Get Harness

From installed to your first finished routine

Everything you need to set Harness up is written down here. One person, one afternoon — no onboarding call, no consultant, no waiting on us.

Before you start

What to have ready

  • A Windows PC you control. Harness does the work on that machine — see the system requirements.
  • Your licence key. It arrives by email as soon as you buy; see pricing.
  • Your own AI provider account. Harness is the supervision layer, not the model. You connect your own Claude or GPT account or API key, and that provider bills you directly.
  • One routine to start with. Something your team repeats, with a result you can recognise as right or wrong at a glance.

Setup

Eight steps to the first result

  1. 01

    Install and activate

    Run the installer on the PC that will do the work and paste your licence key. Activation ties the licence to that machine, so the worker and its history stay in one place.

  2. 02

    Connect your AI provider

    Point Harness at your own Claude or GPT account or API key. When a job needs reasoning, the relevant task content goes to that provider under their terms — and they bill you, not us.

  3. 03

    Grant the first capabilities

    Out of the box the worker can do nothing. Switch on only what this one routine needs — a folder, a mailbox, one system — and leave everything else off.

  4. 04

    Describe the routine in plain language

    Write it the way you would explain it to a new colleague: where the inputs live, what the finished result looks like, and who receives it.

  5. 05

    Check the restated scope

    Harness restates the goal, the sources and the actions it intends to take. Read that before anything runs — it is the cheapest place to catch a misunderstanding.

  6. 06

    Let it work, approve the sensitive step

    The worker collects, checks and builds. Anything irreversible or outbound — sending, spending, deleting, signing — stops in the approval queue and waits for a person.

  7. 07

    Read the audit trail

    Every source read, every action taken and every step queued is written down in plain language on your machine. One read tells you how far to trust the next run.

  8. 08

    Save it as a schedule

    When the result is right, turn the routine into a schedule. It runs on time, and the approval gate stays exactly where you put it.

Where to start

Routines that make a good first job

A recurring report

Numbers collected from the same places every week, checked against what you expect, and laid out in your own template.

A register or document update

A controlled change prepared in the approved structure, with a before-and-after difference and the reason recorded.

Prepared replies and follow-ups

Drafts written from your own data and templates, queued for a person to approve before anything is sent.

While it works

What stays on your machine

  • Credentials. The worker signs in through a broker, by name. Your passwords and API keys are unlocked at the last moment and never placed in the model’s context.
  • Operational state and audit history. Both stay on the PC you run Harness on. There is no cloud copy.
  • Task content goes to the AI provider you connected, and only when a job needs reasoning. That is the one place it leaves the machine, and you chose that provider.

This website and your account portal only ever see your account, licence and device health — never your files, tasks or results.

Fit

A routine is a good candidate when

  • It repeats — weekly, monthly, or every time a specific thing happens.
  • It has a right answer someone can recognise at a glance.
  • The inputs live somewhere you can point at: a folder, a mailbox, a system.
  • The steps are written down, or could be.
  • One person owns the outcome and can approve the sensitive step.
  • You can measure it — minutes spent, errors caught, or time to deliver.

Not yet

Leave it manual for now when

  • The rules change every time and live only in someone’s head.
  • There is no way to tell a good result from a bad one.
  • It turns on judgement about people — hiring, discipline, negotiation.
  • A mistake would be expensive and impossible to reverse.

You can always come back to these once the first routine has been running for a few weeks.

Keep going

The details are all written down

Every capability, connector and setting has a documentation page, and the short walkthroughs show the same steps on screen.

Read the documentation Watch the tutorials