What "coding harness" means

A coding model edits files. A coding harness controls the development lifecycle around those edits.

Seat	Responsibility
User	Owns product intent, scope decisions, overrides, and final authority
Pitboss	Frontier model that grounds the plan, scopes units, delegates work, validates results, and owns acceptance
Foreman	Supplies protocols, canonical state, evidence records, recovery, and mechanical gates
Workers	Host-native agents or configured worker backends that implement one bounded unit
Advisors	Separate reviewer seats used for design deliberation and checkpoint review
Repository tools	Compilers, tests, linters, and build commands that provide observable validation evidence

During a phased implementation, the pitboss is kept out of product-code edits by protocol so its context remains available for integration and review. Workers receive a narrow brief and return a completion report or patch. The pitboss then re-reads the changed files, runs the repository's checks, compares the result with the specification, and records the verdict.

Under the protocol, workers do not accept their own units; the pitboss owns the verdict. The patch-worker tools cannot write verdicts. Worker engines are replaceable, while Foreman remains the authority for project state and completion.