Reusable AI capability

Evaluate Terraform Change Blast Radius

Apply a repeatable pre-apply assessment to a Terraform plan, tracing resource actions through state, dependencies, services, security boundaries, recovery requirements, and accountable release gates without executing the change.

This Skill packages a reusable way to use the linked Prompt or Workflow; Amo.ng does not run it for you.

Skill ID
AMO-S-000003
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Purpose

Give infrastructure and service owners a self-contained method for determining the real blast radius of a proposed Terraform change, identifying missing evidence and unsafe actions, and preparing an evidence-based apply, revise, or stop decision.

Required inputs

Have these details available before following the usage instructions.

  • Terraform plan output, relevant configuration, modules, provider requirements, and lock file
  • Exact workspace, backend, environment, Terraform version, configuration revision, plan command, options, mode, and timestamp
  • Intended change boundary and expected resource actions
  • State, drift, import, moved-resource, replacement, dependency, and ownership context
  • Service, traffic, data, identity, security, availability, compliance, and maintenance constraints
  • Deployment, backup, recovery, rollback, monitoring, and post-change verification procedures
  • Infrastructure owner, affected service owners, security reviewer where applicable, release owner, and acceptance criteria

How to use this Skill

When to use:
- Reviewing a Terraform plan before an authorized apply, replacement, or destructive action.
- Comparing an updated plan after configuration, module, provider, workspace, or state changes.
- Investigating drift, hidden dependencies, state risk, or uncertain service impact before a release decision.

When not to use:
- Executing terraform apply, destroy, import, state mutation, force unlock, or cloud changes.
- Assessing infrastructure without a reproducible plan and enough configuration or environment context to establish its provenance.
- Replacing architecture, incident-response, or cloud-security review where no Terraform change is actually proposed.

Reusable blast-radius assessment:
1. Record plan provenance and confirm the approved change boundary: repository revision, Terraform and provider versions, backend, workspace, environment, command, options, mode, time, and plan freshness.
2. Classify every resource as create, update, replace, destroy, read, move, import, or unchanged, and identify sensitive or irreversible effects.
3. Trace direct and transitive dependencies across modules, data sources, providers, remote state, identities, networking, storage, compute, databases, queues, secrets, and external services.
4. Evaluate state and drift implications, address changes, lifecycle settings, unknown values, provider behavior, permission boundaries, and configuration-to-plan mismatches.
5. Map potential service, data, security, availability, compliance, cost, and operational effects to the affected owners.
6. Separate confirmed plan evidence from hypotheses, unknowns, uninspected artifacts, and checks that have not run.
7. Define the smallest safe change sequence, pre-apply checks, backup or recovery prerequisites, stop conditions, rollback or restoration options, and post-apply reconciliation.
8. Issue an apply-ready, revise-and-replan, or stop decision for the release owner, with any security-sensitive conclusion routed to the security reviewer.

Expected output:
A plan-provenance record, resource-action register, dependency and blast-radius map, state and drift findings, service and security impact assessment, evidence gaps, risk priorities, pre-apply gate, recovery matrix, post-apply checks, and one explicit release recommendation.

Constraints and accountability:
- This Skill assesses evidence; it does not authorize or execute Terraform or cloud changes.
- Do not claim plan commands, tests, backups, applies, rollbacks, or post-change checks occurred without corresponding records.
- Do not expose secrets or unrestricted state and plan data.
- Apply authority remains with the release owner; infrastructure and service owners confirm operational impact, and the security reviewer resolves security-sensitive findings where applicable.
- Use AMO-P-000234 as grounding and as a deeper assessment worksheet where useful.

Powered by an Amo.ng Prompt

Terraform Change Blast-Radius Assessment

Open the linked prompt to use the instructions that power this Skill.

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Completion criteria

Complete when:
- Plan provenance, environment, workspace, revision, command, mode, age, and intended change boundary are recorded.
- Created, updated, replaced, destroyed, moved, imported, and unknown actions are identified.
- Direct and transitive resource, state, service, data, security, and operational effects are mapped or explicitly unresolved.
- Every material finding distinguishes evidence from hypothesis and names the affected owner, required check, and decision impact.
- Pre-apply checks, stop conditions, recovery or rollback options, post-apply verification, and measurable acceptance criteria are defined.
- The final state is apply-ready, revise-and-replan, or stop; no execution is represented as completed.

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