- Author
- Shrivu Shankar
- Published
- Aug 24, 2026
- Kind
- Personal Substack essay, opinion with no data
- Original
- blog.sshh.io/p/the-harness-is-the-company
- Subject
- Harnesses and agent loops
- Themes
- Who holds the power
What it is
Shrivu Shankar writes on a Substack about where agent-run companies are heading. The essay defines a harness broadly and traces how a service company turns into one. It closes with four things the author expects to see.
What it says
- Shankar predicts every SaaS business will become a harness around a model.
- The post defines a harness as everything around a stateless model: infra, interfaces, context, state.
- The post sketches stages from no harness to harnesses that orchestrate individuals.
- The answer to the slop worry: the harness picks where human input matters most.
- Companies should own the top-level harness and plug vendor products into it.
- The author admits agents are hard to trust with the outer loop today. The author would not bet against models improving.
- The post predicts in-house harness building, reshaped roles and AI-native startups beating incumbents.
What evidence it gives
The essay offers argument and a prediction list. It names in-house AI developer tools at Ramp, Stripe and DoorDash as early signs. It gives no data.
Interests and limits
The essay is opinion and tests nothing. The author says they have tried the outer loop and found it hard to trust. The page does not state the author's employer. Reader comments on the page were not treated as part of the source.