Harness² vs Rovo Dev CLI

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.

Rovo Dev CLI

Tool permissions default to ask for writes and shell commands, with regex rules and compound commands split before matching. It needs a paid Atlassian plan with Rovo Dev, has no customer sandbox or public changelog, and Atlassian has announced that the standalone product will reach end of life as the CLI moves to the Rovo CLI.

Harness²

1. 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
2. Ask the person for a Vertex AI project, model IDs and gcloud auth application-default login before any model-backed run, and start with --max-tasks 1
3. 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
4. Write .env yourself with GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT, HARNESS2_SOLVER_MODEL and HARNESS2_JUDGE_MODEL, since .env.example isn't shipped, and never commit it
5. Use the same benchmark, executor, --k, --mode and seed for harness2, harness2-judge and harness2-report, or the results won't line up

Rovo Dev CLI

1. Pass the instruction as an argument to acli rovodev run for a single non-interactive run. No JSON output flag or exit codes are documented
2. Use acli rovodev serve <port> and stream /v3/stream_chat?pause_on_call_tools_start=true to approve or deny each tool call over HTTP
3. Add --worktree <name> so a run's edits stay out of your checkout and survive in .rovodev/worktrees/<name>
4. Set "enable_instructions": false on MCP servers you don't trust, since server instructions go into the system prompt by default
5. Check /usage before long runs. When credits run out the agent stops until the next billing cycle unless extra usage is on