# Conductor vs Harness (slim)

> Harness scores 60.9 (C) to Conductor's 41.3 (E) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-harness-autonomous.md (~6,250 tokens) · this version ~2,730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-harness-autonomous.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/conductor-vs-harness-autonomous
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

Harness scores 60.9 (C) on agent readiness against Conductor's 41.3 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- Conductor: E 41.3, rank #1285 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/conductor.min.md
- Harness: C 60.9, rank #629 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness-autonomous.min.md
- Conductor, good for Existing Conductor users planning their move before Cloud closes on 20 November 2026 and the local app winds down in early 2027.
- Harness, good for A developer who runs Claude Code and Codex on several machines and wants their agents to hand work to each other where the person can watch. Ahead on Reliability, 40 against 25; Schema & documentation, 85 against 60; Agent ergonomics, 77 against 55; Security & auth, 54 against 45; Payments & pricing, 40 against 0; Maintenance & community, 75 against 58; Transparency & trust, 64 against 53. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card; Open source.

| Category | Conductor | Harness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 25 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 60 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 77 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 45 | 54 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 0 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 58 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 53 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Conductor | Harness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Conductor (joining Meta) | Autonomous, Inc. |
| Transports |  | stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary. A closed-source Mac app and hosted Conductor Cloud under Conductor's terms | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 11 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.autonomous.harness/harness` |
| Last release | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | 2026-07-07 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | none | 1.3k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Payments & pricing, Harness +40: Conductor 0 (No new sign-ups since 4 November, free users can't upgrade, and no price is shown. No protocol, no published price, no open free tier, no onboarding (0).); Harness 40 (No payment protocol (0). Read with the self-hosted rule. The software is free and the optional hardware prices are public, per the 17 October check, not re-read on 4 November, since Autonomous's terms forbid access to its sites by automated means, including scripts or web crawlers, and its hosts are paused pending the founder (20). Free with no card (20). An agent cannot start harnesses until the person signs in with Google or Apple in a browser; the agent can now turn the experimental setting on with the person's yes, but the browser sign-in still needs the person, so 0 for autonomous onboarding, as the other harnesses that need an account were read (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 = 40.)
- Schema & documentation, Harness +25: Conductor 60 (Harness reading. Docs for workspaces, review and merge, a Conductor API reference page linked from the docs (not read), and security and permissions pages (60).); Harness 85 (Read as an MCP server and CLI. Eleven tools in source at v0.5.33, each with a typed JSON Schema input built by one helper, required fields marked, plus `--json` on every command. No OpenAPI, which a stdio server does not need (23). llms.txt and a Markdown-like agents page written for agents, per the 17 October check, not re-read on 4 November, since Autonomous's terms forbid access to its sites by automated means, including scripts or web crawlers, and its hosts are paused pending the founder (10). The tool descriptions and server instructions say when to call whoami first, to prefer a new project over an existing folder, to read before telling a harness more, and that turning a setting on is the person's yes to give (20). An enum on `agent` and on the setting `name`, `minItems` on wait names, minimum and maximum on `timeout_seconds`, a minimum on `chars` and `limit`. `machine`, `folder`, `project` and `model` are free strings (12). Worked examples, the exit code table and the `Next:` line per the 17 October reading of the agents page and llms.txt, with exit codes still in the source (13). Per-component semver tags, but the only CHANGELOG.md covers the provider protocol (0.3.0, 6 August 2026), and GitHub's release pages could not be read (7). 23 + 10 + 20 + 12 + 13 + 7 = 85.)
- Agent ergonomics, Harness +22: Conductor 55 (Harness reading. Each task gets a workspace, branch, terminal and diff, with pull requests and merges from the app, and an API for integrations; not re-read in detail (55).); Harness 77 (Eleven tools at v0.5.33 (seven on 17 October). Added since then are harness_search, harness_machines, harness_tell and harness_settings; harness_send and harness_tell are listed only inside a harness, so an agent outside one sees nine. Descriptions total about 4,000 characters. Judgement call. By the total, 11 tools fall in the 11 to 30 band (15), with 5 back for listing two tools only inside a harness (20). Counting only the nine an outside agent sees gives 25. We took the stricter reading, as the 17 October check counted the total (20). `chars` sizes a read (4,000 characters by default), `limit` sizes a search (10 by default), `all` widens the list, and `any` returns on the first finished harness. No pagination (14). Exit codes, refusals returned as answers rather than errors so a model does not retry them, and a timed-out wait reported as still working, in the source (19). readOnlyHint on whoami, list, search, machines, wait and read, destructiveHint false on start, tell and send, idempotentHint on close, and no hint on settings so an engine that asks before an unmarked tool asks the person (16). Two required fields on start, defaults of Claude Code and a 45-second wait. No SDK, but a CLI, an MCP server and a plugin with a skill (8). 20 + 14 + 19 + 16 + 8 = 77.)
- Maintenance & community, Harness +17: Conductor 58 (0.93.0 on 4 November 2026 (30). Several dated releases in 90 days, per the changelog index (20). Discord, a subreddit and email for support (8). Closed app, no package or CI to read (0). 30 + 20 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 58. The local app gets new models and critical fixes only until early 2027.); Harness 75 (v0.5.33_cli and v1.3.56_desktop on 3 November 2026 (30). 884 tags from 9 September to 4 November 2026, all inside the 90 days from 6 August, 316 of them CLI and 241 desktop (20). Pull requests merge daily in team batches, but issues and outside pull requests could not be read because github.com answers our proxy with 403 (5). In the official MCP registry since 19 October 2026 as ai.autonomous.harness/harness, a reverse-domain namespace for harness.autonomous.ai, with npm package @autonomous-ai/harness-mcp 0.2.0 and a checksummed MCPB file. The registry's latest entry is 0.4.20 while the CLI is 0.5.33 (15; 0 on 17 October, when there was no entry). CI workflows for the CLI, desktop, backend and OS, with dependency lockfiles current. Run results unread (5). 30 + 20 + 5 + 15 + 5 = 75.)
- Reliability, Harness +15: Conductor 25 (Read as local software that is winding down. Installed from Conductor's own download, which stopped taking new users on 4 November 2026 (10). Closed source, so no public CI or issue tracker (0, 0). A dated changelog, newest 0.93.0 on 4 November (15). Version 0.93 (0). 10 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 25.); Harness 40 (Read as local software, since the agents run on the owner's machines. A one-line installer from Autonomous's CDN, DMG and AppImage builds, and App Store and Google Play apps, with macOS and Linux stated as supported and Node managed by the installer, per the 17 October check, not re-read on 4 November, since Autonomous's terms forbid access to its sites by automated means, including scripts or web crawlers, and its hosts are paused pending the founder. Not on a package registry we could read (20). A public CI workflow plans a run per changed component, with Linux unit tests, the desktop suite in four shards, repository tooling tests, typechecks and a bundle test, and a separate CLI end-to-end workflow. We could not read run results, so 15, the value this run gives public CI that runs the tests with an unreadable result (10 on 17 October, corrected). Open issues could not be read, because github.com answers our proxy with 403. Unchecked, so scored absent (0). Tags follow semver per component, but there is no changelog for the app or CLI and breaking changes are not marked in the repository (5). The CLI went from 0.4.x to 0.5.x on 29 October (v0.5.1_cli); a 0.x minor is exempt from the breaking-change term under this run's provisional reading. The CLI agents call is 0.5.33 (3 November 2026), the npm MCP package is 0.2.0, and Agents can start other agents is still an experiment, so the agent surface is pre-1.0 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 5 + 0 = 40. Accounts and the relay are hosted by Autonomous with no status page found on 17 October.)
- Transparency & trust, Harness +11: Conductor 53 (Closed service with terms and privacy pages (15). The transition notice says when Cloud data deletion begins (20 November) and that all user data is deleted when the app shuts down in early 2027 (20 of 30). Dated shutdown notice (15 of 20). SOC 2 report on a trust portal, subprocessors not read (10 of 20). 15 + 20 + 15 + 10 = 60.); Harness 64 (MIT licence for the whole repository under Autonomous, Inc., with third-party Store covers under their own licences (30). The repository documents what usage counts contain, a 10-day pseudonymous activity mark and the encrypted relay in detail. Autonomous's privacy policy of 7 July 2026 is general to its stores and sites and does not mention Harness, per the 17 October reading and the site's policy reading of 30 October (14). The provider protocol promises both revisions side by side for a deprecation window after a breaking change. Nothing similar for the app or CLI (6). Telemetry is disclosed with an opt-out in the app and CLI, but it is on by default and described in the repository rather than in the privacy policy (14). 30 + 14 + 6 + 14 = 64.)