What is harness-mode?

A command for changing Harness, a development workflow's current mode and phase. Modes control how strict the checks are, while phases describe whether you are designing, building, or fixing code.

Use it to switch between full, hotfix, and tweak modes; change the design, build, or fix phase; and view the current workflow state.

It lets the workflow match the kind of work being done, such as a quick emergency fix or a normal feature build. The selected state is saved for later commands to use.

How chenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to chenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter/main/.claude/skills/harness-mode/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/chenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/chenklein26-maker/harness-starter/harness-mode.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 39 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 466 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026

SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

high Privilege Escalation · line 17
Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.

Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.

How audits are shown

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00039	$0.00466
Opus 5.5	$0.00016	$0.00186
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00093
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00047

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 93b81d0bde8b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

harness-mode scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/harness-mode/SKILL.md · 56 lines

What it actually says

Harness Mode

管理 .claude/.harness-state，控制 Harness 的行为策略。

支持的命令

切换模式

/harness-mode full     → 完整检查，所有规则生效
/harness-mode hotfix   → 紧急修复，跳过行数/文件数检查
/harness-mode tweak    → 微调模式，仅 .env 保护

切换阶段

/harness-phase design  → 设计阶段，宽松审查
/harness-phase build   → 构建阶段，正常审查
/harness-phase fix     → 修复阶段，收紧变更范围检查

查看当前状态

/harness-status        → 显示当前阶段和模式

执行逻辑

当用户输入上述命令时：

读取 .claude/.harness-state（不存在则创建默认值 {"phase":"build","mode":"full"}）
修改对应的 mode 或 phase 字段
更新 since 为当前时间
写入文件
回显新状态

模式联动：

切换到 hotfix 模式时，自动将 phase 设为 fix
切换到 tweak 模式时，自动将 phase 设为 design

示例

用户：/harness-mode hotfix → 写入 {"phase":"fix","mode":"hotfix","since":"2026-06-01T12:00:00Z"} → 回复：「已切换到热修复模式：阶段=fix, 模式=hotfix。将跳过行数/文件数检查。」

用户：/harness-status → 回复：「当前 Harness 状态：阶段=build, 模式=full (since 2026-06-01T10:00:00Z)」

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 56 lines · 39 tokens per session scan A 93b81d0bde8b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

harness-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository chenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter (119 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 39 tokens to every session and 466 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Project management

harness-mode next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
harness-modechenklein26-maker/Harness-Starter	Skill	119	4mo ago	MIT	A	39	Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	133k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	4d ago	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	313k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
next-partial-prefetching-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	yesterday	MIT	A	103	Claude Code

Harness-Starter: Skill for Claude Code