← Docs · The Agentic Harness

Installing a harness

Installing a harness puts a verified collection of capabilities on your machine. You can inspect what it contains, activate only what you need and distinguish an installation problem from a skill that has not been enabled in the right scope.

What it is

A compatible harness is a named package of skills and supporting material. Its identifier has the form owner/name. The canonical harness is knowledgeislands/ki-agentic-harness; it supplies the core skills used to set up and operate the KI environment.

Installation and activation are separate. An installed capability is available for selection. A user or repository declaration selects it for that scope.

How it works

ki bootstrap detects supported runtimes, creates or reconciles the user environment, installs the canonical harness and links the core user skills into the configured runtimes. Existing agent configuration is reused.

ki bootstrap
ki harness list
ki harness info knowledgeislands/ki-agentic-harness

The CLI verifies installed payloads and capability inventories. A repository declaration can then resolve a capability from its permitted providers. An unfamiliar directory or copied checker is not an alternative operation source.

How you use it

For an additional configured harness, run ki harness install <harness-id>. Inspect it before activating its capabilities. Using skills covers selection during a session; onboarding covers repository activation.

Use the current command names when checking the machine:

ki harness search authoring
ki harness missing
ki harness outdated
ki doctor
ki diag

ki update refreshes configured installed harnesses. The CLI executable is updated only when installation evidence establishes that the updater owns it; --cli requires that executable target. ki bootstrap --refresh redetects runtimes and reconciles the managed inventory.

What it provides

The installed inventory tells you which capabilities this machine can supply. Managed links let supported runtimes discover the skills selected for them. A fresh session after activation lets the runtime rescan those links.

A harness contributor can explicitly select a local checkout with ki dev local set and ki dev local on. That is a live development source: uncommitted edits can change the governance other sessions resolve. ki dev local off restores the verified archive.

Boundaries

Installing an additional harness does not activate its skills in every repository. ki harness reinstall refuses a harness that supplies active user skills, and a development-linked harness must first be restored to archive mode. ki harness uninstall also refuses active user providers, and cannot remove the canonical harness.

A successful installation proves the payload was accepted. It does not prove an already-running agent has loaded the new skills or that an MCP connection works.