A curated, verified, cross-vendor directory of AI agent harnesses — the runtime scaffolding that turns a model into an agent.
◆ 74 harnesses profiled · 9-axis capability schema · last verified 2026-07-08
MIT-licensed self-hosted personal AI assistant ('the lobster way') that exploded to ~382k GitHub stars in months: any model, 20+ messaging channels (WhatsApp/Telegram/Slack/iMessage...), SKILL.md skills via ClawHub, Docker-sandboxed sessions, cron jobs, voice, and a live Canvas.
Anthropic's terminal-native agentic coding tool and the category-defining harness, distinguished by its layered extensibility model (CLAUDE.md memory, Agent Skills, subagents, hooks, plugins, MCP) plus permission modes, checkpoints, and optional sandboxing, available from CLI/IDE/desktop/web with an Agent SDK for building on top.
Formerly OpenDevin, the leading open-source autonomous software-engineering platform: Docker-sandboxed agents that write code, run commands, browse, and open PRs, with a production agent SDK hitting 72% on SWE-bench Verified (Claude Sonnet 4.5) and its own broader OpenHands Index benchmark launched Jan 2026.
Sourcegraph's opinionated no-model-picker coding agent (CLI + VS Code extension), distinguished by curated multi-model design with specialized subagents (Oracle for reasoning, Librarian for library research), Toolboxes (UNIX-script custom tools), skills with bundled MCP servers, and an ad-supported free mode alongside zero-markup pay-as-you-go credits.
VS Code-fork AI IDE whose Agent mode plus in-house Composer models, Background/Cloud Agents (isolated cloud VMs that report back as PRs), hooks, skills, and an agent SDK make it the most fully-built-out commercial agentic IDE; Composer 2 scored 61.7% on Terminal-Bench 2.0 and Composer 2.5 79.8% on SWE-bench Multilingual (SWE-bench Verified not reported).
Anthropic's cloud-hosted Claude Code at claude.ai/code: each session gets an isolated Anthropic-managed VM with the GitHub repo cloned and limited default network access, supports parallel steerable sessions across repos with automatic PR creation, sessions persist after browser close and are monitorable from the Claude mobile app; bundled with Pro/Max/Team/Enterprise plans (research preview).
Anthropic's non-technical desktop agent built on the Claude Code harness (no terminal required) that works over local folders, browsers (Claude in Chrome), and full computer use, with MCP connectors, Agent Skills, and plugins — expanded to web and mobile in July 2026 with cloud-run sessions for Max subscribers.