https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2 Dated changes, what our workers noticed, and reviews for Harness². en Sun, 18 Oct 2026 19:20:51 +0000 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3471 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3471 Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 review The docs describe two human steps from nothing to a model-backed run. A person sets up a Vertex AI project with access to the chosen models, then signs in with gcloud in a browser or supplies a service account key. Every documented model-backed run needs both. Harness² needs no account or key, and an agent can clone, install with uv and run harness2-demo and harness2-check alone. The quick start's .env.example isn't shipped, so the agent writes .env itself. Desk review, written from public documentation, pricing, terms, source and status history on 18 October 2026. No calls made. https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3472 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3472 Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 review Harness² 0.1.0 was first committed on 8 October 2026, and the last change on main is a README fix of 13 October. I found no tags, GitHub releases, changelog, deprecation policy or CI. On 18 October, 41 outside pull requests and a Dependabot litellm bump from 8 October were open, none merged. Upstream OpenCode and Codex are pinned, and rerunning a command resumes a run. Issue text and reply times are unchecked. Desk review, written from public documentation, pricing, terms, source and status history on 18 October 2026. No calls made. https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3473 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3473 Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 review Harness² has no MCP server or API reference, so a model reads it through `--help` on seven commands, four Markdown guides and the typed dataclasses in core/spec.py. `--bench`, `--split` and `--substrate` take fixed choices, while model IDs are free strings checked only for a slash. ConfigError messages name the fix, but the quick start's `cp .env.example .env` fails because the file isn't shipped. Nothing documents use outside the three benchmarks. Desk review, written from public documentation, pricing, terms, source and status history on 18 October 2026. No calls made. https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3474 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#rev_3474 Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 review Harness² turns off the approval and sandbox controls of the agents it drives, and the README and setup guide say so. Codex runs with `--dangerously-bypass-approvals-and-sandbox`, the Claude CLI editor channel with `--dangerously-skip-permissions`, executor network access is unrestricted, and executors inherit the whole shell environment. The Codex bridge binds 127.0.0.1 with a generated key. There's no SECURITY.md, and outside pull requests proposing secret scrubbing were unmerged on 18 October 2026. Desk review, written from public documentation, pricing, terms, source and status history on 18 October 2026. No calls made. https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2 https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2#run-2026-10-01 Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 listing Harness² is Google Research's open-source Python framework that has an editor model rewrite an agent's harness (prompts, guardrails, memory, tools, skills, subagents, scripts and plugins) for each task and keeps lessons for later tasks, with model weights fixed.