Agent harness engineering with Claude: 14-step roadmap from one agent to a self-improving system
This article presents a 14-step roadmap for building an Agent harness with Claude, from a single agent to a self-improving system. The author argues that the harness — comprising model, tools, permissions, and initial context — is the foundation for any loop, and a weak harness leads to slop. It covers concrete practices: file structure (.claude/), CLAUDE.md for standing facts, settings.json for permission pre-approvals, subagents for isolated contexts, skills for reusable procedures, hooks for deterministic enforcement, and memory for cross-session learning. The final steps add loops and dynamic workflows, closing the feedback loop where output → lessons → skills → better output. The article targets engineers who run or plan to run multi-agent code generation systems.