Which AI models can I use with Strands Harness?

It works with Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, Ollama and LiteLLM. You can swap the model later by editing a single line of code.

Do I need AWS to run it?

No. AWS says agents built with Strands Harness can be deployed to any environment with a Linux container, not only AWS.

What do I get out of the box?

Agents come with shell execution, file reading and writing, and web search, plus prompt caching, context management and per-session memory.

Large Language ModelsOpen-Source AIPublickey51m agoSep 29, 2026, 01:00 JST

AWS open-sources Strands Harness for custom AI agents

Send on LINE

3 Key Points

What happened
AWS open-sourced Strands Harness, built on the Strands Harness SDK it released in August 2026.
Why it matters
The harness is open source, so teams can add features and customize it themselves.
What to watch
The benchmark is based on Fable 5, so results on other models may differ from the figures AWS published.

WHO IT HITSTeams that build or operate their own AI agents — internal tooling groups, developers running self-hosted models, and platform engineers inside enterprises — get an open-source harness they can modify instead of building the surrounding plumbing themselves.

Not sure about something? Ask the AI

Questions and answers are published on this page.

Summaries like this, in your inbox every morning.

Get news like this every morning, free

Context & Analysis

Strands Harness sits on top of the Strands Harness SDK AWS released in August 2026. The pitch is one import instead of hand-wiring tools, memory and context handling. AWS says an agent built with it keeps per-session memory, so giving it a session ID resumes an earlier conversation.

The defaults handle context automatically: tool results over about 1,500 tokens are truncated, summaries kick in when the context window passes 85%, and context is restored inside the loop if it overflows. Out of the box an agent can run shell commands, read and write files and search the web.

A few lines of code spin up an agent, and swapping in another model is a single string change — for example from Claude Opus 5 to Google Gemini or Ollama. Agents can also be assembled from a command line and exported as TypeScript or Python. The open question is how much the benchmark result carries over, since it was measured on Fable 5; whether teams see the same cost and score on the models they actually run is likely to decide how widely the harness is adopted.

FAQ

Which AI models can I use with Strands Harness?: It works with Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, Ollama and LiteLLM. You can swap the model later by editing a single line of code.
Do I need AWS to run it?: No. AWS says agents built with Strands Harness can be deployed to any environment with a Linux container, not only AWS.
What do I get out of the box?: Agents come with shell execution, file reading and writing, and web search, plus prompt caching, context management and per-session memory.

PublickeyRead Original Article

Send on LINE

Get the latest Large Language Models news every morning

For example, today's edition would include:

Instinct raises $1B at $10B valuation for personal AI agentSiliconANGLE AI · 51m ago
Okta's Wylie: agent security needs shared safeguardsSiliconANGLE AI · 51m ago
CoreWeave's top three customers drive 70% of revenue, Vellante saysSiliconANGLE AI · 51m ago

AI-summarized, only the topics you pick: one digest a day via Email, LINE, or Slack.

Subscribe free →

Free · 30 seconds with Google · unsubscribe anytimeWhat is AIToday? →

Ask AI

Ask AI anything about this article. The AI reads this article, earlier AIToday articles, and Wikipedia, and cites its sources. Q&As are published on this page for other readers too.