# Applying Anthropic Primitives at Large Enterprises: Harness Paradigm for Knowledge Work

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20622 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.20622/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 2 of its 3 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Dive into Claude Code: The Design Space of Today's and Future AI Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14228/) (2026)
- [Can Coding Agents Be General Agents?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.13107/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Frontier models have collapsed the cost of writing custom code: a niche problem a specialist sees in their own domain now costs an afternoon. The cost of reviewing and maintaining that code hasn't collapsed. Each solution drifts from the next; understanding one means reading its codebase from scratch. Large enterprises build something centrally governed instead: at worst an off-the-shelf product, at best a graph-orchestration framework wired bespoke per use case, or a low-code platform used as the orchestrator. These are custom every time and limited in scope. Enterprises don't weigh a third option that escapes both constraints: the harness paradigm. Recent work treats the coding-agent harness as enterprise infrastructure rather than a coding tool, converging on three findings: harnesses suffice at the task level and outperform more elaborate architectures on enterprise work (arXiv:2604.00073, arXiv:2604.13107); harness choice accounts for most of the variance in agent benchmark results, more than model choice does (arXiv:2605.23950); and the gap between that finding and enterprise adoption is governance (arXiv:2605.10223, arXiv:2605.18747). We propose an architecture that closes that gap. One harness runs unmodified as the backbone; the code stays identical across every deployment, so reviewing what gets built collapses to reading its instructions file. Section 4 gives four mechanisms: credential-scoped tooling, where each backend gets one generic request tool and a scoped credential instead of a hand-built method; authorization logic outside the harness, so one artifact runs as a cron backbone, a chat-surface engine, and a terminal tool; registration is a side effect of pushing code, collapsing an audit a review of a text file. Built on microcc (<https://pypi.org/project/micro-cc/>), our reference harness.