--- title: "What is formae: live infrastructure as the source of truth | Platform Engineering Labs" description: "Infrastructure has more than one author, so formae treats what is actually running as the source of truth and derives everything else from it. Work through code, or just describe what you need. Self-hosted and free, or fully managed." url: "https://formae.ai/what-is-formae" --- # What is formae formae is automatic and continuous infrastructure management. It discovers what is actually running without being asked, keeps that picture current as things change, and versions every change whoever made it. How you work with that model is a separate question, and there is more than one answer. Continuous is the load-bearing word. Nothing here is a run you have to trigger: discovery and versioning happen as the estate changes, and putting a hand-made change back is a policy on a stack rather than a command somebody has to remember. Some teams want to work through code, reviewed and merged like everything else they own. Others would rather describe what they need and have it done, by an agent driving formae directly, with nothing to install and no repository to keep. formae does both, and the choice is not permanent. Why it works that way starts from an observation rather than a technique: infrastructure has more than one author. It is created and changed by pipelines, by consoles, by scripts, by other tools, and by whoever was awake when something broke. Every tool built on a state file assumes a single author, and spends the rest of its life being surprised. formae assumes the opposite. What is actually running is the source of truth, and everything else is derived from it: the code, the answer to a question, the change an agent makes on your behalf. Nothing can disagree with the estate, because nothing else is the record. ## Infrastructure has more than one author A state file records what one tool believed at the moment it last ran. Everything that happened since, by any other hand, is invisible to it until somebody runs a plan and reads a diff they did not expect. formae watches the estate instead. It discovers what is running, captures every change whoever made it, and versions it as it happens. Drift stops being a condition to be detected on a schedule and becomes what it always was: a change, with an author and a time, that either belongs or does not. ## Code is one way in, not the record Nobody maintains a database schema by hand-editing a dump of it. The schema is what the database is; the file is something you ask for when you need one. Infrastructure As Code has been written the other way round, and the cost is a permanent maintenance tax: a repository somebody has to keep in step with a system that changes without asking. formae keeps a current model of the estate and can hand you code out of it, for one resource or a whole account, whenever you want it. Or never, if code is not how you want to work. Either way the model is the same one, and the code describes what is running rather than what somebody intended last quarter. If you do write code, what you write is applied precisely. What nobody has to do any more is keep a manuscript honest. [Why formae IaC](https://formae.ai/why-formae-iac) makes that case in full. ## Agents are the other way in An agent managing infrastructure is only as good as what it has been pointed at. A repository describes the past. A console will let it do almost anything and remember almost none of it. formae gives an agent what it gives a person: the live model. Any MCP-capable assistant can drive it directly, through interfaces that are explicit and schema-driven rather than a screen to scrape or a command to guess at, so a change is valid or refused before anything moves. Whatever the agent does is captured and versioned like any other author's work, which is the point of assuming more than one author in the first place. That is what AI-native means here, and it is not a chat window laid over the top. The same operations, the same boundaries and the same blast radius, whether the hand on them is yours or your agent's. ## Day 2 is where infrastructure lives Provisioning is a day. Operating is a decade, and it is the part that is mostly missing from tools designed around the first apply. formae treats day 2 as the default. Change one property or a whole environment. Patch during an incident, then update the code from what the patch actually did. Put a lifetime on an environment so it removes itself on Friday. Put auto-reconcile on a stack and anything changed by hand goes back on its own, as a policy rather than as something somebody has to remember to run. None of these are exceptional operations; they are the ordinary week. ## Adoption should cost nothing Adopting a new way to run infrastructure that already exists is traditionally a project: import resources, migrate state, refactor, and freeze changes while you do it. formae asks for none of that. Point it at an account and it discovers what is there. Your existing Terraform and Helm keep their value, your team's knowledge keeps its value, and what is running gets described in minutes. You can use formae for part of the estate and nothing else, for as long as that is what helps. No migration. No mandate. No freeze. ## Two ways to work with it The real choice is how you want to work. Where it runs follows from that. [formae Cloud](https://formae.ai/formae-cloud) is the conversational one. You describe what you need and your coding agent does it, against the same live model: nothing to install, no repository to keep, and no code to write unless you ask for some. It reaches your own cloud account through a role you grant. It suits teams who are moving fast and changing shape, and who would rather not own the machinery at all. [formae IaC](https://formae.ai/formae-iac) is the one you run yourself. Open source and self-hosted, you own everything it touches, and it is not priced per resource or per seat, so doubling the estate changes nothing about what you pay. It suits teams who already work through code, and want that to go on being true. [formae Enterprise](https://formae.ai/pricing) is the plan above both, for estates that need a custom installation, enterprise-grade policies and security, a non-public hub and support with hours attached. formae Cloud is not a cut-down formae IaC, and formae IaC is not a trial run for formae Cloud. They are two ways of working, not two rungs. The [pricing](https://formae.ai/pricing) page sets out where they differ. ## Whoever runs your infrastructure formae does not assume a single owner, a single workflow, or that the same person writes the code and carries the pager. It assumes the opposite, which is why the internal model is updated from the live estate rather than from anybody's branch. In practice there are three answers, which is how the front page asks it. I don't care who runs it: you want it to work, and you do not want to run it. We run it ourselves: you own the platform and intend to keep owning it. My org runs it: you own the budget, the standards and the risk, and not the keyboard. formae is built for all three, and what differs is which edition you point at the problem. On this page - Infrastructure has more than one author - Code is one way in, not the record - Agents are the other way in - Day 2 is where infrastructure lives - Adoption should cost nothing - Two ways to work with it - Whoever runs your infrastructure ## Frequently asked questions [Pricing](https://formae.ai/pricing) - **Can an AI agent run formae?** Yes, and that is the point rather than an add-on. formae exposes an MCP server, so any MCP-capable assistant or agent can drive it directly, through interfaces that are explicit and schema-driven. An agent gets the same live model, the same boundaries and the same precision a person gets, and everything it does is captured and versioned like any other author's work. - **Is formae an Infrastructure As Code tool?** It can be. It works the other way round from most of them: instead of keeping a file in step with a system, formae keeps a current model of the live system and hands you Infrastructure As Code out of it whenever you want it. It is also usable with no code at all, by describing what you need to your coding agent. - **Do I have to choose an edition before I start?** No. Run it yourself with formae IaC, or have it run for you with formae Cloud. Starting on one does not shut the other door: moving across later undoes nothing you have already done. - **Does formae replace Terraform?** It can, and it does not require you to. formae runs alongside what you already have, discovers the estate whoever built it, and never asks for a migration or a change freeze first. [formae vs. Terraform](https://formae.ai/formae-vs-terraform) and [formae vs. Pulumi](https://formae.ai/formae-vs-pulumi) go through the differences one by one. - **What does formae cost?** formae IaC is open source and self-hosted, with unlimited resources and no per resource or per seat charge. formae Cloud is billed monthly per installation and managed by us. formae Enterprise is priced for what you need. [Pricing](https://formae.ai/pricing) has the numbers and the terms. - **Who is formae for?** Whoever runs the infrastructure, which is rarely one person. These are the nine, grouped by the answer they would give: - **I don't care who runs it**: [startup CTO](https://formae.ai/#startup-cto), [software engineer](https://formae.ai/#software-engineer), [solution engineer](https://formae.ai/#solution-engineer) - **We run it ourselves**: [DevOps engineer](https://formae.ai/#devops-engineer), [SRE](https://formae.ai/#site-reliability-engineer), [platform engineer](https://formae.ai/#platform-engineer) - **My org runs it**: [CIO](https://formae.ai/#enterprise-cio), [enterprise architect](https://formae.ai/#enterprise-architect), [CISO](https://formae.ai/#ciso) Each one opens the card that says what that reader gets out of it.