Skip to content
Latchkey

Harness "Trigger ... failed" in CI

A Harness trigger listens for a webhook or artifact event and starts a pipeline. "Trigger failed" means the event arrived but the trigger could not launch the run: conditions did not match, auth failed, or required runtime inputs were not supplied.

What this error means

The trigger activity page shows a failed trigger with a reason such as "conditions not met", "authentication failed", or "runtime input ... required" and no pipeline execution starts.

Harness
Trigger 'on-image-push' failed:
Payload conditions not met: <+trigger.payload.ref> did not match "refs/heads/main"

Common causes

Payload conditions did not match

Branch, tag, or JEXL payload conditions on the trigger excluded the incoming event, so the run is not created.

Auth failed or required inputs are missing

A bad webhook secret, or runtime inputs the pipeline requires but the trigger does not supply, fails the trigger.

How to fix it

Inspect the trigger activity

  1. Open the trigger's Activity History and read the failure reason.
  2. Adjust payload conditions to match the actual event fields.
  3. Supply any required runtime inputs in the trigger.

Fix webhook auth and inputs

Confirm the webhook secret/token matches, and that the trigger provides every runtime input the pipeline marks required.

How to prevent it

  • Keep trigger payload conditions aligned with your event source.
  • Supply all required runtime inputs in triggers.
  • Validate the webhook secret matches the git provider config.

Related guides

Tired of flaky CI? Latchkey auto-heals failed jobs and retries them for you. Start free →