head to head · open source
Harness vs skills
Harness has 38,384 GitHub stars, 3,398 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. skills has 5,948 stars, 295 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 545% (38,384 vs 5,948 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; skills is written in Python under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, skills 5%. 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 | skills | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 295 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 38K 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 skills if
- You want the skills feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and skills fits your workflow better
About Harness
Harness Open Source is an Apache 2.0, Go based developer platform that combines Git source control management, CI/CD pipelines, Gitspaces hosted development environments and artifact registries into one self hostable system for engineering teams that want end to end software delivery without stitching four separate products together.
read the full Harness overview →
About skills
BrowserAct Skills is a browser automation CLI built for AI agents, distributed as an open source Python project under the MIT license. It lives in the agent infrastructure ecosystem, alongside tooling for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and other agent clients, and it is catalogued here under Data Extraction and Web Scraping. The project has gathered roughly 5,900 stars and 293 forks since it was published about a year ago, with a small open issue count and an active last push.
read the full skills overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or skills more popular?
Harness has 38,384 GitHub stars and skills has 5,948. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and skills free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and skills under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and skills?
Harness is written in Go and skills in Python. 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 skills?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,384 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose skills if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.