Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) for software harnesses is having a moment this week with @PrimeIntellect’s self-improving Prime Agent and @sawyerhood’s great article on bb, and IDE that builds itself. Here are several more of the top articles I’ve been reading to learn about RSI ular:

* lilianweng.github.io/posts/2026-07-… - Harness Eng for Self-Improvement is just a great in-depth article about harness design patterns, not tied to any specific implementation
* metr.org/blog/2025-02-1… METR’s measuring automated kernel engineering from early 2025 contains a lot of detail based on 4o-level models and shows how difficult it is to measure realistic tasks which are likely necessary for RSI’s feedback loops
* normaltech.ai/p/ai-agents-ca… - not about harnesses specifically but a summary on a recent paper that covers what I’ve recently realized where agents are deciding based on data, and when the data isn’t available it’s a path not taken. Perhaps a “research harness” could course correct an AI model at the right time?

Links to the articles I mentioned in the intro sentence:
Prime Intellect’s article on Prime Agent: primeintellect.ai/blog/prime-age…
Sawyer’s article on bb: x.com/sawyerhood/sta…
Image is from the Harness Engineering for Self-Improvement Post.