AWS launches open-source agent framework with 28% token cost reduction

AWS's Strands Agents team has released Strands Harness, an open-source agent framework designed to address common challenges developers face when transitioning from models like Claude Code or Codex to custom implementations. The framework, available for Python and TypeScript under Apache 2.0, offers a 28% reduction in token costs compared to other harnesses while maintaining comparable accuracy across six benchmarks. It supports local execution and deployment on major cloud providers, with built-in tools for generating deployment configurations. The framework's efficiency is attributed to its advanced context management and prompt caching features, which the team claims significantly improve both token efficiency and accuracy. Benchmarks conducted on Amazon EC2 using Harbor showed Strands Harness outperformed competitors like Claude Code and Codex in cost and accuracy, with the highest-scoring model achieving nearly 85% on Terminal-Bench 2.1. Despite DeepSeek Harness being the most token-efficient, it scored lower on all benchmarks, leading to the 28% cost savings figure mentioned in the report.