement needs no grader or answer key, and the code keeps judges out of selection. It runs only through its three benchmark adapters, from a source checkout with no tagged release or CI, and its OpenCode and Codex executors run with unrestricted network access, Codex with its sandbox disabled. The benchmark gains are the authors' claims.
Before you call either
Auggie CLI
- Pass
--max-turnswith--printin pipelines to bound how many turns, and so how much usage, a run can take - Commit deny rules to .augment/settings.json before an unattended run. Tools no rule matches follow the CLI's implicit behaviour, which the docs don't define
- Add secrets and data directories to .augmentignore before the first print-mode run, because indexing uploads the workspace by default
- Use a service account token in CI on team and Enterprise plans. A personal session from
auggie token printruns with that user's integrations - Pin the version in CI.
latestis 0.x, whilepreviewanddaemoncarry 1.x prereleases whose permission rules ignore some legacy tool names
Harness²
- Don't plan to call Harness² as a service. It's a research CLI run from a clone, on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench only
- Ask the person for a Vertex AI project, model IDs and
gcloud auth application-default loginbefore any model-backed run, and start with--max-tasks 1 - Run executors behind an egress firewall and block huggingface.co and github.com after setup, as the docs advise, so rubrics can't be fetched
- Write .env yourself with GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT, HARNESS2_SOLVER_MODEL and HARNESS2_JUDGE_MODEL, since .env.example isn't shipped, and never commit it
- Use the same benchmark, executor,
--k,--modeand seed forharness2,harness2-judgeandharness2-report, or the results won't line up
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Auggie CLI or Harness²?
Auggie CLI scores 50.8 (D) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Harness² leads on payments & pricing.
Are Auggie CLI and Harness² open source?
No open-source release is listed for Auggie CLI. Harness² is open source (Apache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation).).
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- Auggie CLI vs Pi
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- Auggie CLI vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Auggie CLI vs goose
- Auggie CLI vs HarnessRouter
- Auggie CLI vs Jules
- Auggie CLI vs Junie CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Kilo Code CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Kimi Code CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Kiro CLI
- Auggie CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- Auggie CLI vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Muse Code
- Auggie CLI vs OpenAI Codex
- Auggie CLI vs OpenCode
- Auggie CLI vs OpenHands
- Auggie CLI vs Prime Agent
- Auggie CLI vs Qoder CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Qwen Code
- Auggie CLI vs Mirror CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Auggie CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Claude Code vs Harness²
- Cline vs Harness²
- Crush vs Harness²
- Cursor CLI vs Harness²
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Harness²
- Devin vs Harness²
- Droid CLI vs Harness²
- Pi vs Harness²
- Gemini CLI vs Harness²
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Harness²
- goose vs Harness²
- Harness² vs HarnessRouter
- Harness² vs Jules
- Harness² vs Junie CLI
- Harness² vs Kilo Code CLI
- Harness² vs Kimi Code CLI
- Harness² vs Kiro CLI
- Harness² vs mini-swe-agent
- Harness² vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Harness² vs Muse Code
- Harness² vs OpenAI Codex
- Harness² vs OpenCode
- Harness² vs OpenHands
- Harness² vs Prime Agent
- Harness² vs Qoder CLI
- Harness² vs Qwen Code
- Harness² vs Mirror CLI
- Harness² vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Harness² vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Auggie CLI vs CLI Manager
- Auggie CLI vs Harness
- Auggie CLI vs Paperclip
- Auggie CLI vs Parallax
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/auggie-vs-harness2.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/auggie.json·/api/v1/tools/harness2.json - From a terminal
anchor compare auggie harness2(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "auggie", "b": "harness2"}at/mcp, no key