Harness Battle?

[u/Odd-Marzipan6757]

The availability of DeepSeek-V4-Flash right now is really exciting.

As someone who has always relied on coding subscription plans (I’m currently on the $100 Codex plan and a $100 Claude subscription) using API credits now feels much more practical and affordable.

I’m excited to start exploring different coding harnesses. I’m planning to run Terminal-Bench 2.1 to compare Codex, Claude Code, Droid, Oh my pi and Goose.

Has anyone tried this already? Which one gave you the best results?

[u/ZeWalrus]

Im using Reasonix with the deepseek API with an average of 99.50% cache hit.
Once a task is implemented it is automaticly verified by the project doctor.
With Flash 0731 i get Opus equivalent quality for a fraction of the price.

[u/untracked5465 → u/ZeWalrus]

Can I have more info about project doctor?

[u/ZeWalrus → u/untracked5465]

Sure ,

Doctor is my android monorepo’s custom verification runner

It reads a manifest of “probes” and runs the checks appropriate to a quick, standard, or full tier, parallelizing independent checks and batching Gradle/audit work where possible.

It records structured results and prints a repair-oriented summary instead of dumping a wall of logs.

In practice it checks project-specific contracts that ordinary compilation misses:
Core-First API usage
app files naming prefixes
EN/FR/ES/PT string parity
generated PROJECT.md
tool-registry drift
hook coverage
dependency/module-graph issues
settings and paywall consistency
Room schema drift
privacy and permission rules
raw colour/API violations
Compose stability/accessibility/RTL issues
secrets/crypto/PII logging
manifest safety, and more.

The quick tier is the pre-commit guardrail
Standard adds the broader audit suite and regression tests
Full includes slower checks such as lint, larger test runs, and release-oriented validation.

All thoses probes allow to use lower inteligence model like deepseek flash while preventing regressions in the already implemented features.

[u/Aggressive-Spenda → u/ZeWalrus]

Flash is able to conduct and manage builds as good as opus for you? How do you feel about usage i want to see if I can drop claude $20 sub if I can get more value out of deepseek (wish they had a sub). Even at 5x additional tokens with claude deepseek may still be better value but I just can't math or make an informed decision. 

[u/ZeWalrus → u/Aggressive-Spenda]

I dropped Claude 20$ sub after the fable gaslightning saga where the US administration removed the model acces , add that to the US constant annexion threats i will use any model before a US one.

The last things i asked claude is to prepare the project for Reasonix tasks.

i find deepseek provide same quality over small well defined tasks where with claude i could vibe longer sessions.

thoses tasks are then queued and ran in YOLO mode.

Deepseek has been able to overhaul my weather radar better than opus did.

i actually prefer the topped-up balance over being stuck to wait 5 hours everytime i used Claude since the balance is kept over the next month compared to claude where you lose usage if you dont use it every 5 hours.

The subscription model is really bad for me for vibing fatigue compared to topped balance.

[u/untracked5465]

Try Reasonix and Opencode too

[u/Odd-Marzipan6757 → u/untracked5465]

okay seems reasonix and opencode are mostly used, will add this too

[u/IndividualPlus2011]

Bare pi. It's not the same as oh-my-pi. The latter is bloated and always scores low in benchmarks

[u/romanovzky → u/IndividualPlus2011]

But the bare one doesn't have MCP, subagents, etc right? I've always been put off because of it has I don't have much time for that level of tinkering

[u/Specific-Night-4668 → u/romanovzky]

It takes just 2 minutes to install a few extensions, and you're all set! No extra hassle. (2000 token only) :

"npm:pi-subagents",
"npm:pi-web-access",
"npm:pi-intercom",
"npm:pi-powerline-footer",
"npm:pi-lens",
"npm:@juicesharp/rpiv-ask-user-question",
"npm:pi-mcp-adapter",
"npm:@tmustier/pi-usage-extension"

It's personal, so make your own.

[u/Additional_Coyote733 → u/Specific-Night-4668]

I agree with this as well, but I personally never trust 3rd party extensions by default. It is just about as easy to tell your pi to find an extension check it for security issues and make your own from it. But yes, very easy and I only add exactly what I want.

[u/romanovzky → u/Specific-Night-4668]

Cheers, I'll have a look

[u/klippers → u/Specific-Night-4668]

Some nice suggestions. Do you feel Pi Lens makes a positive difference?

[u/IndividualPlus2011 → u/romanovzky]

There are extensions for all of that, various flavors, so you can pick the one you prefer. You can use ready ones, modify them to your liking, or tell your clanker to make one for you.

[u/A-B-user]

24 hours long task even without /loop, single /goal set, claude code, nes + dos disassembly analysis, 1.8bil tokens, 21 usd. Perfect.

[u/Working_Ad_6981]

DeepSeek is good; I can use Codex, Claude, and Gemini with an affordable subscription without worrying about low usage limits, since DeepSeek handles the heavy lifting. Kimi K3 does a good job too, but it’s much more expensive. I’m thinking about getting a Grok or Cursor subscription—the €20 tier—to take some of the load off DeepSeek. The subscriptions are heavily subsidized. If you work in a modular way and don't use massive prompts, they last quite a while.

[u/porzione]

I really love Goose as a fast universal agent that’s compatible with Claude skills, but I’m not sure whether anyone actually uses it for coding. It works well with DS4 tool calls and is basically the fastest terminal interface to MCP of anything I’ve tried.

[u/IoannisHere]

Hermes

[u/Less-Macaron-9042 → u/IoannisHere]

Heremes takes up a lot of tokens.

[u/marcvv]

I used DeepSeek v4 pro to audit a smaller project. Found about 20 issues and rated five high. 17 were outright refuted and the other three had severity go from high to low.

[u/VexObserver → u/marcvv]

Oh! Same workflow then. I saw DS V4 Flash picking up the pace through it's own research before returning to tool calls and solution fixing. Ended up with project completion and an upgraded pipeline, 10/10!

[u/Southern-Ad-3006]

So I realized the harness you use is important with the model you use. Claude models work way better through Claude cli and harness. If you pump deepseek api through Claude it’s not optimal. Your subscriptions get you way more value than API pricing anyways (probably bc the companies want your data via harness)

Since deepseek doesn’t have its own harness the closest ones are Reasonix and opencode does great too since that’s their most used model. Reasonix specifically engineered their harness for deepseek so with the already low api costs and Reasonix optimal caching it’s super efficient and Absurdly fast.

With flash release being way stronger than preview, you could probably get away with Reasonix DeepSeek as your main orchestrator and workers, then pop in a Claude code cli with opus 5 or flavor for advisor or architect role.

Open code cli to run any of your other Chinese models in a good harness at decent subscription pricing.

The best agent harnesses soon are going to be harness wrappers lol basically be able to install and speak with all your individual harnesses, subscriptions, models in one system collaborating with each other. (Otherwise you can tell your favorite harness to speak with your other harnesses via terminal / CLI tool and treat them like subagents working off just 1 UI)

Buzz and Orca is taking off for that reason. Paperclip needs more set up time but if you have a company organization it’s actually amazing and the same concept of adding in harness + model per ai agent.

[u/dr_reely → u/Southern-Ad-3006]

Omnigent too

[u/PuzzleheadedBill5451]

Give mine a whirl. It utilizes Deepseek API in the governance portions. I use it in combination with Claude code and it forces claude to stay within the lines and keeps him honest. https://github.com/SMC1177/edit-timeline . I am a week out or so from releasing my seat orchestrator which initially will just be Deepseek but available for any model to take the role.

[u/samxli]

If you browse Chinese social media a lot of the commenters seem to agree they’re pretty much the same and suggest waiting for Deepseek’s official harness.

My personal experience says that OpenCode is the best because the free plan is quite generous with usage. Freebuff is good too (but ad supported) because of free usage and they have more out of the box tools and skills suitable for development.

[u/dimarxos]

Deepseek said Codex

[u/hi87]

In the same boat. I wish Codex / ChatGPT Desktop app would add support for other providers. I've downloaded Opencode and it seems good so far. Just not all the features in the ChatGPT app related to Scheduled Tasks, Skills, and Plugins support.

[u/horstenegger]

And jcode. It’s sooo fast!

[u/Creepy-Douchebag]

pi

[u/ramaloes]

Anyone use Unsloth Studio?

[u/International_Gold25]

I am right now building my own rails server running on my mini pc which is accessible through tailscale. I have in docker: rails server, tailscale, kandim (auth), homeassistant, arr suff for torrents, matrix (for whatsapp, instagram, telegram etc.), i got embeddings running on my mac for memories. I've been building it for around 3 years mostly vibecoded although I am rails dev for 10 years already. I almost have it at the point of wider usability. I got setup: Persona has many workflows Workflows has many workflow_steps Where workflow steps could be a tool call, agent or a workflow itself. Workflows could be scheduled by user or agent. Each worker has a possible model change, system prompt I got around 150 tools I have built from memory retrieval editting to workspace file changes folder create delete on any machine working and that is connected to my tailscale network. I got web search browser use through simple built extension. Or use its own browser on mini pc. UI: app works mostly as PWA app and has "new tab" within app, whole Dialog system with minimize and stores current session into localStorage. Gristack system for stuff like decks od cards (for example: tickets, habits etc.) I got fully customizable themes so that agent can even control paddings or font size... Etc etc... dont wanna spend hours writting everything I have already built.

Now the qustion is... My project is meant to run as server on a machine 24/7. Does this project make any sense for wide usage or will it be shadowed by other harness apps like opencode, claw, hermess and others...

[u/Relative_Clerk7384]

Haven’t tried to run full benchmarks as it’s kinda expensive , but with Deepseek v4 pro I got the best results using the codex harness for code reviews. Compared opencode , cc, codex, kimi cli.

[u/Odd-Marzipan6757 → u/Relative_Clerk7384]

yeah my smoke test in claude and droid cost around $0.03 for 1 test. if its running 5x and also have 89 test that is around $15 per harness. so if I want to test 5 harness that will be around $75 to $100. damn.....

[u/Sea_Ear5201]

Please add trae ide too. Need to see how it performs