The Before-Yes Check

From the episode: Terraform Plan and Apply: How I Took a Live App Down

Terraform shows you a plan of everything it is about to do, and nothing happens until you type yes. This page is the four things to find in that plan before you type it, whether you wrote the Terraform file yourself or ChatGPT or Gemini wrote it for you.

• What it is: a one-page check for one Terraform plan: one word, one count, one name, and anything left blank, then a yes or a message to your team.
• Who fills it in: whoever is about to type yes, including somebody new to cloud who has never run terraform apply on a shared system before.
• When: after terraform plan (or terraform apply) shows the plan, and before you type yes. Fill in a fresh page for every plan.
• Time: a couple of minutes on a small plan. Longer on a big one, and that is time well spent.

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