# Harness

> Harness is a screen-aware AI assistant: a floating AI window for the screen you share. It answers about exactly what is on screen, live, and can watch over time and flag the moment something the user cares about happens. No install: it runs in any Chromium browser (Chrome, Brave, Arc, Edge). Screen reading runs locally in the browser, and the user chooses how private the answering layer is.

Key facts:

- What it does: you share a tab, window, or your entire screen, and ask about what is actually there. Harness answers about the live screen, keeps a searchable on-device visual memory of what it has seen, and can watch for you and alert the moment it happens (e.g. "flag me if I get outbid"). It never clicks or types for you.
- Privacy model: the full screen never streams to a server. Small vision models run locally; the full screen history and memory database stay on-device and are wipeable. Standard and private hosted modes can transmit selected current/recalled evidence plus a compact, expiring text/audio ledger of recent changes. Confidential mode keeps that ledger client-only. A browser-relayed local model keeps model execution local, but hosted turn orchestration still transits Harness.
- Answering models: user's choice. Run a model locally, connect an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, bring a Venice or Bankr API key, or use managed pay-as-you-go credit routed to frontier models (Claude, Gemini, GPT, Grok). Private routes and confidential TEE models are available with explicit capability tradeoffs.
- Pricing: free Open tier (local/custom endpoint or your own key). Managed credit is pay-as-you-go with $5 free. The Resident subscription ($7.99/mo) adds encrypted cloud backup, restore, device handoff, and deeper durable context. It does not include a recurring inference allowance.
- Open source: the Harness client is being open-sourced; the hosted and self-hosted product are the same client.

## Pages

- [Home](https://tryharness.ai/): product walkthrough, pricing, and FAQ
- [What is screen-aware AI?](https://tryharness.ai/what-is-screen-aware-ai): the category explained, how it works, on-device vs cloud, and the tool landscape
- [Best screen-aware AI assistants (2026)](https://tryharness.ai/best-screen-aware-ai): honest roundup of the category, bias disclosed
- Comparisons: [vs Copilot Vision](https://tryharness.ai/compare/copilot-vision), [vs ChatGPT desktop](https://tryharness.ai/compare/chatgpt-desktop), [vs Highlight AI](https://tryharness.ai/compare/highlight-ai), [vs Cluely](https://tryharness.ai/compare/cluely), [vs Screenpipe](https://tryharness.ai/compare/screenpipe)
- [Privacy policy](https://tryharness.ai/privacy): what data is and is not collected

## Community

- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/tryharness)
- [Discord](https://discord.gg/Dk5WWgP6Hh)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/TryHarness)