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Tanzanite Docs

The Harness

Every agent in Tanzanite is governed by a harness. The harness is the control layer that decides how an agent behaves — and it can be changed without redeploying anything.

What the harness defines

Section titled “What the harness defines”
  • System prompt — the base instructions every agent starts from.
  • Available tools — which tools the agent can call, organized into tiers so the agent discovers more capabilities as a task requires them.
  • Model routing — which model handles which kind of step.
  • Safety guardrails — what requires approval and what is blocked.

Hot-swappable

Section titled “Hot-swappable”

The harness is configuration, not code. Administrators can edit it in the harness editor (under Admin) and the change takes effect for new runs immediately — no build, no deploy. This makes it easy to tune behavior, add tools, or tighten guardrails.

The harness editor

Editing the harness — available to admins.

Skills and plugins

Section titled “Skills and plugins”

The harness works alongside:

  • Skills — packaged instructions and capabilities an agent can load for specific tasks.
  • Plugins — installable bundles that extend the platform with new tools and integrations.

Local-private harness

Section titled “Local-private harness”

For fully private use, Tanzanite can run a local harness against an on-device model, so sensitive work never leaves your machine.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”