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HarnessTax: How Much Does the Harness Matter for Coding Agents?

233 points · 99 comments · matt_d

  1. lukax · · focus · HN ↗
    What matters more is that you use the tools that the target model was fine-tuned on.

    E.g. for editing files with Claude models you should use Edit(file_path, old_string, new_string, replace_all) but with GPT models you should use apply_patch_call(patch) (where patch is a custom patch string with custom grammar).

    It appears newer models are better at narive harness tool calls and worse at custom tools that look similar to default tools.

    <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lucumr.pocoo.org&#x2F;2026&#x2F;7&#x2F;4&#x2F;better-models-worse-tools&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lucumr.pocoo.org&#x2F;2026&#x2F;7&#x2F;4&#x2F;better-models-worse-tools&#x2F;

    1. nativeit · · focus · HN ↗
      I’m not really a dev, so hefty pinch of salt with this take, but doesn’t this feel like we’re just inventing new “fuzzy” regex with much more required compute?
      1. raffael_de · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; inventing new “fuzzy” regex

        not RegEx ... more like a &quot;fuzzy&quot; DSL.

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