Terraform Patterns

Terraform's docs cover syntax; they don't cover layout. This skill is the layout. Optimized for small-to-medium teams (1–20 engineers) running on AWS, GCP, or Azure.

When to use

• New Terraform repo from scratch.
• Adding a second/third environment (staging → prod, or multi-region).
• Refactoring a single-main.tf-with-1000-lines repo.
• Setting up CI/CD for Terraform.

When NOT to use

• Massive enterprise (500+ engineers) — go read Gruntwork's IAC patterns.
• You're using Pulumi or CDKTF — different idioms.
• One-off scripts — Terraform's overhead isn't worth it for "spin up an EC2 once."

Decisions made for you