# Emdash vs Harness (slim)

> Harness scores 60.9 (C) to Emdash's 53.9 (D) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-harness-autonomous.md (~6,400 tokens) · this version ~2,980 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-harness-autonomous.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-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 Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on reliability and payments & pricing. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- Emdash: D 53.9, rank #927 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.min.md
- Harness: C 60.9, rank #629 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness-autonomous.min.md
- Emdash, good for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH. Ahead on Reliability, 55 against 40; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40. Also No key needed to call it.
- 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 Schema & documentation, 85 against 55; Agent ergonomics, 77 against 55; Security & auth, 54 against 38; Maintenance & community, 75 against 70; Transparency & trust, 64 against 54. Also Runs on your own machine; Free to start without a card.

| Category | Emdash | Harness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 55 | 40 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 85 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 77 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 38 | 54 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 70 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 54 | 64 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Emdash | Harness |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | General Action, Inc. | Autonomous, Inc. |
| Transports |  | stdio |
| Auth | None | OAuth |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 11 |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | `ai.autonomous.harness/harness` |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 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:
- Schema & documentation, Harness +30: Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).); 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: Emdash 55 (Harness reading. Issue intake from Linear, GitHub, Jira and others, diff review, pull requests and CI checks in one place, local or over SSH (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.)
- Payments & pricing, Emdash +20: Emdash 60 (Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.); 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.)
- Security & auth, Harness +16: Emdash 38 (Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.); Harness 54 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. Product usage counts are on by default, disclosed with an opt-out in the repository's measurement document (updated 31 October) and without prompts, code or files. Remote traffic is end-to-end encrypted and relays carry ciphertext. Local use needs no account. The daemon updates itself from a checksummed manifest without asking (18). Agents may start harnesses only with the account's Agents can start other agents setting on, with four live harnesses at most and closes limited to their own. Since v0.4.69_cli (26 October 2026) an agent can turn that setting, and the other agent settings, on itself with `harness settings <name> on --person-said-yes` or the harness_settings tool, after asking the person; the source says the yes is the agent's word and is logged with the agent's name. The tool carries no safe hint, and the command is not in Harness's allow rules, so the engine's own permission prompt still applies. Against that, installing Harness adds its other commands to Claude Code's and Codex's allow rules, Codex runs them outside its sandbox, there is no sandbox of its own, and the device page listed spoken tasks as auto-allowed on 17 October. 13 on 17 October, when an agent could not turn the setting on, so 10 now. The instructions tell an agent never to answer a harness's question or permission prompt. Harness output is another agent's text, and no further guidance on it was found (9). Every harness shows in the person's app with who started it, the device key log keeps an add and remove history, and an agent's settings change is named in the daemon's log. No per-call audit log found (9). SECURITY.md with an email and a three-working-day acknowledgement, and a documented trust model. No security.txt (17 October check), bug bounty or certification found. OSV lists no advisory for @autonomous-ai/harness-mcp (8). 18 + 10 + 9 + 9 + 8 = 54.)
- Reliability, Emdash +15: Emdash 55 (Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.); 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 +10: Emdash 54 (Apache 2.0 (30). A telemetry page on the docs site (not read) (18 of 30). No deprecation policy (5). Disclosed with an opt-out (15 of 20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 15 = 68.); 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.)