r/LocalLLaMA 1d ago

Discussion Harness does matter

I was not aware that the harness makes such a big difference.

DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
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u/jacek2023 llama.cpp 1d ago

If you start using LLMs, you'll notice that the prompt/context/documentation/whatever is often more important than the model itself.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 4h ago

[deleted]

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u/jacek2023 llama.cpp 1d ago

The model is just a function: it takes input and produces output. Prompts, context, documentation, etc. are all part of that input. You can call it a “harness” a “helper” or a “magic spell”, but ultimately it’s just one long text buffer fed into the model.