Conceptually, at their core, Operating Systems provide: - Process management (including scheduling) - Memory management - File systems - Device management - Protection and security Thinking about [Claude Code](https://claude.com/product/claude-code) as an example of harness, it's interesting to notice it serves many of the same core functions: - Process management - decides when different agents run, commands, scheduling, etc. - Memory management goes by Context management but similar concept - File systems - this one relies on the existing system, but there's an argument the underlying model is a file/stream abstraction in the same way Unix systems abstract networking - Device management - also relies on the underlying system, but adds fully abstracted cloud environments and a system of connectors via the [MCP protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) - Protection and security - permission control and security modes are common and related to the MCPs above. *This is the weakest link though, as OS provides a stricter enforcement, but we're looking into analogies*. Skills, plugins are user applications and [Claude Code Mods](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins/mods/overview) akin to [Loadable Kernel Modules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable_kernel_module). I predict we're going to see increasing integration of harnesses into operating systems, where [Microsoft](https://www.microsoft.com) and [Apple](https://www.apple.com) have a distribution advantage. I suspect if [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com) and [OpenAI](https://openai.com) are paying attention, they will be pushing further into deeper integration, and who knows, we may see Anthropic release an operating system (although unlikely)! The harness will be the [browser wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars) of the past, and it might play out similarly. We are in the [Netscape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape) era.