Why formae IaC: Infrastructure As Code that matches reality

formae IaC is Infrastructure As Code that matches reality. It continuously discovers what is actually running, captures changes made outside the code, and treats live infrastructure as the source of truth instead of a state file. Code is derived from that state, for one resource or a whole account, whenever you want it.

It is open source and self-hosted. You run the agent, you own everything it touches, and there is no limit on how much infrastructure you put under it.

Infrastructure drift is designed out, not detected

Infrastructure is created and changed through several tools at once: pipelines, consoles, scripts, other Infrastructure As Code, and whatever was necessary during the last incident. With independent paths changing the same resources, any declared configuration falls behind. Drift becomes the default.

State-based tools notice this only at a point in time, during a plan or an apply. Between runs, infrastructure diverges silently, and the first sign is a diff nobody expected.

formae IaC captures every change as it happens, whoever made it and whichever tool made it, versions it, and absorbs it into its internal state. That state is always current. Drift does not accumulate, because there is nothing for it to accumulate against.

Infrastructure As Code generated from what exists

formae IaC does not try to keep hand-written files in step with a system that changes without asking them.

It keeps a continuously updated model of the live estate and extracts Infrastructure As Code from it on demand: the whole estate, one environment, one service, one resource. The code that comes out describes what is running, not a planned future state and not last quarter's snapshot.

No state file to keep in step

Tools that depend on an external state file inherit an entire class of problems: stale state, failed imports, plans that cannot be trusted, and a repair step somebody has to own.

formae IaC has no state file to keep honest. Its internal state is updated from the live estate regardless of how changes arrive, and Infrastructure As Code is a projection of that state rather than the thing being projected onto.

GitOps stays, and granular apply arrives

Many teams keep their Infrastructure As Code in their own Git repository, and that repository is where review and approval happen. That workflow stays as it is. What it gains is code that describes the estate as it is right now, extracted from live state and reviewed like any other change.

What a change can be:

• a patch, for one incremental change
• a selective apply, to specific resources or components
• a refresh of the code in the repository, taken from live state

Classic GitOps and fine-grained apply are not alternatives here. Neither one assumes every change must flow through a single path.

Built for day 2

Most Infrastructure As Code is shaped around the first apply. Real systems spend a day being provisioned and a decade being operated.

formae IaC 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 rather than from memory. Put a lifetime on an environment so it removes itself when it is no longer needed. Put auto-reconcile on a stack and anything changed by hand goes back on its own, and goes back again the next time, because it is a policy on the stack and not something somebody has to remember to run.

The internal state follows all of it, whichever tool the change came through.

Extensible to anything with an API

Infrastructure is more than what a provider catalogue covers. It is internal platforms, custom services, appliances and hardware, most of it reachable through some kind of API and none of it on anybody's provider list.

formae IaC is built to be extended quickly, including systems that expose RESTful APIs, control interfaces or management endpoints. Once added, they live in the same internal state and take part in the same workflows as everything else, so Infrastructure As Code stops ending where the provider list ends. Extending it means writing a plugin, and Build on formae is how that is done.

Adopt it without a migration

Adopting Infrastructure As Code on infrastructure that already exists is traditionally a project of its own: import the resources, migrate the state, refactor what is there, and freeze changes while it happens.

formae IaC asks for none of it. Enable it on an existing environment and it discovers what is running, then hands you Infrastructure As Code straight out of the current state. You can put part of the estate under formae and nothing else, for as long as that is what helps.

Your existing Terraform keeps its value literally: formae IaC reads your .tfvars files directly. The values in them are the part with years of production thinking in them, and they carry over as they are. What does not carry over is the mechanics underneath, and providers, modules and a state file were never the thing worth protecting.

No forced migration. No mandatory refactoring. No freeze on changes.

A practical Terraform alternative

Teams looking at Terraform alternatives usually want the same four things: infrastructure drift handled rather than reported, day 2 workflows that are safe at small granularity, less dependence on a fragile state file, and Infrastructure As Code that works with infrastructure that already exists.

formae IaC answers all four the same way, by treating live infrastructure as the source of truth and deriving the code from an always current internal state. Moving off Terraform happens incrementally, with your .tfvars read as they are, without a change freeze and without rewriting what already works.

Capability by capability, that comparison is formae vs Terraform, and the same argument against Pulumi is formae vs Pulumi.

Where to start

Put one environment under it and see what it finds. The quick start is all of day one. It stays free, with unlimited resources, however far you take it, and pricing says what that covers.

If running it yourself was never the appeal, formae Cloud is the hosted offering: nothing to install, nothing to keep up to date, and we operate it.