most of my day is mundane things that don't really change me
Don't 'really change' you or don't change you at all? Are you the sum your experiences?
it's behavior does change, just not permanently.
It does not change, ever. From the moment it starts processing, to the moment it finishes processing, it is still the same model. It has access to all of its input the moment it's brought into existence, it doesn't experience the prompt linearly, the input is it's raison d'être.
whole system like model + harness + files
I would generally agree that a llm could be part of a larger system capable of experiencing things and having difficult conversations about it, but I don't think these harnesses are it. They are very simple systems, compared to the llms they control. I think emergent behavior would require something much more complex, given what we know about life.