Comment by h0rv
10 hours ago
Why would you not use an open-source harness in October 2026? I am generally curious - what is the alpha?
10 hours ago
Why would you not use an open-source harness in October 2026? I am generally curious - what is the alpha?
Well, I'd love to use an open-source harness! My issue is that Opus 5.5 / Fable 5.1 has been the best model for me to work with, and it's way cheaper to use it with the subscription to Claude Code Max. I won't pay more just to use an open-source harness. I'd rather just wait it out and stay on Claude Code not having to constantly jump around / switch tools as the industry matures.
You can use your claude subscription just fine in open harnesses!
I make one (https://github.com/juggler-ai/juggler) and it'll auto-detect and use your claude CLI. I use that claude plan for 90% of my work, plus a bit of GPT, I just prefer to do it inside a nicer, less locked-in environment than claude.
There's really no moat around proprietary closed harnesses, it's trivial to jump between them, but people need to be aware that it's possible!
Locked in? I routinely switch between claude and codex, same codebases, same skills, and even shared "memories" with maybe 5 minute effort to set it up. There is no lock in whatsoever.
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it goes against anthropic‘s terms of service, and people have had their Claude accounts banned for doing exactly this.
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Pi can utilize Claude or GPT subscriptions and they work wonderfully. You can have both subscriptions logged in and write your own tools to route to the model that works best in every scenario. I have access to both pro level subscriptions for work and a large credit count for api calls for Claude. I use all 3 with JEV as my router with a local model for context management and compaction. my token usage has gone down to a point where I rarely even use api calls. I would recommend oh-mi-pi for anyone who wants to get started with using an open source harness as it has very good memory and context management tools that ship with it and are extremely easy to set up.
You don't have to pay more - I wouldn't switch to an open source harness on a whim, but your harness/cheaper agents can always call Claude Code headlessly.
As context: I work as a consultant and produce code on behalf of my customers. What's most important to me is that the quality of the code is as high as it can be, without me having to rerun it with multiple different models to see which agents produces the best. If Opus 5.5/Fable 5.1 (or a different model for that sake) consistently produces the best code, I will use that for all my tasks, since that lowers the cognitive burden.
The cheaper agents never really matter, because the Max subscription costs me $100 and that is less than an hour of pay. In some cases the customer even pays for the subscription.
But I do love the idea of being able to use Pi or OpenCode. I am a heavy terminal user, and used Vim/Tmux/Lazygit-types of workflows before coding agents were in the terminal, so I do love customizability and portability. Right now there is just too much ground-shift to take part in it. Better to wait it out.
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1. A lot of people already have Claude Code set up, and it's easier to keep using that than to install something new.
2. Lots of people are used to Claude Code's interface/commands/etc. and don't feel like paying the cost of learning something new. The benefits would have to outweigh those switching costs, and it's unclear that they do.
3. Claude Code already works with your Claude MAX subscription[0], which gives you an incredible amount of usage of the top-tier models for cheap, which can't be matched by any open-source options. And most people won't exhaust this usage, so they have no real need to use open-source models.
4. Although it's hard to 100% confirm this, there's reason to believe that Claude itself works better with Claude Code than with other harnesses.
5. There's no real lock-in. If tomorrow you decide you don't want to use Claude Code, you can just switch to something else ezpz. So there's no reason to worry that you're digging a hole and locking yourself in. Thus, there's no urgency to switch away.
[0] Yes, open-source harnesses can use your Claude MAX subscription, but does this "benefit" of open-source harnesses really outweigh the costs of #1, #2, and #4 above?
>4. Although it's hard to 100% confirm this, there's reason to believe that Claude itself works better with Claude Code than with other harnesses.
I thought this was pretty much well established that all of the labs have model - harness pairings for exactly this reason
Whale Paper. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.00196
EMNLP talk from like 2 weeks ago https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.2207/
Yeah I thought so too, just didn't want to overstate it. So actually, a pretty big reason not to use an open-source harness if you're using a big lab's model.
You realize this is about Cursor, not Claude Code?
I'm responding to a comment, not to article, and the comment is asking about open source harnesses, presumably in comparison to all non-open source harnesses, not just in comparison to Cursor.
There's just not really any features in an open-source harness that blow my mind enough to move off the highly-subsidized claude code subscription. I type in instructions and it spits out code. I'm increasingly of the opinion that the more complex features being floated are productivity theater.
A lot of the extant harnesses are built around interaction, which adds a bunch of complexity.
Eg an agent that only runs off a webhook trigger doesn’t have a use for all the UI stuff Pi does (and you may not want the local state like Pi does by default).
I’m still sort of with you, I’d generally do ACP to an open source agent. You do get much finer grained control if you use one of these agent SDKs (there’s a bajillion of these as well).
I havent switched to a 3rd party harness yet so quick question for anyone, does the claude code or codex harness not give the models a significant improvement in their ability? Or does prompting a model on openrouter vs claude code yield the same result?
Why would you not just build your own harness in October 2026? Gateway, memory, tool calls, LLM api - the basics are pretty simple to get started and get to a point where your harness can be self-improving to add any new features that you need.
Claude Code wont let me use their sub with one as far as I remember. So I'm stuck with their convoluted TUI. It does what I need, and when it doesn't I just build tools that Claude consumes. The new "Artifacts" feature has helped a bit though.
You can. Anthropic documents it: the Agent SDK and claude -p work signed in with your Claude plan and draw from your normal subscription limits. https://support.claude.com/en/articles/15036540-use-the-clau...
We build a desktop app on top of the SDK, so I've spent a lot of time on that page.
Not true any more, read the note at the top of that page. They give you API credits but it's limited.
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It's the one features that keeps me using claude, it's simply convenient.
I was both excited and disappointed to learn that Claude Code has plugins, but they're not like actual plugins to let you customize CC, which would be nice.
Cheaper tokens in the $200 subscription.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but using Pi etc you're paying the full API price.
Only if you use Claude via /login in pi... in which case
;)
You're wrong.
oh-my-pi works great with Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI subscriptions. Being able to quickly to switch between models without changing your workflow is such a joy - for me at least.
better discounts when compare with API cost, and frontier lab harnesses and models are tuned to each other
A main criteria in 2026 should be whether the harness gives you access to all model families for just the harness author's models.
More and more harnesses are headed this way, there are two notable holdouts.
If you tell me I should OpenCode over Claude Code in October 2026 - then you have no idea what you are talking about.
OpenCode + DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Uncensored on Venice AI is truly incredible. Granted, I have it also drive an interactive claude code session in tmux and just do everything Claude Code refuses to. But, it just gets shit done. Kind of what makes Instinct so powerful, don't tell me you won't do something, just get it done.
Interesting on Instinct, I have to often tell it "just do it"
I wish you would explain your reasoning instead of preemptively telling people they don't know what they're talking about. Then I might actually learn something.
Aside from the opus5.5/fable + sub-lockin arguement...
Building an exceptional harness requires exceptional understanding of the technology you are harnessing.
Ant is building Claude Code in a place of frontier knowledge and advancement - everything surrounding the tool at Anthropic is something that does not exist within any "open source" organization. OC has recruited exceptional developer and new-media talent, but they have largely developed from a "catchup/copy" and designer-led process, and have consistently been behind in terms of capabilities and/or have misaligned implementation due to what I would classify as disadvantages of not understanding the underlying technology fully. I think this has led to a lot of unintended bloat - maintaining a plugin for it has been consistently very head-scratching experience.
- Pi was a refreshing welcome to the OSS arena with thoughtful design to enable simplicity and ecosystem-based development
In October 2026 - Claude Code feels further stretched ahead. The orchestration/projects model you get with sub agents either in the cloud/remote or local is the strongest capability I have experienced in awhile. Beyond the model intelligence the harness has been consistently refined and now includes things like Mods for robust customization. OC is pushing through big milestone release, not advancing on the front in terms of agentic engineering ux. Who came up with MCP, Slack/Claude Tag interface paradigm (less about slack), dynamic workflows, durable subagents, agent-to-agent communication across the harness, etc
What if I'm trying to bypass the security monitor built-into CC?
What's your reasoning? What makes Claude Code better? Genuinely curious to learn.
say more, what do you think CC does better?
Im not sure how they would know, they're clearly using a singular harness.
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