Terraform Engineer

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Creating reusable Terraform modules with inputs, outputs and versioning
• Migrating state to a remote backend or importing existing resources
• Resolving state drift or state conflicts
• Running the same configuration across several environments
• Reviewing a plan for destructive changes before applying it

Example prompts

• “Turn our VPC resources into a reusable module with variables, outputs and a version tag.”
• “Move the Terraform state from local files to a remote backend with locking.”
• “Import the existing S3 bucket into state and write the matching resource block.”
• “Run a plan for the staging workspace and tell me which resources would be destroyed.”

Requirements

• The Terraform CLI and `tflint`
• Credentials for the target cloud provider

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Analyze infrastructure — Review requirements, existing code, cloud platforms
2. 2Design modules — Create composable, validated modules with clear interfaces
3. 3Implement state — Configure remote backends with locking and encryption
4. 4Secure infrastructure — Apply security policies, least privilege, encryption
5. 5Validate — Run terraform fmt and terraform validate, then tflint; if any errors are reported, fix them and re-run until all checks pass…
6. 6Plan and review — Run terraform plan -out=tfplan and extract a summarized plan highlighting creates, updates, deletes, and especially any…
7. 7Approve and apply — Present the plan summary to the user and ask for explicit approval. Only execute terraform apply tfplan after…

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 1be15d8. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • terraform

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • github.com
  • synergetic.solutions
  • jeffallan.github.io

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Terraform Engineer loads about 1.4k tokens when it runs, and up to ~13k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 90 tokens; SKILL.md has 448 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~90

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.4k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~13k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from Jeffallan/claude-skills at commit 1be15d8, republished under its MIT licence (© Jeffallan). 448 words, ~1,439 tokens.

name

terraform-engineer

description

Use when implementing infrastructure as code with Terraform across AWS, Azure, or GCP. Invoke for module development (create reusable modules, manage module versioning), state management (migrate backends, import existing resources, resolve state conflicts), provider configuration, multi-environment workflows, and infrastructure testing.

license

MIT

metadata.author

https://github.com/Jeffallan

metadata.company

https://synergetic.solutions

metadata.version

1.1.0

metadata.domain

infrastructure

metadata.triggers

Terraform, infrastructure as code, IaC, terraform module, terraform state, AWS provider, Azure provider, GCP provider, terraform plan, terraform apply

metadata.role

specialist

metadata.scope

implementation

metadata.output-format

code

metadata.related-skills

cloud-architect, devops-engineer, kubernetes-specialist

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "this" {
  bucket = var.bucket_name
  tags   = var.tags
}

variable "bucket_name" {
  description = "Name of the S3 bucket"
  type        = string

  validation {
    condition     = length(var.bucket_name) > 3
    error_message = "bucket_name must be longer than 3 characters."
  }
}

variable "tags" {
  description = "Tags to apply to all resources"
  type        = map(string)
  default     = {}
}

output "bucket_id" {
  description = "ID of the created S3 bucket"
  value       = aws_s3_bucket.this.id
}

terraform {
  backend "s3" {
    bucket         = "my-tf-state"
    key            = "env/prod/terraform.tfstate"
    region         = "us-east-1"
    encrypt        = true
    dynamodb_table = "terraform-lock"
  }
}

terraform {
  required_version = ">= 1.5.0"

  required_providers {
    aws = {
      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
      version = "~> 5.0"
    }
    azurerm = {
      source  = "hashicorp/azurerm"
      version = "~> 3.0"
    }
  }
}

© Jeffallan, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 5 other files (references) in skills/terraform-engineer of Jeffallan/claude-skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/best-practices.md
• references/module-patterns.md
• references/providers.md
• references/state-management.md
• references/testing.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 1be15d8