# INTENT > Why rein-openweights exists, its boundary, and what it must never > become. Established by glas-harness > `docs/adr/ADR-001-rein-harness-family.md`. ## Why it exists Every current agent harness in the ecosystem (Claude Code, Grok CLI, Codex/GPT CLI) is a frontier-model-vendor harness: it only drives that vendor's own model. There is no way to run a current open-weight model through an equivalent agentic tool-use loop (plan → tool call → observe → repeat, with a bounded tool policy) without building one from scratch per occasion. rein-openweights exists to be that harness: one agentic loop, model supplied via OpenRouter, usable anywhere a rein-aharness-equivalent session is wanted but a frontier-vendor dependency is not — cost-sensitive workloads, offline/degraded-network tolerance, or simply comparing open-weight model capability against frontier baselines on the same task. ## Governing principle It is a **rein** — a concrete harness backend under glas-harness's router, implementing the same harness contract as `rein-aharness` (session lifecycle, tool dispatch + policy, sandbox consumption via sand-boxer, State Hub reporting). It does not reimplement any of that framework machinery itself; glas-harness owns the contract, this repo owns the open-weight-model-specific agentic loop and tool execution. ## What it must never become - **Not a model router.** Choosing which OpenRouter model to use for a given task, pricing, and fallback is a caller/config concern (`--model`), not logic this repo owns. `llm-connect` remains available as an optional dependency for future needs (structured-JSON side calls, diagnostics/replay) but is not load-bearing for the base agentic loop — see glas-harness ADR-002 and `src/rein_openweights/openrouter_client.py`. - **Not a second harness framework.** Session semantics, tool policy schema, sandbox consumption, and audit reporting are glas-harness's contract (`GLAS-WP-0001-T01`) — this repo implements it, not forks it. - **Not a sandbox provisioner.** Isolation comes from sand-boxer via glas-harness, the same as every other rein. - **Not tenant-specific logic.** Anything specific to one consumer belongs in that consumer's configuration, not hardcoded here. ## Status Minimal agentic loop implemented and unit-tested (26 tests, all mocked at the network/subprocess boundary): tool surface, OpenRouter client, credential acquisition, commit-verified success criterion, State Hub reporting. See `workplans/REIN-OW-WP-0001-bootstrap.md`. **Live-proven (2026-07-26):** run for real through glas-harness's gateway (`glas_harness.reins.rein_openweights.ReinOpenWeights`) inside a real `ext.bwrap` sandbox, against the real OpenRouter API (`qwen/qwen-2.5-72b-instruct`) — a 2-turn tool-calling loop produced a real, verified git commit. Credential reused the `OPENROUTER_API_KEY` already present in the environment (the same one llm-connect resolves), via this repo's own `credentials.py` env-var short-circuit — no OpenBao round trip needed for this run. The glas-harness adapter (`glas_harness/reins/rein_openweights.py`, mirroring `reins/rein_aharness.py`) now exists and is what performed this run. **`GLAS-WP-0002-T02` closed (2026-07-27):** the OpenBao AppRole/vault credential path (`credentials.py`'s `_acquire_token`/`bao kv get` branch) is now live-verified, not just unit-tested against mocks. `ops-mason` built the real infrastructure (AppRole `rein-openweights`, policy, `reins/rein-openweights/openrouter` KV v2 path); the founder completed provisioning; a real task ran with `OPENROUTER_API_KEY` explicitly unset — real AppRole login, real KV v2 read, real OpenRouter call, real commit. See `ops-mason/plans/rein-openweights-openrouter-approle.md` for the full build record, including two real bugs (a KV v2 policy path shape mistake, a missing admin-policy entry for the new mount) found and fixed by actually running this end to end rather than stopping at mocks.