Compare Harnesses

Compare Harnesses is a Quality skill for Claude Code, published by ruvnet in metaharness.

609 stars72 forkson ruvnet/metaharnessAdded 2026/08/25+2% in starsRepository updated 2026/08/24

agent-harnessagent-harness-generatoragent-scaffoldingagentic-aiagentic-frameworkautonomous-agentsclaude-codecodexcreate-agent-harnesshermes-agentmcpmcp-servermulti-agentopenai-codexopenclawpi-devrvmsandboxingscaffoldscaffolding

Install in seconds

Install Compare Harnesses

Copy Compare Harnesses into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/ruvnet/metaharness/tree/main/.claude-plugin/skills/compare-harnesses ~/.claude/skills/compare-harnesses

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/ruvnet/metaharness.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: .claude-plugin/skills/compare-harnesses/SKILL.md in ruvnet/metaharness
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/compare-harnesses
Collection: One of 16 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Quality — 1354 skills

What Compare Harnesses does

Compare Harnesses diffs two scaffolded harnesses and reports manifest, host, and file fingerprint changes. Use it to spot drift between a fork and a baseline, or to emit ADR-031 bundle JSON for CI.

Compare Harnesses is cataloged under Quality on DirSkills. Compare Harnesses comes from a repository tagged agent-harness, agent-harness-generator, agent-scaffolding, agentic-ai and agentic-framework.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

compare-harnesses

Codex skill: diff two scaffolded harnesses — the ADR-031 Bundle JSON Pattern surfaced through Codex (iter 105 → iter 109).

What it does

Two-harness diff. Useful when you've forked an upstream template, when a support ticket says "mine and theirs scaffolded different things", or when a CI script wants a byte-equality check between a candidate scaffold and a known-good baseline.

Reports three sections:

Manifest meta — same name? same kernel? same surface?
Hosts — which host adapters each side ships (claude-code / codex / pi-dev / hermes / openclaw / rvm)
Files — added / removed / changed (per-file SHA-256 fingerprints; the cheapest possible byte-equality test)

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Commands Compare Harnesses provides

Slash commands named in this skill’s SKILL.md, listed in the order they first appear.

/compare-harnesses

Frequently asked about Compare Harnesses

What else does ruvnet publish alongside Compare Harnesses?
Compare Harnesses is one of 16 skills that DirSkills catalogs from ruvnet/metaharness, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include Create Harness, Darwin Mode and Diag Harness. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Compare Harnesses does, and is maintained by ruvnet in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the ruvnet/metaharness page.
How does Compare Harnesses compare to other Quality skills?
Compare Harnesses ranks #1121 by stars among the 1354 Quality skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Benchmark, Benchmark Optimization Loop and API Design Patterns. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Compare Harnesses against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.