🧰 What is harness-kit?
Your AI coding setup — plugins, skills, MCP servers, hooks, conventions — packaged into a single config you can apply to any tool on any machine. Build it once, share it with your team in one file.
📦 Install
/plugin marketplace add harnessprotocol/harness-kit
Fallback: install with script (skills only)
If your Claude Code build doesn't support the plugin marketplace:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harnessprotocol/harness-kit/main/install.sh | bash
Downloads skill files to ~/.claude/skills/ over HTTPS. The full plugin experience (scripts, hooks, agents) requires the marketplace install.
⚡ Quick Start
Install explain — no dependencies, works in any codebase:
/plugin install explain@harness-kit
Then try it:
/explain src/auth/middleware.ts # explain a specific file
/explain the payment processing flow # search the codebase for a concept
/explain src/services/ # map a directory
Produces a layered explanation: summary, key components, how it connects, patterns, gotchas, and where to start if you need to change it.
🔌 Plugins
A few highlights to get started:
| Plugin | What it does | Try it |
|---|
explain | Layered code explanations for files, functions, directories, or concepts | /explain src/auth/ |
research | Process any source into a structured, compounding knowledge base | /research https://... |
review | Code review with severity labels and cross-file analysis | /review |
lineage | Column-level data lineage through SQL, Kafka, Spark, and JDBC | /lineage orders.amount |
📋 Browse all 16 plugins → or run /plugin marketplace browse harness-kit
🌍 Community
| Plugin | Author | What it does |
|---|
superpowers | Jesse Vincent | TDD, systematic debugging, brainstorming-before-coding, subagent delegation, git worktree isolation |
/plugin marketplace add obra/superpowers-marketplace
/plugin install superpowers@obra
🔄 Share Your Setup
Export your plugin setup to a harness.yaml, commit it to your dotfiles, and restore it anywhere.
| Command | What it does |
|---|
/harness-export | Write harness.yaml from your current setup |
/harness-import harness.yaml | Interactive wizard — pick what to install |
/harness-compile | Compile to native configs for Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot |
/harness-sync | Keep all three tools' configs aligned |
/harness-validate | Validate against the Harness Protocol v1 schema |
Shell fallback (no Claude Code required)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/harnessprotocol/harness-kit/main/harness-restore.sh | bash -s -- harness.yaml
See harness.yaml.example for the config format. harness.yaml follows the Harness Protocol v1 open spec — a vendor-neutral format for portable AI coding harnesses.
🔒 Security & Privacy
