tiv documentation

tiv (Terraform Infrastructure Viewer) turns Terraform plans and state into interactive reports in your browser, and gives you a quick project summary in the terminal.

• tiv plan: see what a plan will add, change, and destroy before you apply it
• tiv state: browse everything Terraform currently manages
• tiv summary: a one-screen project overview in the terminal
• Samples: try every command without real infrastructure

Install

Build from source (Go 1.26 or later):

go build -o tiv .

Put the binary somewhere on your PATH.

Quick start

Run from any initialized Terraform directory:

tiv plan

tiv runs terraform plan for you, converts the result, and opens a report in your browser showing every planned change with attribute diffs and a dependency graph.

tiv state      # browse current infrastructure the same way
tiv summary    # quick overview without leaving the terminal

How tiv finds its input

Every command resolves input the same way, stopping at the first source that works:

1. An explicit flag (--plan, --state, --plan-file)
2. Piped or redirected stdin
3. A default file in the current directory (plan.json for plan, state.json or terraform.tfstate for state)
4. Running terraform for you in the current directory

A leftover default file that turns out to be empty or unreadable is skipped with a warning rather than stopping the chain. A file you name explicitly is never second-guessed: if it is unusable you get an error.

When tiv reaches step 4 it shows a spinner while terraform works. Ctrl+C cancels cleanly, stopping the terraform process underneath.

The report server

plan and state serve their report from a temporary web server on your machine:

• Bound to 127.0.0.1 only. Nothing is reachable from other machines.
• Default port 4747. If that port is busy, a random free port is chosen and printed. --port pins a specific one.
• Your browser opens automatically. Pass --open=false to skip that and open the printed URL yourself.
• The server runs until you press Ctrl+C.

The graph needs internet access on first view: the rendering libraries load from a CDN.

Global flags

Available on every command:

Flag	What it does
-v, --verbose	Show debug detail: which input source was used, terraform invocations
-q, --quiet	Only show errors

Logs go to stderr. Data (summary text, --json output, the report URL) goes to stdout, so piping stays clean:

tiv summary --json -q | jq .