Comment by tosh
8 hours ago
i also like the backpack analogy
the harness is what you take with you on a trip/task
whatever you take with you is not free (system prompt, tools, skills …)
some models are really good even if you bring almost no skills, tools or system prompt
the harness is the complement to the model
the better the model the more minimal the harness can be
harnesses like pi [0] and smol [1]are on the more minimal end of things
Not a bad analogy because the bigger your backpack the slower you walk. With models a big context and tool set degrades performance. So you want the smallest harness/backpack that can do the job.