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Concepts

HarnessTap concepts

Resources, context, environment, plugins, and workspaces — from atomic building blocks to your local library, step by step.

The atomic building block.

Resource

Every file or setting HarnessTap manages is a resource—the smallest unit you can combine, reuse, and swap.

What

Context-side

instructions, skills, rules, MCP server definitions, hooks, agents, commands

How

Environment-side

env vars, model config, permissions

Plugin pins are composition refs that pull in more resources from marketplaces—without duplicating files by hand.

MCP server definitions describe what to connect to; tokens and URLs are supplied as environment values.

Rectangular boxes list context-side resource types in an upper block and environment-side resource types in a lower block.

What the agent knows and can do.

Context

Context is everything that shapes what the agent sees before it acts.

Think of it like a focused briefing: you hand over the skills, rules, and MCP servers for this job—not your whole toolbox.

Context-side resources define what gets loaded into the agent's working set—the knowledge and capabilities it can draw on right now.

A border draws around the context-side resource cluster with a Context label at the top.

How it runs.

Environment

A named environment is a bundle of runtime settings—env vars, model choices, permissions—you can swap without rebuilding your configuration.

Plain values like region or log level can travel with you. Secrets stay referenced from your keychain or vault, not pasted into shared files.

Switch environments

Move between dev, staging, and production with one command—same setup, different runtime values.

Switch audiences

Use the same underlying configuration for different customers or teams by changing the active environment.

A border draws around the environment-side resource cluster with an Environment label at the top.

A reusable recipe.

Plugin

A plugin is a reusable recipe for agent configuration—a named bundle of context-side resources with optional environment defaults.

Versioned

Track changes over time with semver—know exactly which recipe you applied and when.

Shareable

Publish to a catalog for your organization or hand off a portable export to teammates.

Composable

Combine plugins and apply them at project level (one repo) or machine level (your global setup).

Tag a plugin profile when it represents a switchable global preset—same storage and publish pipeline, surfaced in the Profiles catalog tab.

Individual resource boxes fade away. Context and Environment regions stack inside a Plugin wrapper with a Plugin title.

Your local library.

Workspace

Your workspace is the single local library where every plugin, resource, and environment you manage lives.

Cherry-pick from catalogs

Org catalogs publish versioned plugins for multiplayer discovery—pull what you need into your workspace without adopting a team baseline wholesale.

Apply to projects

Use `ht apply --project` to materialize plugins onto a repo. Profiles are separate: they switch global machine harness files with `profile use`.

Three labeled plugin boxes appear side by side inside a workspace wrapper with a Workspace title above.

How it fits together

Resource
Atomic building blocks—context-side (what) or environment-side (how).
Context
What the agent knows and can use before it acts.
Environment
Runtime settings you swap between dev, staging, production, or teams.
Plugin
A versioned recipe you combine and apply.
Profile
A tagged plugin for global machine presets—switch with `profile use`.
Workspace
Your local plugin library—cherry-pick from catalogs, apply to projects.
Catalog
Org-published plugins for multiplayer browse and install.
Account
Cloud login identity for publish, search, and pull.

Ready to try it?

Browse the open catalog or create an account to publish your own plugins.

Browse the open catalogStart free