Atmos Stack Configuration

Stacks are YAML configuration files that define which components to deploy, with what settings, and how they relate to each other. They separate configuration from infrastructure code, enabling the same Terraform root modules to be deployed across many environments with different settings.

What Stacks Are

A stack manifest is a YAML file that declares components and their configuration for a specific combination of organization, tenant, account, region, and stage. Atmos discovers stack manifests based on included_paths and excluded_paths in atmos.yaml, then deep-merges all imported configurations to produce the final resolved state for each component.

Stacks are not Terraform workspaces, although Atmos derives workspace names from stack names. A single stack manifest can configure multiple components, and a single component can appear across many stacks with different variable values.

Stack Discovery

Atmos discovers stack manifests based on included_paths and excluded_paths configured in the stacks section of atmos.yaml. For the complete atmos.yaml configuration reference, see the atmos-config skill.

Stack Name Precedence

Atmos resolves the stack name using this priority (highest first):