DeepSeek’s Harness AI Framework Surges to 1.54 Million Users in Less Than Three Months
DeepSeek’s Harness artificial intelligence agent framework has achieved 1.54 million daily active users in less than three months since its launch, according to the company’s announcement on November 9. This rapid growth highlights the emerging competition between leading Chinese and American AI companies.
As of November 4, users of Harness through the company’s official application programming interface were consuming approximately 92 trillion tokens daily, equivalent to about 1.1 billion tokens per second.
A “harness” refers to the software infrastructure that transforms a large language model into an AI agent capable of autonomously executing tasks on behalf of users, rather than merely responding to prompts.
American companies OpenAI and Anthropic have utilized their early advantages in developing harnesses to create their industry-leading coding products, Codex and Claude Code, respectively.
DeepSeek’s Harness went live on August 13, followed by a desktop application on September 29, enabling developers to run AI agents that can execute code and utilize external software for task execution.
The company reported that the number of third-party plug-ins has grown to around 35,000 since the launch, with approximately 60 percent of active users having built or installed at least one plug-in.
According to Cui Tianyi, a former Jane Street engineer who joined the Harness team in March, the goal is for DeepSeek’s Harness to function as an operating system for the agent era. Cui compared Harness to a smartphone operating system that includes tools like an alarm clock and calculator while allowing developers to integrate alternative functions through third-party plug-ins.
One community-built plug-in combines tools for reading, highlighting, and translating academic papers, enabling users to ask an AI agent questions about the material. Another plug-in provides developers with insights into the information an agent is using and how that evolves throughout a conversation.
DeepSeek plans to establish a marketplace where developers can publish plug-ins and users can discover them. The company is also developing a support program that will offer token grants, technical discussions, and promotional assistance for developers.
Furthermore, DeepSeek is focusing on monetizing its powerful foundation models and established its first product division last month, led by Cui, as reported by Chinese media outlet The Paper.
Source: SCMP Tech (Asia)