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Agents and harness

Tools and harness

AI that writes or improves the tools, harnesses and infrastructure used to build and run AI.

Research agent writes harness mutation blueprints
Coding agent implements harness module changes
Winning harness becomes the new champion
New champion harness runs further generations
repeat

Tools and harnessYang et al. (UC Santa Barbara, Microsoft) · 2026

Self-optimizing Deep Research

LLM optimizers critique deep research reports
Optimizers rewrite research agent prompts
Optimized system runs the next queries
repeat

Tools and harnessZeta Alpha · 2026

Reflection LLM writes revised module prompts
Winning prompt candidates are kept
Optimized prompts return to same system
New system traces feed next reflection round
repeat

Tools and harnessAgrawal et al. (UC Berkeley, Stanford, Databricks, MIT) · 2025

ADAS (Meta Agent Search)

Meta agent programs new agent designs
Designs are evaluated on target tasks
Results are added to an archive
Meta agent uses archive for next design
repeat

Tools and harnessHu, Lu, Clune (UBC, Vector Institute) · 2024

Recently on the radar

PaperarXiv·29 Sep 2026·Tools and harness

MILO: Automated Harness Discovery via Orchestrated Multi-Agent Evolution

The loop: Mutator agents rewrite complete agent harnesses using global search history and feedback. An orchestrator adapts the search strategy based on the performance of the discovered harnesses, improving the mutators' future harness designs.

loop fit 9/10Prithwish Jana, Mononito Goswami, Hao Liu et al.via arXiv

Other loop types

Self-modifying agents Training data Self-reward and self-play Kernels and compilers Hardware and chips Inference efficiency Architecture and optimizer search Research automation AI R&D evals Interpretability and oversight