Generate AWS access tokens from OIDC tokens

The AWS OIDC plugin lets you authenticate with AWS services using OIDC federation instead of long-lived access keys. This is useful in Harness CI pipelines running on Harness Cloud or self-hosted delegates where temporary credentials are preferred.

Prerequisites

• An AWS IAM Role configured with a federated identity provider using OIDC.
• OIDC configured in your AWS account (e.g., via IAM Identity Provider).
• The pipeline must be running in a context where Harness can issue an OIDC token (e.g., on a hosted delegate with OIDC enabled).
• This setup is supported on both Harness Cloud and Self-managed Kubernetes Infrastructure.

For more on configuring AWS for OIDC, refer to AWS OIDC setup.

Example Pipeline Usage

- step:
    type: Plugin
    name: assume-role-with-oidc
    identifier: assume_role_with_oidc
    spec:
      image: plugins/aws-oidc
      settings:
        role_arn: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/harness-ci-role
        role_session_name: foo # defaults to harness-aws-oidc
        duration: 3600 # in seconds

This step will use the injected OIDC token from Harness to authenticate with AWS and assume the specified role.

The plugin automatically sets the following environment variables for use in subsequent steps:

• AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID

• AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

• AWS_SESSION_TOKEN

Inputs

Key	Required	Description
iamRoleArn	✅ Yes	The ARN of the AWS IAM role to assume via OIDC.
oidcTokenId	✅ Yes	The OIDC token to exchange for temporary AWS credentials.
roleSessionName	❌ No	Optional name for the assumed role session. Defaults to harness-aws-oidc.
duration	❌ No	Optional duration (in seconds) for temporary credentials.
logLevel	❌ No	Optional log level (e.g. debug, info, warn).

Follow-up Usage

After this step, you can run AWS CLI or SDK-based commands in subsequent steps without having to manage access keys manually.

note

The AWS OIDC plugin does not export credentials as plain environment variables. Instead, it writes them as output secrets, which you can access in later steps using output variable expressions (for example, <+steps.STEP_ID.output.outputVariables.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>). These secrets are automatically masked in logs for security.

Example:

- step:
    type: Run
    name: Run AWS Command
    identifier: runAwsCommand
    spec:
      image: amazon/aws-cli
      shell: sh
      envVariables:
        AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: <+steps.assume_role_with_oidc.output.outputVariables.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID>
        AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: <+steps.assume_role_with_oidc.output.outputVariables.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY>
        AWS_SESSION_TOKEN: <+steps.assume_role_with_oidc.output.outputVariables.AWS_SESSION_TOKEN>
      command: aws s3 ls

Related Links

AWS OIDC plugin GitHub Repo

GCP OIDC Token Plugin