> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://developer.harness.io/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://developer.harness.io/harness-platform/3.0/harness-platform-resources/pipelines/failure-handling/mark-as-failed.md).

# Mark stage as failed

You can mark a specific stage as failed during pipeline execution by selecting the `Mark Stage As Failed` option.

Marking a stage as failed lets you:

* Abort a step that is running that you need to stop.
* Trigger a configured failure strategy after the step is aborted.

After marking a stage as failed, Harness aborts any currently-running delegate tasks.

### Requirements <a href="#requirements" id="requirements"></a>

* You must have `Execute` pipeline permission to be able to mark as stage as failed.
* You must enable `Allow users to mark a running Step as failure` in your Harness account's [default settings](/harness-ai/use-harness-platform/settings/default-settings.md).

### Configure failure strategy <a href="#configure-failure-strategy" id="configure-failure-strategy"></a>

Failure strategies define the actions to take when a stage fails. You can configure failure strategies for different failure conditions.

If a stage marked as failed has no specified failure strategy, Harness uses the default failure strategy.

To configure a failure strategy for manual stage failure:

1. In your pipeline, select the stage where you want to configure a failure strategy.
2. Select the **Advanced** tab.
3. Under **Failure Strategy**, select **Add**.
4. For **On failure of type**, select **User Marked Failure**.
5. For **Perform Action**, select the desired action to take when the stage is marked as failed, such as **Rollback** or **Retry**.
6. Select **Save**.

### Mark a stage as failed <a href="#mark-a-stage-as-failed" id="mark-a-stage-as-failed"></a>

To mark a stage as failed during pipeline execution:

1. [Go to the execution details](/harness-ai/use-harness-platform/pipelines/executions-and-logs/view-and-compare-pipeline-executions.md) for a currently-running pipeline.
2. Select the stage you want to mark as failed, and select **Mark Stage As Failed**.
3. Select **Confirm**.

In the execution history, the stage's **Error Summary** reports `User Initiated Failure`, and the stage's failure type is `USER_MARKED_FAILURE`.

{% hint style="info" %}
**PARALLEL STAGES**

If you need to fail multiple stages running parallel, you must select **Mark Stage as Failed** for each parallel stage.

If you only mark one of the parallel stages as failed, the other stages must complete before the failure strategy applies for the failed stage.
{% endhint %}