For Ethereum software, Hardhat is a development environment. Using Hardhat, you can edit, compile, debug, and deploy your smart contracts and dApps using the different components, all of which work together as a development environment.

Hardhat Runner is one of the main components you interact with when utilizing Hardhat. A flexible and extensible task runner, it manages and automates the recurring tasks entailed in the development of smart contracts and decentralized applications.

• Hardhat is used via a local installation in your project. This way, your environment will be reproducible, and there will be no issues related to future version conflicts.
• Installing Hardhat is an easy task, and it only takes a few minutes.
• Solidity stack traces, error messages, and console.log are provided by Hardhat when debugging Solidity transactions.

• Fast iteration
• Debugging-First
• Plugin Ecosystem
• Highly Flexible
• Customizable