Owners Not Renters
Workbook · 7 September 2026

One prompt,
forty-one builds

The same 1,198-word specification for a browser game, handed once to every model, with no follow-up questions and no second attempts.

Six open-weight models were run through four different agent harnesses, to separate what the model does from what the harness does around it.

Cells41
Playable38
No build3
Harnesses6
Wall clock1–90 min

Six models × four harnesses is the experiment proper — twenty-four cells where the only thing that changes is the agent wrapped around the model.

Three closed models were pushed down the same rerouted path as a control. If an open model fails where a frontier model succeeds, the path works and the model did not.

Fourteen closed runs on their own native harness set the ceiling — Codex with GPT, Claude Code with Claude, Grok Build with Grok, Kimi Code with K3.

Filter to shape the pool; click a capture to lift it into the comparison, where it stays no matter what the filters do next. Cards grow as the set shrinks. The captures are near-black by nature — lift opens the shadows without blowing the highlights.

Model
Closed
Harness
Sort
Size
auto
Lift
62
In view0
Playable0
Median
Spread
Timing lost0