{"type":"post","id":"cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56","slug":"cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56","title":"Cline Agents Harness Unlocks Benchmark-Leading Performance from NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Super VL","description":"Cline reports that Nemotron-3.5 Super VL 120B A12B scored 61.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with Cline’s harness and thinking mode off, versus 53.9%, 51.7%, and 44.9% in three other open-source harnesses.","retrieval_nugget":"Cline reports that Nemotron-3.5 Super VL 120B A12B scored 61.8% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with Cline’s harness and thinking mode off, versus 53.9%, 51.7%, and 44.9% in three other open-source harnesses.","published_at":"2026-10-15","updated_at":"2026-10-15","record_date":"2026-10-15","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["agent-harness","coding-agents","harness-engineering"],"source_urls":["https://cline.ghost.io/nvidia-nemotron-3-5-super-vl-cline-agent-harness"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56","status":"published","visuals":[],"editorial_provenance":{"schema_version":"newruntime-editorial-copy-v1","content_status":"source_grounded_final","final_copy_sha256":"sha256:50f25daa175dcf8e412ec8a4452af2b66d9e1a4f54ecd5b73dfc2e5adff283f1","reviewed_at":"2026-10-15T16:09:22.316Z","source_evidence_count":1,"verified_claim_count":3,"site_analysis_schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","site_object_kind":"field_note","observed_fact_count":3,"implication_count":2,"watch_condition_count":2,"related_record_count":0},"analysis":{"schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","object_kind":"field_note","thesis":"harness design can materially shape observed agent performance even when the underlying model is held constant.","observed_facts":[{"text":"Cline reports 61.8% for Nemotron-3.5 Super VL 120B A12B on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with Cline and thinking mode off.","source_urls":["https://cline.ghost.io/nvidia-nemotron-3-5-super-vl-cline-agent-harness"]},{"text":"Three other open-source harnesses scored 53.9%, 51.7%, and 44.9%; two used high reasoning or effort settings.","source_urls":["https://cline.ghost.io/nvidia-nemotron-3-5-super-vl-cline-agent-harness"]},{"text":"Cline says its internal Nemotron-based Slack agent triages tasks and investigates user-reported bugs.","source_urls":["https://cline.ghost.io/nvidia-nemotron-3-5-super-vl-cline-agent-harness"]}],"mechanism":"Cline combines a plan-before-code instruction, a stall detector that emits structured events, and checks aimed at the behavior each task requires.","why_now":"open-weight models are increasingly being evaluated as parts of runnable agent systems, so harness comparisons influence how teams judge practical capability.","implications":["Teams comparing agent models should keep the harness and reasoning settings visible rather than treating benchmark scores as properties of the model alone.","Task-level verification examples can clarify what a benchmark score represents, while remaining distinct from independent validation."],"evidence_boundary":"Cline’s post reports its own benchmark runs and internal Slack agent use; it does not provide an independent replication, isolate feature effects, or measure token savings.","watch_conditions":["whether independent evaluations reproduce the gap under matched settings and disclose task-level results.","whether future comparisons isolate planning, stall detection, and verification as separate contributors."],"related_records":[],"new_branch_reason":"No prior New Runtime record was supplied; this source supports a distinct record about a same-model harness comparison and reported operational use."},"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/cline-agents-harness-unlocks-benchmark-leading-performance-from-03fd56.json"},"related_patterns":["harness-architecture-outlives-model-choice","ai-engineering-evaluations-are-splitting-into-task-specific"],"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agent-harness/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness/","title":"Agent Harness","reason":"Explore the agent-harness topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-harness.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/coding-agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents/","title":"Coding Agents","reason":"Explore the coding-agents topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/coding-agents.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/harness-engineering/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/harness-engineering/","title":"Harness Engineering","reason":"Explore the harness-engineering topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/harness-engineering.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/harness-engineering.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}