u/kvikash99

Illia Polosukhin, Co Founder of NEAR, laid down the thesis: Agent Harnesses are the New Operating System

They will hold our keys, execute our transactions, and act on our behalf.  

That’s why “the way we build them matters more than almost any other technology choice we’ll make this decade.”

✦ Agent harnesses are the new operating system. They allocate resources, manage processes, enforce permissions, and isolate trust boundaries for AI agents handling credentials, transactions, and communications.

✦ Most current agent harnesses are black boxes vulnerable to prompt injection, malicious skills, and packaging errors, relying on dangerous policy-based trust in providers.

✦ NEAR builds on three foundations: Rust for memory-safe runtime, Trusted Execution Environments for hardware-enforced isolation, and cryptographic attestation for independent verification.

✦ Prompts and data stay encrypted, processed only inside TEEs on CPU and GPU, with signed proofs confirming genuine hardware and untampered code.

✦ This shifts from “trust us” to mathematical guarantees, enabling user-owned AI, real autonomy, and safe cross-chain actions without custody risk. The architecture is live in production.

Read More: How NEAR Is Building Truly Private AI Agents https://x.com/NEARLegion/status/2052743060300382684

I just gave it a chance today and try adding a new AI provider on IronClaw today.

Just added the API key, base URL, selected model, and done. So, I can use different AI models in one place with a clean setup and secure environment.

Feels simple for normal users but still gives access with IronClaw security.