LearnHarness vs nanobot

LearnHarness

The in-app agent reads files but cannot change them or run commands, and a bundled skill gives other agents a documented read-only view of sessions and the knowledge graph. The project is 14 days old at 0.4.0, its file reads reach the whole home directory without approval, and it has no security policy.

nanobot

nanobot runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, with no telemetry found in its source and memory kept as files the owner can read and restore. No per-action approval step was found, and the shell sandbox and workspace restriction are off by default. Five security advisories were published between March and September 2026, all with fixes.

LearnHarness

1. Use the bundled skill (skills/learnharness/SKILL.md) to read a learner's record. It needs Python 3.10 or later and writes nothing
2. Pass --format json before the subcommand, for example python3 -B scripts/graph.py --format json propositions
3. Treat stored answer keys and teacher prose as model-authored. A proposition in the graph is not evidence the learner understood it
4. Do not read auth.json, which sits one folder above the data folder and holds provider keys in plain text
5. Close the app or re-read when a stable snapshot matters. The readers do not lock files while the app writes

nanobot

1. Set tools.restrictToWorkspace to true and tools.exec.sandbox to bwrap or seatbelt before giving it real accounts. Both are off by default
2. Run 0.3.0 or later. Earlier versions carry the published SSRF flaw in web fetch (GHSA-vc5v-6vwm-wf9m)
3. Keep allowFrom narrow on every channel and never set ["*"] on Email, which has no pairing
4. Write secrets as ${VAR} references in ~/.nanobot/config.json. Plain values are stored in clear text
5. Use nanobot -m "..." for a one-shot run, and keep nanobot gateway running for channels, schedules and heartbeat