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Fancy harnesses make coding agents more expensive but not better, study finds

Technology · en

Fancy harnesses make coding agents more expensive but not better, study finds

The Decoder · Oct 24, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

A controlled study shows that switching between coding-agent harnesses like Claude Code, OpenCode, or mini-SWE-agent barely moves pass rates more than rerunning the same setup. Cost per task, however, can triple, driven mainly by the system prompt that gets resent with every step.…