Agent Skill for bootstrapping, verifying, and enforcing agent-harness infrastructure in repositories. Makes repos agent-ready with self-sustaining enforcement mechanisms that work for all contributors -- human or AI, with or without skills installed.
Agent harness is repo-level infrastructure that makes AI coding agents reliable. Instead of relying on individual skill installations, the harness embeds enforcement directly into the project via CI workflows, git hooks, and conventions.
The skill follows the "verify-first" principle: it primarily checks consistency, secondarily creates missing artefacts, and delegates specialised work to existing skills.
Key concepts:
- AGENTS.md as compact index (<150 lines), not encyclopedia
- Three enforcement layers: hard (CI/branch protection), automatic (.envrc/hooks), soft (conventions)
- Three maturity levels: Basic, Verified, Enforced
- The skill is the installer; the harness enforces itself
/plugin marketplace add netresearch/claude-code-marketplacecomposer require netresearch/agent-harness-skillnpx skills add https://github.com/netresearch/agent-harness-skillgit clone https://github.com/netresearch/agent-harness-skill.gitCheck harness consistency in the current repo:
"Verify the harness in this repo" "Check if this repo is agent-ready" "Run harness verification"
Create missing harness artefacts:
"Make this repo agent-ready" "Bootstrap the harness for this project"
Check maturity level:
"What's the harness maturity of this repo?" "Audit agent-readiness"
The verification script works standalone:
# Full check
bash scripts/verify-harness.sh --format=text
# Check specific level
bash scripts/verify-harness.sh --level=2
# Status summary
bash scripts/verify-harness.sh --status
# In CI
bash scripts/verify-harness.sh # auto-detects GitHub Actions format- AGENTS.md exists and is index-format
- Commands documented
- docs/ directory exists
- All AGENTS.md references resolve
- Documented commands match actual targets
- docs/ARCHITECTURE.md exists
- CI harness verification active
- harness-verify is a required check
- Git hooks auto-activate on clone
- PR template includes harness checklist
- Drift detection active
See maturity-levels.md for details.
The skill sets up enforcement that works for ALL contributors:
| Mechanism | Layer | Works without skill? |
|---|---|---|
| CI Workflow | Hard | Yes -- runs on GitHub |
| Branch Protection | Hard | Yes -- GitHub server-side |
| .envrc (direnv) | Automatic | Yes -- in repo |
| composer/npm hooks | Automatic | Yes -- runs on install |
| Git hooks | Automatic | Yes -- in repo |
| AGENTS.md | Soft | Yes -- agents read it |
| PR Template | Soft | Yes -- GitHub shows it |
| Makefile targets | Soft | Yes -- in repo |
See enforcement-mechanisms.md for details.
The harness skill delegates specialised work:
| Skill | Delegation | What harness verifies |
|---|---|---|
| agent-rules | AGENTS.md content | Index format, length, references |
| github-project | Branch protection, PR templates | Required checks configured |
| enterprise-readiness | Quality gates, SLSA | Gates present |
| typo3-testing | Test infrastructure | Test commands work |
| git-workflow | Commit conventions, hooks | Hooks installed |
| automated-assessment | Checkpoint evaluation | Maturity checkpoints |
See skill-integration-map.md for details.
- ADR-001: Verify-First Design
- ADR-002: Enforcement Layers
- ADR-003: Skill Delegation Model
- ADR-004: AGENTS.md as Index
- ADR-005: Checkpoint Maturity Model
Contributions are welcome. Please ensure:
- Changes pass
bash skills/agent-harness/scripts/verify-harness.sh - SKILL.md stays under 500 words
- Templates remain self-contained and portable
Split licensing:
- Code (scripts, workflows, configs): MIT
- Content (skills, references, docs): CC-BY-SA-4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Netresearch DTT GmbH