Harness conveniently wraps Docker around three open-source coding agents — pi, opencode, and hermes — so you can point one at a directory (or file) without giving it access to your entire machine.

Features

• Sandboxed by default — capability-dropped container with no-new-privileges; the agent only sees the directory (or file) you mount.
• Three agents, one CLI — switch between pi, opencode, and hermes with -a. Same flags, same flow.
• Supply-chain hardened — the image is signed and verified with cosign and SLSA provenance on every run; dependencies installed inside the container are always pinned and verified where possible and a 7-day "cooldown" is used to mitigate supply-chain attacks.
• Local-first — defaults to LM Studio with gemma-4-e4b. Drop in an --env-file to use Anthropic, OpenRouter, OpenAI, Gemini, and others.
• Stateful or one-shot — interactive runs persist agent state under .harness/<agent>/; one-shot prompts (-p or piped stdin) stay ephemeral.
• Zero install — npx @capotej/harness just works.

Quickstart

Docker is required. By default, harness uses LM Studio locally:

lms daemon up
lms get google/gemma-4-e4b

The container is preconfigured to use gemma-4-e4b via LM Studio's local API.

You can also specify a different local model with -m. HuggingFace-style names with slashes (e.g. qwen/qwen3.5-9b) work correctly in local mode:

npx @capotej/harness -m "qwen/qwen3.5-9b" -p "write a fizzbuzz in Go"

Using a cloud provider instead

pi (default agent)

If you pass an API key for a supported provider via --env-file, pi will use that provider instead of the local LM Studio setup. Supported keys:

| Provider | Environment Variable | |----------|----------------------| | Anthropic | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | | OpenRouter | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | | OpenAI | OPENAI_API_KEY | | Google Gemini | GEMINI_API_KEY | | Mistral | MISTRAL_API_KEY | | Groq | GROQ_API_KEY | | Cerebras | CEREBRAS_API_KEY | | xAI | XAI_API_KEY | | Hugging Face | HF_TOKEN |

See the full list of supported providers for more options. When using LM Studio locally, 16k context is sufficient.

opencode agent

opencode uses LM Studio by default. To use OpenRouter instead, pass an env file containing OPENROUTER_API_KEY:

npx @capotej/harness -p "write me a fizzbuzz in Go"

That's it. Your current directory is mounted at /workspace inside the container and the agent works against it.

Contents

• Examples
• Agents
  • pi (default)
  • opencode
  • hermes
• Security model
  • Sandbox
  • Image verification
  • Dependency cooldown
• Persistence
• Reference
  • CLI flags
  • Environment variables
  • Agent-specific behavior
• Deploying hermes as a fly.io "claw"
• Developing

Examples

# One-shot prompt
npx @capotej/harness -p "write me a fizzbuzz in Go"

# Pipe via stdin
echo "write me a fizzbuzz in Go" | npx @capotej/harness

# Interactive session (no -p, no piped stdin) — state persists under .harness/
npx @capotej/harness

# Use a cloud provider via env file
npx @capotej/harness -e .env -p "add a login endpoint"

# Override the model
npx @capotej/harness -m anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5 -p "refactor the auth module"

# Mount a single file instead of the whole directory
npx @capotej/harness -f ./script.py -p "add type hints"

# Switch agents
npx @capotej/harness -a opencode -p "write me a fizzbuzz in Go"
npx @capotej/harness -a hermes -e .env -p "add tests"

npx, bunx, and pnpm dlx are interchangeable. Or install globally:

npm install -g @capotej/harness
# or
pnpm add -g @capotej/harness
# or
bun add -g @capotej/harness

Agents

Pick an agent with -a. Default is pi.

pi (default)

pi defaults to LM Studio with google/gemma-4-e4b (16k context is enough). Pass an --env-file containing any of the keys below and pi switches to that provider:

| Provider | Environment Variable | |---------------|----------------------| | Anthropic | ANTHROPIC_API_KEY | | OpenRouter | OPENROUTER_API_KEY | | OpenAI | OPENAI_API_KEY | | Google Gemini | GEMINI_API_KEY | | Mistral | MISTRAL_API_KEY | | Groq | GROQ_API_KEY | | Cerebras | CEREBRAS_API_KEY | | xAI | XAI_API_KEY | | Hugging Face | HF_TOKEN |

See the full provider list. The -m flag is forwarded directly.

opencode

opencode defaults to LM Studio. Drop OPENROUTER_API_KEY into your env file and it switches to OpenRouter automatically (openrouter/auto if no -m). The -m flag takes a bare model name; the provider prefix is added for you.

npx @capotej/harness -a opencode -e .env -p "refactor the auth module"
npx @capotej/harness -a opencode -e .env -m anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5 -p "add tests"

When using LM Studio locally, set the model's context length to at least 32k tokens.

hermes

hermes by NousResearch supports many providers. Pass an env file with your key and a provider/model to -m:

npx @capotej/harness -a hermes -e .env -m anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5 -p "add tests"
npx @capotej/harness -a hermes -e .env -m openrouter/auto -p "add tests"

Common keys: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, GOOGLE_API_KEY, and others. LM Studio context length should be at least 64k tokens.

Security model

Harness layers protections at runtime, image, and dependency level.

Sandbox

Each run starts the container with:

• --cap-drop=ALL --cap-add=NET_RAW — minimal capability set
• --security-opt no-new-privileges:true — block privilege escalation
• Only your mounted directory (or single file with -f) is visible to the agent

Image verification

By default, harness verifies that the container image was signed by the official CI workflow and carries a valid SLSA provenance attestation. This requires cosign:

brew install cosign

Verified digests are cached at ~/.cache/harness/cosign-verified.json so verification only runs once per image. Skip with --no-verify (or by setting HARNESS_IMAGE_TAG, which implies skip):

npx @capotej/harness --no-verify -p "write me a fizzbuzz in Go"

Dependency cooldown

When an agent runs pnpm install or uv pip install inside the container, any package published in the last 7 days is rejected — a guard against supply-chain compromises that are typically discovered and yanked within hours.

• pnpm: minimumReleaseAge=10080 (minutes) via .npmrc
• uv: --exclude-newer set to 7 days ago at image build time

The cooldown applies to transitive dependencies too. Older packages install normally.

Persistence

Interactive runs (no -p and no piped stdin) bind-mount .harness/<agent>/ from your working directory into the container. This lets agents resume sessions, skip database migrations on repeat runs, and retain memories across invocations.

One-shot runs (-p or piped stdin) are implicitly ephemeral — no .harness/ directory is created. Use --ephemeral to force-disable persistence on interactive runs.

Add .harness/ to your .gitignore.

Reference

CLI flags

| Flag | Alias | Description | |---------------|-------|-------------| | --prompt | -p | Pass a prompt directly to the agent | | --env-file | -e | Load environment variables into the container | | --file | -f | Mount a single file instead of the current directory | | --model | -m | Override the model used by the agent | | --agent | -a | Select agent: pi, opencode, hermes (default: pi) | | --no-verify | | Skip cosign signature and provenance verification | | --ephemeral | | Disable session persistence (implied by -p and piped stdin) | | --help | -h | Show help |

Environment variables

| Variable | Description | |----------------------|-------------| | HARNESS_IMAGE_TAG | Override the Docker image tag (defaults to the package version). Setting this implies --no-verify. |

Agent-specific behavior

• pi — -m is passed straight to the binary as --model.
• opencode — -m is passed via the OPENCODE_MODEL env var. Provider is auto-detected from the env file (OPENROUTER_API_KEY → OpenRouter, otherwise LM Studio).
• hermes — -m is passed as --model in provider/model form. Provider is auto-detected from whichever API key is present.

Deploying hermes as a fly.io "claw"

You can deploy hermes as a long-running "claw" on fly.io, reachable over a messaging gateway. These instructions assume Telegram; adapt for other messaging gateways.

Install and authenticate flyctl:

brew install flyctl
fly auth login

Create fly.toml:

app = "my-hermes-agent-claw"
primary_region = "iad"

[env]
  TZ = "America/New_York"

[build]
  image = "ghcr.io/capotej/harness:hermes-1.5.0"

[processes]
  app = "hermes gateway"

[[mounts]]
  source = "my_hermes_agent_claw_data"
  destination = "/home/harness/.hermes-openrouter"
  initial_size = "1gb"

[[vm]]
  size = "shared-cpu-1x"
  memory = "512mb"

[[restart]]
  policy = "always"
  max_retries = 3

Create the app, volume, and secrets, then deploy:

fly apps create my-hermes-agent-claw
fly volumes create my_hermes_agent_claw_data --region iad --size 1 --app my-hermes-agent-claw
fly secrets set OPENROUTER_API_KEY=<your-key> --app my-hermes-agent-claw
# https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs/user-guide/messaging/telegram#option-b-manual-configuration
fly secrets set TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=<your-token> --app my-hermes-agent-claw
fly secrets set TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_USERS=<your-user-ids> --app my-hermes-agent-claw
fly secrets set GH_TOKEN=<your-personal-access-token> --app my-hermes-agent-claw
fly deploy --app my-hermes-agent-claw

GitHub CLI access: The GH_TOKEN secret makes the gh CLI available inside the container. Tell the agent to add terminal.env_passthrough: [GH_TOKEN] to its config.yaml so the token is accessible in the sandbox.

Message the bot via Telegram, or wire it up to a scheduled workflow — see the daily briefing bot guide for an example.

Developing

Link your local checkout globally:

pnpm link --global
# unlink with:
pnpm unlink --global @capotej/harness

Building the image

make image

Builds ghcr.io/capotej/harness with Debian stable-slim, Node.js v24, @mariozechner/pi-coding-agent, opencode-ai, hermes-agent, fd, ripgrep, jq, and curl.

The base image is pinned by manifest-list digest (the OCI image index, not a per-platform manifest) for reproducible multi-arch builds. To bump it:

docker buildx imagetools inspect debian:stable-slim --format '{{.Manifest.Digest}}'

Linting

pnpm lint           # all
pnpm lint:ts        # Biome
pnpm lint:md        # markdownlint
pnpm lint:sh        # shellcheck
pnpm lint:docker    # hadolint
pnpm lint:actions   # actionlint
pnpm format         # auto-format with Biome

shellcheck, hadolint, and actionlint are system binaries:

brew install shellcheck hadolint actionlint