Infrastructure as code

The value of IaC is that the configuration is the truth: reviewable, reproducible, and revertible. That value evaporates the moment someone changes something in the console, because now the code describes a system that does not exist.

Every change goes through the code. No exceptions for "just this once" or "it's urgent" — the urgent manual fix is precisely how state drifts and how the next change destroys something.

For Terraform specifics — state layout, plan symbols, the operations that force replacement, drift detection, and imports — read references/terraform.md.

1. Read the plan, every time

The plan is the review. Never apply without reading it, and never let a pipeline apply without a human having read it for anything stateful.