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Harness Solutions Factory (HSF) Overview

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Harness Solutions Factory (HSF) is an automation framework that deploys and manages Harness platform resources through self-service workflows, governed templates, and Infrastructure as Code. It gives platform engineering teams a repeatable foundation for onboarding teams to Harness at scale, without requiring each team to configure their own pipelines, projects, or environments from scratch.

Key Capabilities​

  • Self-service workflows: Development teams can request Harness resources — projects, pipelines, environments — through IDP workflow. No direct platform or Terraform knowledge is required.
  • IaC-backed governance: Every resource HSF creates is backed by a Terraform workspace in IaCM. Changes go through plan-and-approve cycles, and drift is surfaced in the IDP catalog.
  • Out-of-the-box templates: HSF ships with pre-built templates for common platform operations: project setup, CI pipeline onboarding, security scanning, build farm configuration, and delegate management.
  • Managed updates: When Harness releases new versions of HSF, a scheduled pipeline creates a pull request in the harness-solutions-factory and harness-template-library repos. You review and merge on your timeline — nothing auto-applies.

Core Concepts​

1. Self-Service Workflows​

Workflows are the user-facing entry point to HSF. A user selects a workflow in IDP, fills out some details, and submits. HSF then triggers a pipeline that creates the requested resource, registers it in the IDP catalog, and optionally gates on an approval before applying the changes. Users can watch the execution in real time and access outputs directly from the catalog entry once provisioning is complete.

Example workflows include:

  • Deploy Harness SAST & SCA Templates
  • Harness Project Setup
  • Deploy Harness CI Golden Standard Templates

2. Harness Template Library​

Harness Template Library houses all the templates that are created by Harness. They reflect best practices validated by the Harness Center of Excellence (CoE) and implementation engineering team. These templates serve as the foundation for all workflows created through HSF.

This repository is stored in Harness Code Repository and is copied over locally when you first deploy HSF.

3. Custom Harness Template Library​

Custom Harness Template Library houses all the templates that are customized and created by your organization. You can make a copy of the templates that are provided by Harness and change it to meet your software needs.

This repository is stored in Harness Code Repository and is copied over locally when you first deploy HSF.

4. Factory Floors​

The different operating modes allows usage of HSF with and without Harness IDP.

tip

Which operating mode should I use?

Core+IDP: The default, traditional model — use if you have Harness IDP licensed and/or want the full self-service portal experience.

Core+Hub: Use if you want to remove the Harness IDP dependency (available in v2.4+) — Hub provides the workflow layer via chained pipelines and ABAC.

Core+Backstage: Use if your organization already has Backstage or another internal developer portal and wants to connect it via API.

HSF Core are the core 12 pipelines of Harness Solutions Factory

HSF Core + Harness IDP​

This operating model is the traditional model and the only one that has been supported till now. It leverages Harness IDP features to execute workflows, run pipeline stages and control RBAC.

HSF Core + HSF Hub​

This operating model is new with HSF 2.4. Removing the dependency on Harness IDP, HSF Hub is a new project that gets created to house all of the best practice templates from Custom Template Library. It runs a chained pipeline from this project and is controlled by ABAC.

HSF Core + Backstage (or BYO API Connector)​

This operating model is new with HSF 2.4. It allows you to bring your own form of Backstage or API to trigger a HSF Core pipeline.

Next Steps​

HSF is delivered as part of an existing Professional Services package at no additional cost. If your organization is interested in getting started, reach out to your Harness account team — they'll confirm your eligibility and coordinate the deployment process.

Prerequisites​

Before HSF can be deployed, confirm the following:

  • The IDP, IaCM, and Harness Code Repository modules are enabled on your account. If you don't have these licensed, Harness can provide a limited license to cover HSF usage for managing Harness entities.
  • You have an account with admin-level permissions, or can coordinate with someone who does to generate a temporary Personal Access Token (PAT). This token is used to create account-level resources during deployment and can be deleted afterward.
  • No account-level OPA policies are in place that would block pipeline execution.

What to expect​

Once prerequisites are confirmed, someone from the Professional Services team will guide you through the deployment. The process creates a dedicated Harness Platform Management organization in your account along with all the core pipelines, workspaces, repositories, and user groups HSF needs to operate. You can review exactly what gets created in Created Resources.