Is the Harness Engineering Playbook skill free?

Yes. The skill itself is free from broomva/harness-engineering. SkillProof publishes the install command and an independent test verdict at no cost.

What is the Harness Engineering Playbook SkillProof Score?

9.2/10 — installs cleanly 5/5, triggers reliably 5/5, output vs. baseline 8/10, docs & honesty 5/5.

How do I install Harness Engineering Playbook?

Copy the install command from this page, run it in your terminal, and restart Claude Code. Skills live in ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/ inside a project.

Can I use Harness Engineering Playbook with Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Codex or other AI tools?

The SKILL.md format is native to Claude (Claude Code, Desktop, claude.ai). The instructions inside adapt to other assistants: Cursor rules, GitHub Copilot instructions, Windsurf rules, Custom GPTs, AGENTS.md for OpenAI Codex, and GEMINI.md for Google Gemini CLI — our conversion guides cover each, and the free converter on the tools page does the wrapping for you.

Harness Engineering Playbook

Scaffolds AGENTS.md, harness scripts, and CI so agents run repos reliably

by broomva · broomva/harness-engineering

Tested · Works

Install — copy the command Download source ↗

Test report

Verdict: Tested · Works
Score: 9.2/10
Tested: Jul 20, 2026
Environment: Claude Code 2.x (agent harness)
Upstream re-checked: Jul 30, 2026 · cce22e7

⚠ This skill is no longer available upstream. Our re-check on Aug 10, 2026 couldn't find it any more (repo unreachable/deleted). The test below is what we measured on Jul 20, 2026 and we're leaving it up as a record — but there is nothing left to install, so we've removed the command.

Ran the bundled wizard live (python3 harness_wizard.py init --profile control) against a fresh repo: it scaffolded 17 files including AGENTS.md, PLANS.md, Makefile.harness and language-auto-detecting smoke/test/lint/typecheck scripts, and the paired audit command then passed green. The generated smoke.sh genuinely branches on Cargo/npm/pytest presence. That is a complete, gated harness a no-skill baseline would only approximate ad hoc.

Scored on four weighted criteria — install, triggering, output vs. baseline, docs. How scoring works

Installs cleanly 5/5
Triggers reliably 5/5
Output vs. baseline 8/10
Docs & honesty 5/5

What Harness Engineering Playbook does

Implements OpenAI's Harness Engineering practices by scaffolding a repo with AGENTS.md, PLANS.md, deterministic smoke/test/lint/typecheck scripts, a Makefile.harness, architecture and observability docs, and a CI workflow, then auditing them. Triggers when setting up agent-first workflows, adding harness commands, or hardening a repo for reliable autonomous agent runs.

How to install Harness Engineering Playbook

Nothing to install: the source repository no longer has this skill. If the author brings it back, our daily re-check will pick it up and the command will reappear here.

Commands — how to trigger Harness Engineering Playbook

/harness-engineering-playbook Scaffolds AGENTS.md, harness scripts, and CI so agents run repos reliably

It also activates on plain-language prompts like these:

Scaffold AGENTS.md and CI so agents can run this repo reliably
Set up deterministic smoke and lint scripts for agent workflows
Harden this repo for autonomous agent runs with a harness setup

Frequently asked questions

Is the Harness Engineering Playbook skill free?: Yes. The skill itself is free from broomva/harness-engineering. SkillProof publishes the install command and an independent test verdict at no cost.
Does Harness Engineering Playbook work with Claude Code?: We tested it with Claude Code 2.x (agent harness) on Jul 20, 2026. Verdict: Tested · Works. Ran the bundled wizard live (python3 harness_wizard.py init --profile control) against a fresh repo: it scaffolded 17 files including AGENTS.md, PLANS.md, Makefile.harness and language-auto-detecting smoke/test/lint/typecheck scripts, and the paired audit command then passed green. The generated smoke.sh genuinely branches on Cargo/npm/pytest presence. That is a complete, gated harness a no-skill baseline would only approximate ad hoc.
What is the Harness Engineering Playbook SkillProof Score?: 9.2/10 — installs cleanly 5/5, triggers reliably 5/5, output vs. baseline 8/10, docs & honesty 5/5.
How do I install Harness Engineering Playbook?: Copy the install command from this page, run it in your terminal, and restart Claude Code. Skills live in ~/.claude/skills/ (global) or .claude/skills/ inside a project.
Can I use Harness Engineering Playbook with Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Codex or other AI tools?: The SKILL.md format is native to Claude (Claude Code, Desktop, claude.ai). The instructions inside adapt to other assistants: Cursor rules, GitHub Copilot instructions, Windsurf rules, Custom GPTs, AGENTS.md for OpenAI Codex, and GEMINI.md for Google Gemini CLI — our conversion guides cover each, and the free converter on the tools page does the wrapping for you.