Summary

cloudposse/atmos is an open-source infrastructure runtime designed to unify the management of Terraform, OpenTofu, Helmfile, Kubernetes, and container deployments. It targets DevOps teams and platform engineers seeking to eliminate configuration drift and reduce toolchain complexity by providing a consistent, DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) approach across local development, CI/CD pipelines, and AI agent workflows. Atmos streamlines infrastructure operations by integrating authentication, secrets management, dependency vendoring, and toolchain orchestration into a single, declarative system.

How It Works

Atmos models infrastructure using a "stacks and components" paradigm, enabling hierarchical imports and configuration inheritance to enforce DRY principles. It provides a unified runtime that auto-installs required toolchain versions (Terraform, OpenTofu, Helmfile) and manages dependencies via just-in-time vendoring. The system integrates a single identity layer across major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP), supports numerous secrets backends, and offers native caching and registry mirroring for faster, more reliable builds. This integrated approach eliminates the need to stitch together disparate tools, ensuring consistent execution locally, in CI, and with AI agents.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Primary Install/Run: Try directly in your browser via GitHub Codespaces.
• Prerequisites: Supports Terraform, OpenTofu, Helmfile, Kubernetes, and containers. Requires compatible cloud provider credentials for authentication.
• Documentation: atmos.tools

Highlighted Details

• Unified Auth: Single identity layer across AWS, Azure, GCP (SSO, OIDC, federation).
• Secrets Management: Declare secrets per environment, sourced from 10+ backends (e.g., 1Password, Vault, SOPS), with cross-channel masking.
• JIT Vendoring: Pulls dependencies on-demand with version pinning and retries.
• Caching & Mirroring: Native build cache and transparent Terraform provider/module registry mirror.
• AI Integration: Supports AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot) via portable skills and an MCP server.
• GitOps Aware: Detects code changes to plan/apply only affected infrastructure components.
• Workloads: First-class support for Helmfile, Kubernetes releases, containers, and local cloud emulators.

Maintenance & Community

Atmos is under active development with community contributions encouraged via GitHub issues and pull requests. The project maintains an active open-source community on Slack (#atmos) and hosts weekly "Office Hours" for Q&A and trend discussions. Anonymous telemetry is collected but can be opted out.

Licensing & Compatibility

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. This permissive license allows for commercial use and integration into closed-source projects, subject to the terms of the license.

Limitations & Caveats

The provided README does not explicitly detail known limitations, alpha status, or specific unsupported platforms. The project emphasizes active development and community support for addressing issues and feature requests.