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A Harbor task is an instruction, environment, and test script. The task is defined as a directory of files with the following structure:
Environments can be defined using any spec, as long as the consumer of the task (e.g. Harbor framework) supports it. Popular specs include Dockerfile, docker-compose.yaml (for multi-container environments), and Apptainer.def (for HPCs).

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Trials

A Harbor trial is an agent’s attempt at completing a task. The diagram below shows how the components of a task are used in a trial.

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Rewards

A task defines the logic to verify the completion of the instruction and produce a reward in the tests/test.sh script. The script must produce a numerical reward in the environment at /logs/verifier/reward.txt or /logs/verifier/reward.json (for multi-dimensional or labeled rewards).

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Independent, isolated, and reproducible

Harbor tasks are independent, isolated, reproducible pieces of code. Harbor tasks have no dependency on the Harbor framework. They can easily be plugged into any framework that supports the Harbor format. However, the Harbor framework is a simple way to start running tasks at scale. Think of tasks like software packages that should be self-contained, verisioned, maintained, and developed over time.

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Task components

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Multi-step tasks

Harbor tasks can be split into multiple steps, each with its own instruction, tests, and solution. Multi-step tasks are great for defining milestones in long-horizon tasks, testing continual learning methods like memory, and observing an agent’s ability to build on its prior work. See multi-step tasks for a detailed overview.