Terraform Destruction Safelist Plugin
A Terraform provider plugin that intercepts destroy operations and enforces a curated safelist of resources (RDS, Aurora, managed databases, load balancers, etc.) that cannot be destroyed via terraform destroy. The plugin validates the destroy plan against the safelist before execution and fails with a clear error if protected resources are targeted, forcing engineers to explicitly remove resources from the safelist with a separate authenticated command.
28 weeks • 70% confidence
Value Proposition
Prevents accidental production database destruction in seconds without manual state file management or workarounds. Works transparently in existing Terraform workflows (no code refactoring). Provides audit logs of who tried to destroy what and when, solving compliance requirements simultaneously.
Target Audience
DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams at mid-market and enterprise companies running Terraform in AWS/GCP/Azure with >5 environments and >$50k annual cloud spend
Key Features
- Pre-built safelist templates for RDS, Aurora, ElastiCache, managed Postgres/MySQL by cloud provider
- Resource-level granularity (protect db-prod-01 but allow db-staging-01)
- Require explicit 2-person approval to remove resources from safelist via CLI flag
- And more, with full implementation detail...
Tech Stack
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Terraform users accidentally destroy critical production databases when managing infrastructure stateDevOps engineers and infrastructure teams using Terraform face catastrophic data loss when destroying infrastructure state, as there's no way to selectively protect critical resources like RDS databases from being deleted. Current Terraform workflows lack inverse/exclusion targeting, forcing teams to choose between losing state management or risking accidental deletion of irreplaceable production databases. This gap between infrastructure-as-code practices and data safety creates paralyzing fear around state destruction operations.
Score: 17.5%