this might be the most useful AI agent paper of 2026, and it's certified f*cking gold Wavestone AI Lab took apart Claude Code, Codex and 9 more agents every good one runs on the same 7-part harness agent = model + harness all 11 use the same 7 parts. only the size changes the 7 parts: > loop - from a plain while loop to fully replayable runs > LLM layer - one prompt template up to 29 provider profiles > tools - bash only up to 43 typed tools on demand > memory - full history up to notes kept across sessions > safety - a step limit up to rules + reviewer model + sandbox > orchestration - Aider skips sub-agents, others fork them > extensions - SKILL.md in 9 of 11, MCP in 8 it ends with a 90-line harness covering all 7 the cleanest starting point for your own agent the pages worth your time: > p.4 - the 7-part map > p.12 - 3 loop types, Claude Code and Codex as examples > p.53 - why nobody uses frameworks or embeddings > p.67 - 18 design rules > p.71 - the 90-line harness to copy