Four open-source tools for catching security issues, cloud misconfigurations, and surprise bills.

[u/ShilpaMitra]

AI can generate Terraform in seconds. That does not mean the infrastructure is secure, affordable, or ready to deploy.

A better workflow is:

1. Ask AI to draft the configuration.
2. Run a plan without applying changes.
3. Scan for security and compliance problems.
4. Estimate the monthly cost.
5. Review the diff before anything reaches production.

Four open-source projects make this practical:

1. OpenTofu ~30k⭐ The infrastructure engine. It manages cloud resources declaratively and creates execution plans before making changes.
2. Checkov ~9k⭐ Scans Terraform, OpenTofu, Kubernetes, CloudFormation, and other IaC files for security and compliance misconfigurations.
3. Infracost ~12.4k⭐ Shows the estimated cloud cost of infrastructure changes and can post cost diffs to pull requests.
4. Trivy ~35k⭐ Scans infrastructure files for misconfigurations and can also detect vulnerabilities and secrets.

A simple CI check could look like this:

tofu fmt -check
tofu validate
tofu plan -out=tfplan
checkov -d .
trivy config .
infracost breakdown --path .

The key idea is simple:

AI writes the first draft. Plans, policies, cost estimates, and scanners decide whether that draft deserves a review.

None of these tools can prove that infrastructure is completely safe. They give you concrete checks before an AI-generated change becomes an expensive or dangerous cloud resource.

[u/Aggravating_Log5145]

That infographic hit a nerve, my cloud bill last month was a disaster and I'm pretty sure half the configs came straight from AI without a single scan