The Six Commands: Terraform Core Workflow

Lesson 2 of 14 · 9 min · Beginner

Terraform manages infrastructure as code through a small, disciplined set of commands. Each one has a single job — formatting, validating, planning, or applying — and together they form the loop every Terraform project runs on, from a first init to a final destroy.

Read Before You Write

Terraform never touches your infrastructure blindly. Every change passes through a preview stage first — that's the core discipline the workflow enforces: describe, then preview, then apply, never skip straight to the last step.

init · fmt · validate · plan

These four commands read your configuration and, at most, your provider APIs. None of them create, modify, or delete a single real resource.

apply · destroy

Only these two commands change actual infrastructure — and both stop to ask for typed confirmation before doing so, unless you pass -auto-approve.

The Six Commands

01 / SETUP

terraform init

Initializes a project: downloads provider plugins, pulls in modules, creates the .terraform/ directory, and configures the backend.

run when First use, after changing providers/backend, or after cloning a repo.

$ terraform init

Initializing provider plugins...
- Finding hashicorp/aws...
Terraform has been successfully initialized!

02 / PREVIEW

terraform plan

Compares current infrastructure against your configuration and shows exactly what would be created, modified, or destroyed. Nothing is changed.

mental model "Here's what I'm going to do. Is it okay?"

$ terraform plan

+ aws_instance.web

Plan: 1 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.

terraform apply

Reads the configuration, generates a plan, asks for confirmation, then executes the changes for real.

CI/CD Skip the prompt with terraform apply -auto-approve.

$ terraform apply

Do you want to perform these actions?

Enter a value: yes

terraform destroy

Deletes every resource Terraform manages for this configuration. Asks for confirmation the same way apply does.

caution Use carefully, especially in production. -auto-approve skips the prompt.

$ terraform destroy

Destroy complete!
Resources: 5 destroyed.

05 / STYLE

terraform fmt

Automatically rewrites your .tf files to Terraform's standard style — consistent spacing, aligned = signs, cleaner reviews.

main.tf

resource "aws_instance" "web" {
  ami           = "ami-123"
  instance_type = "t2.micro"
}

06 / CHECK

terraform validate

Checks that your configuration is syntactically valid — required arguments, block structure, and references. It never contacts your cloud provider.

tip Run this before plan to catch mistakes early.

$ terraform validate

Success! The configuration is valid.
Error: Missing required argument

The Typical Workflow

Write Terraform code
↓
terraform fmt
↓
terraform validate
↓
terraform init
↓
terraform plan
↓
terraform apply
↓
Infrastructure Created
↓
terraform destroy (when no longer needed)

terminal

terminalEND TO END

$ terraform fmt && terraform validate
$ terraform init
$ terraform plan
$ terraform apply

Quick Summary

Command	Purpose	Changes Infrastructure?
`terraform init`	Initialize project, download providers/modules	No
`terraform fmt`	Format Terraform code	No
`terraform validate`	Validate configuration syntax	No
`terraform plan`	Preview proposed changes	No
`terraform apply`	Create or update infrastructure	Yes
`terraform destroy`	Delete managed infrastructure	Yes