Papers
arxiv:2610.29458

Harness Scaling for Generalizable Agentic Reinforcement Learning

Published on Oct 21
· Submitted by
Fei Bai
on Oct 22
Authors:
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Abstract

Harness Scaling improves agentic reinforcement learning by training across diverse execution configurations, boosting generalization to unseen harnesses.

Agent harnesses have become a central component of modern agentic systems, shaping how models use tools, manage context, and coordinate long-horizon interaction. Realizing the benefits of these harnesses depends on how effectively the underlying model can make use of them, motivating reinforcement learning directly through the harness. However, existing approaches typically train through a single fixed harness, which can lead to specialization and limited transfer across harness configurations. To address this, we introduce Harness Scaling, a new scaling dimension for agentic RL that extends training from a single harness to diverse execution configurations. Concretely, we construct a factorized harness space, select a compact training subset with balanced factorial coverage, and organize cross-harness training to combine global coverage with controlled variation for the same task. Across multiple benchmarks, model scales, and RL algorithms, Harness Scaling consistently improves generalization to unseen white-box configurations. Moreover, models trained through structured white-box variation transfer effectively to unseen external black-box harnesses, outperforming models trained through a single complex black-box harness. These results establish harness diversity as a meaningful scaling dimension for agentic RL and highlight the importance of how this diversity is organized for cross-harness generalization.

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Paper submitter

Excited to share our work Harness Scaling for Generalizable Agentic Reinforcement Learning!

Most existing agentic RL methods train through a single fixed harness, potentially limiting generalization across different execution configurations.

We introduce Harness Scaling, a new scaling dimension for agentic RL that focuses on how agents execute, complementing traditional scaling over tasks and environments.

Our approach organizes harness diversity through five components (system prompt, tool interface, observation, context management, and workflow), combining structured configuration selection with cross-harness RL.

Key findings:

  • Harness Scaling consistently improves generalization to unseen harness configurations across models, benchmarks, and RL algorithms.
  • Structured harness selection and locality-aware training are more effective than simply increasing the number of training configurations.
  • Remarkably, training across diverse white-box harnesses transfers effectively to unseen black-box harnesses such as Claude Code, even outperforming direct black-box RL training.

Our results highlight that not only harness diversity, but how it is organized, matters for generalizable agentic RL.

Feedback and discussions are very welcome!

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