Summary :

Enhance the Harness HTTP step to support built‑in Base64 encoding for Basic Authentication credentials (username:password).

Problem :

Currently, Harness HTTP steps do not provide a built‑in mechanism to Base64‑encode credentials (e.g., username:password) at runtime.

This creates challenges when integrating with APIs (such as ServiceNow / ServiceFirst) that require strict Basic Authentication : Basic configuration, resulting in HTTP 401 Unauthorized responses.

Because Harness expressions do not support string manipulation or encoding functions (e.g., concatenation or Base64 encoding), users are forced to:

Pre‑generate Base64 credentials outside Harness and store them as additional secrets, or

Fall back to ShellScript steps using tools like curl, reducing pipeline reliability, security posture, and maintainability.