head to head · open source
Harness vs loop-engineering
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. loop-engineering has 11,683 stars, 1,575 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 232% (38,798 vs 11,683 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; loop-engineering is written in TypeScript under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, loop-engineering 13%. Harness was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Harness | loop-engineering | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick loop-engineering if
- You want the loop-engineering feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and loop-engineering fits your workflow better
About Harness
Harness Harness Open Source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, hosted development environments (Gitspaces), and artifact registries. Overview Harness Open source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, Gitspaces, and artifact registries. Running Harness locally The latest publicly released docker image can be found on harness/harness. To install Harness yourself, simply run the command below. Once the container is up, you can visit in your browser. The Harness image uses a…
read the full Harness overview →
About loop-engineering
Loop Engineering Stop prompting. Design the loop. Get a score. Start in 5 minutes · Quickstart · What do you want to do? · Refactor path · 中文 · Pattern picker tool defaults to claude if you omit it. Swap for grok , codex , or opencode . Week one is report only . You design a system that discovers work, hands it to agents, verifies results, and persists state — instead of typing the next prompt yourself. New here? Quickstart · Refactor a project · Thin GitHub Action loop (no STATE.md required) What do you want to do? This is a pattern library for operating agents around a codebase . It is not a “rewrite the…
read the full loop-engineering overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or loop-engineering more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and loop-engineering has 11,683. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and loop-engineering free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and loop-engineering under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and loop-engineering?
Harness is written in Go and loop-engineering in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Harness or loop-engineering?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose loop-engineering if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.