Study: coding-agent harness value depends on model, tools, and context budget
A Sept 17 arXiv study (176 matched settings on SWE-Bench Verified and Terminal-Bench 2.1) finds coding-agent harness value is conditional: context management mainly prevents overflow under tight budgets, planning helps weaker models’ success but mainly cuts cost for stronger ones, and bash-only beats predefined tools for bash-capable models.
