# About and naming

**By Dinis Cruz.** Design session written up with Claude, 24 October 2026.

> **SHarness is unrelated to Sharness, the shell testing library** derived from Git's test suite (felipec/sharness).

## The name

SHarness is a **secure harness**: the layer agents run inside so that they run securely. It takes behaviour policies from text the agent reads to rules the agent runs inside, enforced from outside the agent's environment. Dinis Cruz's memo on the name and the direction is the article [A secure harness for agents](../articles/secure-harness-for-agents.md).

## Identity

| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Brand | **SHarness** (capital S, capital H) |
| Domain | [sharness.ai](https://sharness.ai) |
| GitHub organisation | [github.com/SHarness-AI](https://github.com/SHarness-AI) |
| Code repository | [SHarness-AI/SHarness-AI__CLI](https://github.com/SHarness-AI/SHarness-AI__CLI) |
| Website repository | [SHarness-AI/SHarness-AI__Website](https://github.com/SHarness-AI/SHarness-AI__Website) |
| PyPI distribution | [`sharness-ai`](https://pypi.org/project/sharness-ai/) |
| Command | `sharness-ai` |
| Python import | `sharness_ai` |
| Component names | `sharness.<role>`: `.launcher`, `.kms`, `.net`, `.fs`, `.bash`, `.llm`, `.policy` |
| Environment variable prefix | `SHARNESS_AI_` (proposed) |

## Naming rules

- The brand is **SHarness**. Lower-case `sharness` appears only in code identifiers (`sharness.kms`, `sharness_ai`).
- There is no plain `sharness` command: on Debian, pkgsrc and OpenBSD that name is the unrelated shell test library's package. The command is `sharness-ai`.
- Environment variables use `SHARNESS_AI_`, not `SHARNESS_`, which the shell test library uses.
- One role, one noun: each component is named for its one job.

## Where it came from

SHarness grew out of [sgit](https://cli.sgit.ai), the encrypted vault CLI, and uses sgit's PKI. The first analysis was [A vault key that never lands](https://cli.sgit.ai/articles/a-vault-key-that-never-lands.md); the handover it builds on is [pki.sgit.ai/handover.md](https://pki.sgit.ai/handover.md); its policies apply the [Agent Behaviour Policy](https://riskmandate.ai/abp.html) model to processes. sgit is the first app designed to run inside SHarness.

## Who writes here

An article's byline says who wrote it; this is where each name points. The rules are those of [Every site its own articles](https://send.sgit.ai/articles/every-site-its-own-articles.html): never one claimed as the other; no model names in the text; the editorial responsibility is the person's, whoever wrote the words.

| Name | Who | What they write here |
|---|---|---|
| **Dinis Cruz** | the person: SHarness's author and the editor of this site | the briefs and memos, published in full; articles written up from his voice memos, in his voice and under his name, by an agent. [About him](https://sgit.ai/about/) |
| **sharness.build** | the build agent of this site and of the CLI's first release, a Claude Code session working from Dinis's requests | the site itself, the release history, and articles in its own voice about what it delivered, with the commits to check them against |

## What is real today

Only the name, this site and a placeholder package. The `sharness-ai` package on PyPI reports its version and prints its help; nothing in the design is built yet. The status of every claim is on [Evidence](../evidence/index.md) and [What exists today](../shipped/index.html).

All content CC BY 4.0. Code under the repositories' licences.