An Empirical Study of Harness Design for Coding Agents
Quick summary
arXiv:2609.20804v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Coding harnesses shape how autonomous coding agents translate model capabilities into long-horizon software-engineering performance, yet existing work typically evaluates harnesses as monolithic systems, leaving the effectiveness of individual components unclear. To enable component-level comparisons, we study this question with a lightweight coding harness whose execution loop is fixed while three components are varied: planning, action space, and context management. Across four models evaluated on SWE-Bench Verified and Terminal-Bench 2.1, we e
Key takeaways
- arXiv:2609.20804v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Coding harnesses shape how autonomous coding agents translate model capabilities into long-horizon software-engineering performance, yet existing work typically evaluates harnesses as monolithic systems, leaving the effectiveness of individual components unclear.
- To enable component-level comparisons, we study this question with a lightweight coding harness whose execution loop is fixed while three components are varied: planning, action space, and context management.
- Across four models evaluated on SWE-Bench Verified and Terminal-Bench 2.1, we e
Why it matters
“An Empirical Study of Harness Design for Coding Agents” highlights the need for repeatable measurement rather than a single impressive demonstration. Independent validation across datasets and clearly stated limitations determine whether a result can guide product decisions.
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