Harness, Scaffold, and the AI Agent Terms Worth Getting Right
Source
huggingface.co
Date
Why it matters
Fixes the vocabulary you need to read AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → research and tooling docs precisely: what a agent harnessThe scaffolding around a model that turns it into a working agent — the loop, the tools it can call, and the rules for when to stop.Full definition → includes, when scaffold means something different, and how policy, skills, sub-agents and RL rollout terms relate.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
agent harness — The scaffolding around a model that turns it into a working agent — the loop, the tools it can call, and the rules for when to stop.
context engineering — Deciding what an agent sees at each step — the discipline that replaced prompt engineering once context windows got large enough to fill badly.
tool use — A model's ability to call external functions — run code, search the web, edit files — instead of only generating text.
