What helped was treating agents less like “always-on brains” and more like short-lived executors. Each step had an explicit goal, explicit inputs, and a defined end. Once the step finished, the agent stopped and context was rebuilt deliberately.
Harnesses like this feel important because they shift the problem from “make the model smarter” to “make the system more predictable.” In our experience, reliability came more from reducing degrees of freedom than from adding intelligence.
How would it compare?
I look at Gambit as more of an "agent harness", meaning you're building agents that can decide what to do more than you're orchestrating pipelines.
Basically, if we're successful, you should be able to chain agents together to accomplish things extremely simply (using markdown). Mastra, as far as I'm aware, is focused on helping people use programming languages (typescript) to build pipelines and workflows.
So yes it's an alternative, but more like an alternative approach rather than a direct competitor if that makes sense.
[see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45988611 for explanation]
are things like file system baked in?
fan of the design of the system. looks great architecturally