The Agent Harness Is the New Lock-In Layer | Focused Labs

Dev.to / 6/10/2026

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Key Points

The article argues that AI vendor lock-in is shifting from the underlying model to the “agent harness,” where the expensive dependencies now live.
It compares cloud infrastructure lock-in (e.g., ARM templates, CloudFormation, Terraform) with AI agent tooling, saying that evaluation and switching costs move into adjacent layers rather than the model call itself.
While model API calls may be relatively swappable, changing models can still be painful due to downstream effects like prompt drift, tool-call behavior changes, and altered latency/cost profiles.
The key lock-in risk is therefore the tooling around model calls within agent frameworks, including provider SDKs and workflow components.

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