> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://thomasadair.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # You cloned the harness. Now what goes in it? - URL: https://thomasadair.ghost.io/you-cloned-the-harness/ - Published: 2026-08-18T18:09:21.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-18T20:52:53.000Z - Description: DeepSeek Harness passed 160,000 stars in days. If the runtime is free, the interesting question isn't the code — it's what goes in the slots, and that's the layer a clone can't hand you. - Author: Thomas Arthur Adair - Tags: AI, solo-builder, field-notes, systems-architecture, memory, #field-note **By Thomas Adair.** Marine. DJ/Producer. Systems Architect — shipping across trading systems, music production, agentic tooling, and consumer apps with AI orchestration. *A builder’s note on the DeepSeek Harness wave — and the layer a clone can’t hand you.* --- I’m Thomas. I work on agentic engineering — the unglamorous business of turning a language model into something that runs a real job start to finish — and I write these notes mostly to check my own work. Here’s one I wanted to write down. This week a repo called DeepSeek Harness went off: MIT-licensed, “everything is a plugin,” pitched as a free open rival to Claude Code. As I write it’s past **160,000 stars and 15,000 forks** in a matter of days, and still climbing by the hour… The runtime — the loop, the slots, the seams — is now sitting there for anyone to take. So here’s the piece I actually wanted to write. If the harness is free, the interesting question isn’t the code. It’s what goes *in* the slots. When does an agent get to say it’s done? What goes in memory, and when do you stop trusting it? “Everything is a plugin” is really an empty slot where a year of your own mistakes would otherwise go. The code is the easy part. The judgment is the part a clone can’t hand you — and the part the whole wave, a hundred thousand stars deep, is now quietly agreeing is the one worth owning. I didn’t wait for this week to care about that layer. I read what works — papers, other people’s code, and the things I tried that didn’t hold, which teach straighter than anything else — and built the memory setup that made sense for me: files that survive a session dying, a slim index that stays readable, a rule that you save the memory the same session the fact showed up, and the habit of checking the world before you trust an old note. The argument for all of it is in [the article](https://thomasadair.ghost.io/persistent-memory-bundle/), and it’s free to read either way. Alongside the piece, there’s the runnable version of it — the same memory setup I keep under my own agents, written down properly. The handful of file types, the slim index that stays legible, before-and-after examples, fill-in templates, and a start-to-finish setup you can stand up in an afternoon. The thinking is free to read either way; this is for anyone who’d rather drop the whole system in than build it back up from scratch. → [**The Persistent Memory Bundle**](https://3569505352279.gumroad.com/l/memory%5Fbundle?ref=thomasadair.ghost.io) — $29, instant download, 30-day refund. The writing here stays free — that part isn’t going behind a wall. If some of it has been worth your time, there’s a [tip jar](https://buy.stripe.com/28EcN52fY7PigzrcePfrW01?ref=thomasadair.ghost.io) pointed at the rig it all runs on. No countdown, no pressure either way. Thanks for reading. One edge worth weighing: a hundred thousand stars is attention, not adoption. A repo can trend all week and still not survive real work. The fair counter to me is that the model still does the hard part and the harness is just plumbing. Fine — but plumbing is what floods the house when it’s wrong, and “okay, now what do I put in it?” is exactly the right question to be asking. That’s who I write these for. --- **Sources:** [DeepSeek Harness — GitHub](https://github.com/deepseek-ai/deepseek-harness?ref=thomasadair.ghost.io) · [DeepSeek Harness launches as open-source rival to Claude Code — VentureBeat](https://venturebeat.com/technology/deepseek-harness-launches-as-open-source-rival-to-claude-code-alongside-v4-pro-on-api-with-higher-prices?ref=thomasadair.ghost.io) — *Thomas Adair. Marine. DJ/Producer. Systems Architect — shipping across trading systems, music production, agentic tooling, and consumer apps with AI orchestration.*