Chaos Experiment

Chaos Experiment

Create, edit, and answer reference questions about Harness Chaos Experiments — faults, probes, actions, and the underlying ChaosExperiment manifest — via MCP.

MANDATORY — Tool Result Verification:

• NEVER claim a tool call succeeded without an explicit success response from the tool.
• NEVER fabricate, assume, or pre-empt tool results. If you called a tool and did not receive a confirmed result, say so and retry.
• When a tool returns a review/elicitation prompt (e.g., "Waiting for user to review before update..."), the user's approval does NOT mean the operation completed. You MUST wait for the follow-up tool response confirming execution before reporting success.
• If the tool response is ambiguous or missing, tell the user honestly and offer to retry.

Instructions

Step 1: Establish scope

Before any harness_list, harness_get, harness_create, harness_update, or harness_execute call in this skill, establish org/project scope using the repo-wide playbook at references/scope-establishment.md:

• Parse org / project from the user's message or a pasted Harness UI URL first.
• Ask only for what is missing — do not re-ask for values already known.
• Restate the active scope (e.g. org=default, project=payments) before the first mutating call.
• Never assume a default org/project unless the user explicitly confirms it.

Step 2: Route before acting

Choose the first matching entry route below. Read that entry file first; it may direct you to read additional shared references later.

• Reference question — the user asks how a fault, probe, action, target workload, tunable, vertex, manifest field, or YAML structure works, without asking to create or modify an experiment: Read references/components.md. No scaffolded YAML is required for a reference-only answer.
• Existing experiment — the user explicitly asks to edit, update, modify, change, rename, fix, remove from, or add to an existing experiment, says the experiment already exists, or provides an existing experiment UUID: Read references/edit.md. Preserve experimentId and identity. Do not generate a new UUID. Saving an edit reuses harness_create as an upsert — chaos_experiment has no separate update operation; do not call harness_update for this resource type.
• New experiment — the user asks to create, build, set up, make, design, or launch a new experiment: Read references/create.md. This route still applies when the user supplies the desired name for the new experiment. Generate a new UUID; do not load an existing experiment.
• Unsure — ask: "Would you like to create a new chaos experiment, edit an existing one, or ask a reference question about experiment YAML/components?"

Fault / probe / action add-remove mechanics live in references/components.md. Create and edit flows read it after working YAML exists; reference-only questions may read it directly.

For ChaosFault / ChaosProbe / ChaosAction / Chaos steps in a pipeline or DRTest stage, stop and use chaos-dr-test instead.

Examples

• "Create a pod-delete chaos experiment on my checkout-service" -> route to references/create.md
• "Add an HTTP probe to my test-exp-007 experiment" -> route to references/edit.md
• "Edit the experiment with UUID 218b1053-..., remove the CPU hog fault" -> route to references/edit.md
• "What does the vertices array in a ChaosExperiment manifest mean?" -> route to references/components.md (reference-only, no YAML changes)
• "How do I target a workload by labels instead of name?" -> route to references/components.md

Performance Notes

• Do not guess fault, probe, or action identities, infrastructure IDs, or runtime variable names. Always call the matching harness_list / harness_get / harness_execute(action="get_variables") and use the returned values.
• Validate the manifest against the YAML Validation Rules in references/components.md before presenting it or saving — no duplicate keys, no orphan vertices references, no blank lines.
• Wait for the tool's confirmed save response before reporting success; a review/elicitation prompt is not a completed save.
• Not covered by this skill: running an experiment, listing existing experiments, or inspecting run results. Use the Chaos MCP tools directly — harness_execute(resource_type="chaos_experiment", action="run", resource_id="<experiment_id>", ...), harness_list(resource_type="chaos_experiment_run", ...), harness_get(resource_type="chaos_experiment_run", resource_id="<run_id>", ...).

Troubleshooting

• Experiment fails to save / validation error — call harness_describe(resource_type="chaos_experiment") to check the authoritative create body schema, fix the offending field, and retry.
• No enterprise or custom faults returned — confirm the selected infrastructure type (Kubernetes -> KubernetesV2, Linux, Windows) matches the fault's supported infrastructure; re-run harness_list(resource_type="chaos_fault", ...) with the corrected infrastructure filter.
• Target workload discovery returns empty — the chaos infrastructure's Service Discovery agent may not have scanned the namespace yet; ask the user to verify the infrastructure is ACTIVE and isChaosEnabled: true before retrying discovered_service / discovered_namespace calls.
• Ambiguous create vs. edit intent — if the user's request could mean either, ask explicitly per Step 2 above rather than guessing; creating a duplicate experiment is harder to undo than asking one clarifying question.