Agents

Fancy coding-agent harnesses triple cost without improving pass rates

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

Outlet: The Decoder
Published: Oct 24, 2026
Importance: 3/5

Summary

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

Original excerpt

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. The article Fancy harnesses make coding agents more expensive but not better, study finds appeared first on The Decoder.

#coding agent#claude code#cost efficiency

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