Harness Automation

Universal patterns for Harness platform operations. Project-agnostic — all account/org/project IDs come from environment or explicit arguments.

Tool preference order

mcp__harness__* tools (if MCP harness is installed — preferred).
hc CLI (fallback for local dev).
REST API via curl (last resort).

MCP tool surface

mcp__harness__harness_list          # List resources (pipelines, PRs, deployments, repos)
mcp__harness__harness_get           # Get specific resource
mcp__harness__harness_describe      # Detailed description
mcp__harness__harness_execute       # Trigger pipeline
mcp__harness__harness_status        # Execution status
mcp__harness__harness_search        # Cross-resource search
mcp__harness__harness_create        # Create resource
mcp__harness__harness_update        # Modify
mcp__harness__harness_delete        # Remove
mcp__harness__harness_diagnose      # Troubleshoot failures
mcp__harness__harness_schema        # Pull schemas for YAML authoring

Pipeline identity

Harness resource identifiers:

account — tenant-wide (env HARNESS_ACCOUNT).
org — organization (env HARNESS_ORG, default default).
project — logical grouping (passed per-call).
identifier — resource ID inside project.

Never hard-code these in scripts. Read from env or parameters.

ECR tag invariant (when applicable)

For services emitting container images: {service}-{version}-{sanitized-branch}-{short-sha}-{YYYYMMDDHHMMSS}

Immutable. Never :latest. Tag is computed by CI template, not by the caller.

Pipeline authoring — reuse first

Check repos/*/harness/templates/ (or equivalent shared-templates repo) for an existing template.
If found, reference via template: include — do not inline.
If not found and used in 3+ pipelines, promote the pattern to the template repo.

Common flows

Trigger pipeline + wait

mcp__harness__harness_execute
  project: <project>
  pipeline: <identifier>
  inputs: { branch: "feature/foo" }

# Poll status
mcp__harness__harness_status
  execution-id: <from previous>

List recent executions

mcp__harness__harness_list
  resource: executions
  project: <project>
  pipeline: <identifier>
  limit: 10

Create a PR

mcp__harness__harness_create
  resource: pull-request
  repo: <repo-identifier>
  source: <branch>
  target: main
  title: "..."
  body: "Refs <JIRA-KEY>"

PR-workflow pattern

Branch — git checkout -b <type>/<jira-key>-<slug>.
Commit — Conventional Commits; include Refs <JIRA-KEY> in body.
Push — git push -u origin <branch>.
Open PR — via harness_create or hc pr create.
CI — triggered automatically; monitor via harness_status.
Review — council agents (code-reviewer + security-auditor + infra-reviewer) fan out over the diff.
Merge — after green + approvals.

CI steps pattern

For PowerShell-based projects (e.g., tenant-management-kit):

steps:
  - step:
      type: Run
      name: Run all tests
      spec:
        command: pwsh -File tools/run-all-tests.ps1
  - step:
      type: Run
      name: Validate policies
      spec:
        command: pwsh -File tools/validate-all-policies.ps1

Safety rules

Never --no-verify.
Never force-push to main / master.
Never disable signing.
Never bypass hook blocks — fix the underlying issue.
Destructive ops (delete pipeline, delete repo, purge executions) require explicit user confirmation.

Troubleshooting

mcp__harness__harness_diagnose
  execution-id: <failed execution>

Returns structured failure analysis. For connector failures, check mcp__harness__harness_get resource: connectors — credentials expire silently.

skills/claude-code-automation — headless mode for CI gatekeepers.
skills/work-unit-protocol — Section 20 verification includes pipeline green.
plugin: harness-platform — installed separately, provides richer operations.

harness-automation