Terraform preset

A reasoning guide the onboard flow uses for Terraform (and OpenTofu) projects. It is a checklist, not a template — detected reality wins.

Signals

• *.tf files — commonly main.tf, variables.tf, outputs.tf, providers.tf — plus a .terraform.lock.hcl and reusable code under modules/.
• A backend block (remote state: S3, GCS, Terraform/Tofu Cloud) and one or more provider blocks.

What to reason about

• The real gate: terraform fmt -check, terraform validate, tflint, and terraform plan — captured verbatim (tofu if OpenTofu is in use).
• How environments are separated — workspaces vs per-environment directories (envs/dev, envs/prod) vs *.tfvars files.
• Module boundaries, provider/version pinning, and where backend state and secrets live.

Notes

Plan is read-only; apply mutates infrastructure — never run it as a validation gate. Note OpenTofu as a drop-in variant of the Terraform CLI.