---
title: Agent Harnesses and Skills
url: "https://goremy.ai/blog/topic/agent-harnesses-and-skills"
type: topic
updated: "2026-11-04T13:00:09.277Z"
posts: 13
---

# Agent Harnesses and Skills

Learn how AI agent harnesses and skills work in practice. Covers hooks, SKILL.md files, context management, and tailoring a harness to a specific task.

Answers: How do I write a SKILL.md file to tailor an agent harness for a specific task?

## Posts (13)

- [How to Install and Use Taste Skill 2.1 for AI-Built Websites](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/taste-skill-v2-ai-agent-frontend-design) (2026-11-04): Taste Skill 2.1 gives coding agents 20 design directions, public-domain photos and a browser inspector. Here is how to install it and where it falls short.
- [How Do Panda Code Agent Teams Work? Cheap, Balanced, Best](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/panda-code-agent-teams-cheap-balanced-best) (2026-11-03): Set up Panda Code agent teams: cheap, balanced and best modes, router-first dispatch, retries, harness failover, model pauses and the S-to-D tier list.
- [How to Install and Use Google's EGM Plugin (Elephant Goldfish)](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/google-egm-elephant-goldfish-model-plugin) (2026-10-31): Google's EGM plugin has an agent write a design doc, then fresh sub-agents review it. Install steps for Claude Code, Codex and Antigravity, plus commands.
- [What Is an AI Second Brain? The Four Cs Framework Explained](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/ai-second-brain-four-cs-framework) (2026-10-29): An AI second brain needs four parts: context, connections, capabilities and cadence. See how to build one with Claude Code and Obsidian, and audit each part.
- [When to Use Sub-Agents vs a Single Agent Loop](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/fold-sub-agents-into-main-agent-loop) (2026-10-28): Anthropic argues teams overuse sub-agents. Learn the keep-in-loop test, the skills/tools/lookup split, the 30 to 50 tool limit, and how to fold safely.
- [How to Build a Task-Specific Agent Harness (Skills, Hooks)](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/how-to-build-task-specific-agent-harness-skills-hooks) (2026-10-27): Design an agent harness for your own tasks: tiny prompts, on-demand skills, scripts, sub-agents, control-loop hooks, and where self-evolution breaks.
- [Lean REA vs REA: Is a Skill File Better Than an MCP Server?](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/lean-rea-vs-rea-mcp-reverse-engineering-skill) (2026-10-27): Lean REA is an 8KB skill file that replaces the 207-tool REA MCP server. Compare speed, cost, turns and context use using the Sonnet 5.5 benchmark figures.
- [How Can an AI Agent Improve Its Own Harness in Production?](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/agent-harness-engineering-langchain-managed-deep-agents) (2026-10-21): Learn how two loops, escalation memory and trace-based fixes in LangSmith Engine, help a production agent learn from mistakes while humans stay in control.
- [What Is an AI Skill File? SKILL.md vs MCP Servers Explained](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/what-is-an-ai-skill-file-skill-md-vs-mcp-servers-explained) (2026-10-20): An AI skill file (SKILL.md) is a markdown folder of instructions an agent loads on demand. Learn the format, token costs, and how it compares to MCP servers.
- [What Are AI Agent Skills Files (SKILL.md)?](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/what-are-ai-agent-skills-files-skill-md) (2026-09-11): SKILL.md skills files are plain-text onboarding guides for AI agents. Here's how progressive disclosure works, why sprawl and security risks are real, and how skills pair with MCP.
- [What is Agentic Context Management?](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/what-is-agentic-context-management-a-plain-english-guide) (2026-09-02): Why AI agent bills spiral and how agentic context management (ACM) controls memory architecture to stop runaway token costs. A practitioner's breakdown.
- [The Rise of the AI Agent Harness: Securing Automated Coding](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/what-is-an-ai-agent-harness-a-plain-english-explainer) (2026-08-27): AI agent harnesses sandbox, log, and secure coding agents. Here's what they are, why DeepSeek, Zed, and OneCLI are all building one, and how they work.
- [What is an AI Harness? The Infrastructure Behind Autonomous Agents Explained](https://goremy.ai/blog/articles/what-is-an-ai-harness-a-plain-english-explainer) (2026-08-24): An AI harness is the software around a language model that turns it into an agent. Here's what it does and how open-source servers use it.