Agent Harness Construction

• status: success|warning|error
• summary: one-line result
• next_actions: actionable follow-ups
• artifacts: file paths / IDs

Error Recovery Contract

For every error path, include:

• root cause hint
• safe retry instruction
• explicit stop condition

Context Budgeting

1. Keep system prompt minimal and invariant.
2. Move large guidance into skills loaded on demand.
3. Prefer references to files over inlining long documents.
4. Compact at phase boundaries, not arbitrary token thresholds.

Architecture Pattern Guidance

• ReAct: best for exploratory tasks with uncertain path.
• Function-calling: best for structured deterministic flows.
• Hybrid (recommended): ReAct planning + typed tool execution.

Benchmarking

Track:

• completion rate
• retries per task
• pass@1 and pass@3
• cost per successful task

Anti-Patterns

• Too many tools with overlapping semantics.
• Opaque tool output with no recovery hints.
• Error-only output without next steps.
• Context overloading with irrelevant references.