Claude Code vs OpenClaw vs Hermes vs DeepAgents: A Deep Dive into Harness Design

Over the past year, “agent” has become one of the most overused words in software. But what actually determines whether an agent is good day-to-day is usually not the model — it’s the layer wrapped around it: the harness. LangChain’s The Anatomy of an Agent Harness offers a clean definition: Agent = Model + Harness. The harness is “every piece of code, configuration, and execution logic that isn’t the model itself.” ...

2026-07-07 · 11 min · 2265 words · Ethan