# Emdash vs Harness² (slim)

> Emdash scores 53.9 (D) to Harness²'s 42 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-harness2.md (~5,500 tokens) · this version ~2,030 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-harness2.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/emdash-vs-harness2
- 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
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Emdash scores 53.9 (D) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 42 (E), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Harness² leads on security & auth. Both do agent harnesses.

- Emdash: D 53.9, rank #933 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/emdash.min.md
- Harness²: E 42, rank #1290 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2.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 20; Payments & pricing, 60 against 40; Maintenance & community, 70 against 36; Transparency & trust, 54 against 49.
- Harness², good 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 Security & auth, 44 against 38.

| Category | Emdash | Harness² |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 55 | 20 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 55 | 51 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 55 | 59 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 38 | 44 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 40 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 70 | 36 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 54 | 49 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Emdash | Harness² |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | General Action, Inc. | Google (Google Research) |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | 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). |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-08 |
| Popularity | none | 4.2k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Emdash +35: 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.); Harness² 20 (Local-package reading. Not on PyPI (the release feed for harness2 answers 404). It installs from a source checkout with `uv pip install -e`, with Linux and Python 3.12 stated (the package allows 3.13), plus Node.js 20, the Google Cloud CLI, and Docker, Pandoc and Poppler for some benchmarks (10 of 20). No CI workflow in the repository. tests/test_workflow.py holds five unit tests over the deterministic demo, which needs no credentials (5 of 25). Six issues and 42 pull requests were open on 18 October, the pull requests mostly fixes by their titles, such as the missing .env.example, report failures, seeds lost between refinement and grading, and resume. None is merged and no issue is closed. Issue text and replies couldn't be read (5 of 25). No tags or changelog (0). Version 0.1.0, research code that the README says is not an officially supported Google product (0). 20 in all.)
- Maintenance & community, Emdash +34: Emdash 70 (v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.); Harness² 36 (0.1.0, first committed on 8 October 2026, with a README fix on 13 October (30). No tags, releases or dated changelog entries (0). 42 pull requests (41 from outside contributors, one from Dependabot) and 6 issues open on 18 October, against one pull request and no issues closed. No outside change is on main, which has three commits by the authors, and reply times couldn't be read (3 of 25). Not on PyPI and no SDK (0). No CI. Dependencies are pinned by version and upstream checkouts by commit, a ruff configuration is in pyproject.toml, and Dependabot's litellm bump of 8 October is still open (3 of 10). 36 in all.)
- 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.); Harness² 40 (No payment protocol (0). Read with the self-hosted rule, as for the other harnesses. Free under Apache-2.0 with nothing to buy (20). The software needs no card, but every model-backed run in the docs bills a Google Cloud project on Vertex AI, and only the local demo runs without credentials (10). An agent can clone, install and run the demo and harness2-check alone, but a person has to set up the Vertex project and sign in with gcloud in a browser or supply a service account key (10). 40 in all.)
- Security & auth, Harness² +6: 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.); Harness² 44 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default and credentials, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture and network egress, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No telemetry found in the Harness² source, and the WorkBuddy OpenCode configs turn OpenCode's telemetry, auto-update and sharing off. Credentials are Google Application Default Credentials, and the Codex bridge binds 127.0.0.1 by default with a generated key stored with mode 0600. Against that, executors inherit the whole shell environment (the editor channel drops only five Anthropic variables), and no .gitignore keeps a filled-in .env out of commits (20). Codex runs with `--dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox`, the Claude CLI editor channel with `--dangerously-skip-permissions`, and the WorkBuddy OpenCode preset allows every tool, with only OpenCode's directory fence and WorkBuddy's containers as limits. The README and setup guide say so (4). Executor network access is unrestricted by default. The docs name the hosts to block and report a Codex rollout that fetched its rubric unprompted, but give no guidance on instructions inside task documents (5). Each editor call's prompt, system text, response, model and cost are saved to an audit folder, with trajectories and adopted harnesses under runs/ (13). No SECURITY.md or security.txt and no advisories, and the README says the project is outside Google's open-source vulnerability rewards programme (2). 44 in all.)
- Transparency & trust, Emdash +5: 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.); Harness² 49 (Apache-2.0 under Google LLC, with each bundled runner's licence and provenance file and a hash list. The WorkBuddy runners carry Tencent's custom licence, which has an EU territorial limitation (26 of 30). The docs list every host setup contacts and say credentials, generated configuration and run artefacts are not release assets. No privacy statement covers the package, and task data goes to the configured model provider (12 of 30). No deprecation policy or notices for the 0.1.0 research release (0). No telemetry found in the source, and the docs don't say either way. OpenCode's telemetry is turned off only in the WorkBuddy configs (10 of 20). 48 in all.)