tiv plan

See what a Terraform plan will do before you apply it: every change with before and after values, and a graph of how the changing resources relate.

Quick start

From an initialized Terraform directory:

tiv plan

tiv runs terraform plan into a temporary file, converts it, and serves the report at http://127.0.0.1:4747, opening your browser. Nothing is applied, and no plan files are left behind.

Reading the report

• Change counts across the top: add (green), change (amber), destroy (red), replace (purple). Each chip is a filter. Click one to hide that kind of change in both the list and the graph.
• The graph shows changed resources inside their module containers, with arrows for dependencies between them. A module called from another module draws inside its parent’s container. Clicking a node jumps to its detail card. When filters change, the graph re-lays itself out.
• Change cards, grouped by module, expand to an attribute diff. Values Terraform cannot know yet show as (known after apply). Sensitive values are masked. Updates show only the attributes that change, with a count of the hidden unchanged ones.
• Dependency chips on each card (“depends on” / “used by”) jump to the related resource.
• Search filters cards by resource address.

Console mode

Pass --console to review the same plan without leaving the terminal:

tiv plan --console

Changed resources are laid out in dependency columns, each card bordered in its action’s colour and led by its sign: + create (green), ~ update (amber), − destroy (red), ± replace (purple). Resources the plan leaves alone stay hidden until you ask for them.

• ↑↓ move within a column; ←→ follow dependency edges across columns, with connector arrows drawn beside the selection
• space expands the selected change into a diff: - lines are values leaving, + lines are values arriving, (known after apply) marks what Terraform cannot know yet, and sensitive values stay masked
• u reveals the unchanged resources, with their current values; press it again to hide them
• t cycles three views of the plan: the dependency graph, a flat list, and the modules the changes sit in. The module view shows what each module is passed and declares
• / searches by resource address and Enter jumps to the first match, then n and N walk forward and back through the rest
• m cycles all → each action present; p cycles providers; the two filters combine
• ? shows the full key reference; q quits

--console and --browser are mutually exclusive. The browser remains the default for now.

Supplying a plan yourself

Terraform saves plans as a binary file that no tool reads directly. terraform show -json converts it, so producing plan input by hand is a two-step process:

terraform plan -out=tf.plan
terraform show -json tf.plan > plan.json

Then any of these work:

tiv plan --plan plan.json                 # explicit path
tiv plan < plan.json                      # redirected
terraform show -json tf.plan | tiv plan   # piped, skipping the .json file
tiv plan                                  # picks up plan.json from the current directory

What is not accepted

• The binary plan file itself (tf.plan)
• Human-readable terraform plan output, with or without -no-color
• The terraform plan -json log stream, which carries no before/after values

If you pass one of these, tiv tells you the exact commands to produce the right format.

Passing options to terraform

These apply when tiv runs terraform for you, and are omitted otherwise:

tiv plan --chdir infra --var 'region=eu-west-1' --var-file prod.tfvars

Flags

Flag	Default	What it does
--plan	none	Path to a plan JSON file
--console	false	Render the report as an interactive terminal UI
--browser	false	Serve the report in the browser (the current default; excludes --console)
--port	4747	Report server port (random fallback when taken)
--open	true	Open the report in your browser
--chdir	none	Directory to run terraform in (like terraform -chdir)
--var	none	Terraform input variable, repeatable
--var-file	none	Terraform variable file, repeatable