Harness, Scaffold, and the AI Agent Terms Worth Getting Right
Source
huggingface.co
Date
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.
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.
