Release Note
Last verified 27 Oct 2026
DigitalOcean Harness Runtime can start a sandbox with no harness in it. Set harness: none in the environment spec, and the session boots the base image with a general-purpose toolchain and nothing running. You run commands with doctl harness-runtime exec, move files with upload and download, and reach services with port-forward. This option is available through doctl and the API. To create one, see How to Run a Sandbox on DigitalOcean Harness Runtime.
The environment spec field that selects the adapter is now named harness. The previous name, agent, is still accepted, so existing spec files and Environment Configs work without changes. A spec can set one of the two, but not both. See the Environment Spec Reference.