A practical guide for building repository harnesses — the repository-local control systems that make AI-assisted coding reliable and repeatable.
Humans: read this guide at opensource.adobe.com/ai-repo-harness-guide — or browse raw markdown starting at Introduction.
| # | Document | Audience | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | Introduction | All | Guide overview, scope, and reading paths |
| 1 | Beyond Prompting | All | The problem, the solution, and why the framing matters |
| 2 | What a Harness Is | All | What a harness is; the five control layers; maturity spectrum |
| 3 | Five Control Layers | Engineers | Five control layers in depth |
| 4 | Harness Components | Engineers | Seven concrete harness components |
| 5 | How Agents Navigate | Engineers | How agents operate within a harness |
| 6 | Reference Layout | Engineers | Reference production repository structure |
| 7 | Build Your Harness | Engineers | Step-by-step implementation with discovery prompts |
| 8 | Migrate Your Harness | Engineers | Migrating a partial implementation to a full harness |
| 9 | Keep It Current | Engineers | Keeping the harness current: inspection prompts and cadence |
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
guide/ |
Ten-chapter guide (00–09) plus reading list, FAQ, and changelog |
.agents/skills/ |
harness-setup and harness-inspect skills for Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot — symlinked from harness-plugin/skills/, their canonical source |
.claude-plugin/ |
Claude Code plugin manifest |
.cursor-plugin/ |
Cursor plugin manifest |
harness-plugin/ |
Canonical skill source (both marketplaces point here) plus Claude/Cursor plugin manifests and an optional VS Code/Copilot extension |
The two skills ship with this guide and work in Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor. Any agent that scans .agents/skills/ reads them with no install; a repo-harness plugin (source: harness-plugin/) is also published through Claude- and Cursor-format marketplace manifests, and the Claude-format manifest is auto-detected by GitHub Copilot.
See guide/README.md → Skills for the canonical per-tool install and update instructions (Claude Code, Copilot CLI/VS Code, Cursor).
See CONTRIBUTING.md. By participating you agree to the code of conduct.
Apache 2.0 — see LICENSE.
- Current: 1.1.0 (2026-08-05) — see CHANGELOG.md for history
- Site: opensource.adobe.com/ai-repo-harness-guide
- Author: Arne Franken
- Audience: Technical practitioners building AI-assisted systems