Harness Engineering Platform

What is Harness?

Harness is an AI-native software delivery platform that unifies CI/CD, feature flags, cloud cost management, security testing, and chaos engineering under one roof. It aims to eliminate the complexity of cobbling together separate tools (Jenkins + LaunchDarkly + Datadog + Chaos Monkey) for each part of the delivery lifecycle.

Harness was founded in 2017 by Jyoti Bansal (also founder of AppDynamics) and positions itself as the “next-generation DevOps platform” built with AI at its core — using AI to suggest pipelines, spot failures, and optimise deployments.

Key Modules

Harness CI (Continuous Integration)

Cloud-native build system with:

YAML-based pipeline definition
Test intelligence — AI identifies which tests to run based on code changes (skips unaffected tests)
Built-in caching for Docker, Maven, npm, Go modules
Native Kubernetes pod execution

pipeline:
  name: Build and Test
  stages:
    - stage:
        name: Build
        type: CI
        spec:
          cloneCodebase: true
          platform:
            os: Linux
            arch: Amd64
          runtime:
            type: Cloud
          execution:
            steps:
              - step:
                  type: Run
                  name: Build
                  spec:
                    command: |
                      dotnet restore
                      dotnet build --configuration Release
              - step:
                  type: Run
                  name: Test
                  spec:
                    command: dotnet test --no-build

Test Intelligence is a standout feature — it analyses the diff and only runs tests that could be affected by the change. Teams report 80%+ reduction in test time for large codebases.

Harness CD (Continuous Delivery)

Multi-cloud deployment with:

Canary, blue-green, rolling deployments out of the box
Automatic rollback on failed health checks
Native Kubernetes, ECS, Lambda, and VM deployments
Deployment verification using metrics from Prometheus, Datadog, New Relic

# CD stage with canary deployment
- stage:
    name: Deploy to Production
    type: Deployment
    spec:
      deploymentType: Kubernetes
      service:
        serviceRef: my-api-service
      environment:
        environmentRef: production
      execution:
        steps:
          - step:
              type: K8sCanaryDeploy
              spec:
                instanceSelection:
                  type: Count
                  spec:
                    count: 1           # deploy 1 pod first
          - step:
              type: Verify            # check metrics for 10 minutes
              spec:
                isMultiServicesOrEnvDeployment: false
          - step:
              type: K8sCanaryDelete   # remove canary, full rollout

Feature Flags

Harness Feature Flags (built on the OpenFeature standard) lets you:

Roll features out gradually (1% → 10% → 100%)
Target by user, segment, or environment
Kill-switch a broken feature instantly without a deploy
Run A/B experiments with metrics tracking

// TypeScript SDK
import { HarnessClient } from '@harnessio/ff-javascript-client-sdk';

const client = HarnessClient.initialize('sdk-key', {
  identifier: 'user-123',
  attributes: { plan: 'enterprise', region: 'eu' }
});

await client.waitForInitialization();

const newDashboardEnabled = client.variation('new_dashboard', false);
if (newDashboardEnabled) {
  renderNewDashboard();
} else {
  renderLegacyDashboard();
}

// .NET SDK
var client = new CfClient(sdkKey);
await client.InitializeAndWait();

bool newCheckoutEnabled = client.BoolVariation("new_checkout_flow", target, false);

Chaos Engineering

Harness Chaos Engineering (formerly LitmusChaos, which Harness acquired) lets you:

Inject failures into production-grade environments safely
Test resilience of Kubernetes workloads
Run chaos experiments as part of the CD pipeline

# Chaos experiment — kill a random pod
kind: ChaosEngine
metadata:
  name: pod-delete-experiment
spec:
  appinfo:
    appns: production
    applabel: app=payment-service
  chaosServiceAccount: litmus-admin
  experiments:
    - name: pod-delete
      spec:
        components:
          env:
            - name: TOTAL_CHAOS_DURATION
              value: "30"           # run for 30 seconds
            - name: CHAOS_INTERVAL
              value: "10"           # delete a pod every 10 seconds
            - name: FORCE
              value: "false"

Run chaos as a pipeline step to automatically validate resilience on every deploy.

Cloud Cost Management

Track, optimise, and forecast cloud spend:

Cost attribution by team, service, environment
Recommendations for right-sizing instances
Spot instance management and auto-migration
Budget alerts and anomaly detection

AI Features (AIDA — AI Development Assistant)

Harness AIDA (AI Development Assistant) is embedded throughout the platform:

Root cause analysis — AI explains why a pipeline failed
Pipeline generation — describe what you want, AIDA generates the YAML
Remediation suggestions — “Here’s what to fix and here’s the PR”
Log summarisation — summarise 10,000-line build logs into a 3-line diagnosis

Harness vs Alternatives

Feature	Harness	GitHub Actions	Jenkins	GitLab CI
CI/CD	✅ Unified	CI only (CD via Actions)	CI only (CD via plugins)	✅ Unified
Feature Flags	✅ Built-in	❌	❌	❌
Chaos Engineering	✅ Built-in	❌	❌	Limited
Cost Management	✅ Built-in	❌	❌	❌
AI assistance	✅ AIDA	✅ Copilot	❌	✅ Duo
Hosted runners	✅	✅	Self-hosted	✅
Open source	Partial	Partial	✅	Partial
Learning curve	Steep	Moderate	Very steep	Moderate
Cost	Enterprise pricing	Free tier generous	Free	Free tier

When to choose Harness:

Enterprise teams wanting a single platform for the full delivery lifecycle
Large codebases where test intelligence saves significant CI time
Teams that need built-in feature flags and chaos engineering without extra tools

When GitHub Actions or GitLab CI is better:

Smaller teams where the simpler YAML and marketplace of actions is sufficient
Teams already deeply invested in the GitHub/GitLab ecosystem
Budget-conscious teams (Harness enterprise pricing can be significant)

Getting Started

Sign up at harness.io — free tier available
Connect your Git provider (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket)
Create your first pipeline using the visual editor or YAML
Add a CD stage pointing to your Kubernetes cluster or cloud
Enable Test Intelligence on your CI stage

# Install Harness Delegate (required for Kubernetes deployments)
helm repo add harness https://harness.github.io/helm-delegate
helm install harness-delegate harness/harness-delegate \
  --set delegateToken=YOUR_TOKEN \
  --set accountId=YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID \
  --namespace harness-delegate-ng \
  --create-namespace