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Core Architecture and Setup
The repository separates concerns into a small set of directories: core, profiles, hooks, skills, and templates. The core holds rules that remain constant across sessions. Each profile contains instructions specific to a work type such as software engineering, DevOps, marketing outreach, document creation, data processing, research, design or general administration.
Installation uses setup.sh on Unix-like systems or setup.ps1 on Windows. Running the script without flags starts an interactive wizard that constructs the final CLAUDE.md or equivalent file. The script concatenates the core file with selected profiles and writes the result to the project root. After the first global install, subsequent projects receive only a thin profile layer rather than a full copy of the harness.
The resulting markdown file acts as the persistent context the agent reads at the start of each session. It encodes guardrails, memory formats, tool invocation patterns and feedback loops. Because the harness targets any model that accepts a CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or GEMINI.md file, switching between providers requires no change to the underlying rules.
Practical Usage Patterns
Sessions follow a single tracked item at a time. The harness expects the user to open one issue or task description, then instruct the agent to complete only that unit before reporting status. This constraint reduces context drift and keeps token usage bounded.
Profiles define concrete behaviors. The software profile, for example, mandates test-first changes, explicit diff output and a requirement to update AGENT-INSTALL.md when dependencies change. The DevOps profile enforces idempotent commands and requires verification steps before any infrastructure modification. These rules live in separate files so a developer can load multiple profiles when a project spans categories.
The repository also ships example hooks and templates that integrate with common workflows. A pre-commit hook can validate that the agent updated the correct tracking file. A template directory contains starter markdown for new projects so the initial CLAUDE.md does not need to be written from scratch.
Trade-offs and Maintenance
The design favors explicit markdown instructions over code-based tooling. This choice keeps the harness portable across models but requires manual updates when a new model introduces different context-window limits or tool-calling syntax. Because the core has undergone five iterations, some accumulated rules may feel overly prescriptive for simple tasks.
Profile composition can produce long context files. Developers must monitor token counts when several profiles are active simultaneously. The setup script offers no automatic compression or summarization step, leaving that responsibility to the user.
The repository provides no built-in evaluation harness or benchmark suite. Users must supply their own metrics to determine whether changes to a profile improve or degrade agent performance on a given task type.
FAQ
Does Agentsmith require a specific model? No. The harness targets any model that reads a CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or GEMINI.md file at session start.
Can multiple profiles be combined in one project? Yes. The setup script accepts multiple profile flags and merges them into the final instruction file.
Is the harness updated automatically after installation? No. Updates require pulling the latest repository version and re-running the setup script against existing projects.
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