Chaos Experiment

Create and manage chaos experiments using Harness Chaos Engineering via MCP.

Instructions

Step 1: Check Infrastructure

Call MCP tool: harness_list
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_infrastructure"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Step 2: Browse Templates

Call MCP tool: harness_list
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment_template"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Step 3: List Existing Experiments

Call MCP tool: harness_list
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Step 4: Create Experiment

Call MCP tool: harness_create
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"
  body: <experiment definition>

Step 5: Run Experiment

Call MCP tool: harness_execute
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment"
  action: "run"
  resource_id: "<experiment_id>"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Step 6: Monitor Results

Call MCP tool: harness_list
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment_run"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Get specific run details:

Call MCP tool: harness_get
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_experiment_run"
  resource_id: "<run_id>"

Step 7: Check Probes

Call MCP tool: harness_list
Parameters:
  resource_type: "chaos_probe"
  org_id: "<organization>"
  project_id: "<project>"

Common Experiment Types

• Pod Delete - Kill pods to test recovery
• Pod CPU Hog - Stress CPU to test throttling
• Pod Memory Hog - Consume memory to test OOM handling
• Pod Network Loss - Simulate network failures
• Pod Network Latency - Add artificial latency
• Node Drain - Drain K8s nodes
• EC2 Stop - Stop AWS EC2 instances
• ECS Task Stop - Stop ECS tasks

Chaos Resource Types

Examples

• “Show me all chaos experiments” - List chaos_experiment
• “Create a pod-delete experiment for checkout-service” - Create chaos_experiment
• “Run the weekly resilience test” - Execute run action
• “What were the results of the last chaos run?” - Get chaos_experiment_run

Performance Notes

• Review existing experiments before creating duplicates. Check for similar fault types targeting the same service.
• Wait for experiment completion before analyzing results. Do not draw conclusions from partial runs.
• Verify the target infrastructure and service are healthy before running chaos experiments.

Troubleshooting

Experiment Won’t Run

• Verify chaos infrastructure is connected and active
• Check target application/namespace exists
• Ensure RBAC permissions for chaos operations

Probes Failing

• Check probe endpoints are accessible
• Verify probe timeout settings
• Review probe type matches expected behavior