Alibaba Cloud's Qoder Open-Sources Better Harness for Coding Agent Evaluation
Alibaba Cloud's Qoder has open-sourced Better Harness, a tool designed to analyze and continuously improve coding agent workflows. The tool supports popular coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Qoder, and Cursor by evaluating whether their capabilities are actually utilized and effective in completing tasks. As AI coding agents become more integrated into software development, evaluating their actual performance and safety controls is critical. Better Harness addresses this by providing a structured, runnable framework to test and optimize agent behaviors in real-world projects. The tool operates on a three-layer architecture covering Harness Engineering practices, the Agent Work Loop evaluation model, and runnable implementations. It independently collects session, project, and customized agent evidence, and has been validated across 30 real GitHub projects.
## BACKGROUND
Harness Engineering is an emerging discipline in software engineering focused on defining the environment, permissions, sandboxes, and boundaries within which AI agents operate. It ensures that autonomous agents can work productively without executing harmful actions or running out of control.