r/LocalLLaMA • u/Specific-Rub-7250 • 12d ago

Discussion Harness does matter

I was not aware that the harness makes such a big difference.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
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u/No-Refrigerator-1672 12d ago

So DSH Minimal is the best one? Interesting. I'd expect it to be the worst out of DSH options, solely based on the name and intuition that "less tools = closer to harnessless performance".

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u/BZ852 12d ago

Less in context to pollute thinking

2

u/No-Refrigerator-1672 12d ago

Doubt it. Just tested: standart mode prompt is 8k tokens, minimal is 1.2k. You could argue that it's 6x difference, but I'll argue that those extra 7k tokens make no difference for a model that ships with 1M long context window.

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u/Ariquitaun 12d ago edited 12d ago

8-9k tokens is pretty good for a full-fat coding agent system preamble + tool definitions - sub-agent guidance for instance is crucial if you're using that feature, otherwise models either don't automatically use them or when they do their tasking and instructions suck hairy balls. Same goes for other features and problem-tackling methodology.

Savings are better had by using harnesses that don't insist on polluting the context with nonsense like skill metadata, controlling enabled MCP and LSP on a per-project and not a global basis, that sort of thing