Skip to main content

Lifecycle hooks for terraform init, and --skip-hooks now works for before-* events

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Atmos now supports before.terraform.init and after.terraform.init lifecycle hooks, and --skip-hooks is finally honored for before- hooks across plan, apply, and deploy.

What Changed​

  • New init lifecycle events. You can now run hooks around the explicit atmos terraform init command:

    terraform:
      hooks:
        pre-init:
          events: [before.terraform.init]
          kind: command
          command: ./scripts/check-tooling.sh
        post-init:
          events: [after.terraform.init]
          kind: command
          command: ./scripts/notify-init-done.sh

    after.terraform.init is brand new, and before.terraform.init — previously listed in the docs but never dispatched to user hooks — now actually fires.

  • --skip-hooks works for before- hooks.* Previously --skip-hooks only skipped after.* hooks; before.terraform.plan / before.terraform.apply / before.terraform.deploy hooks ran anyway. Now --skip-hooks (skip all) and --skip-hooks=name1,name2 (skip by name) are honored symmetrically for both before and after events.

Why This Matters​

--skip-hooks is a global flag bound to Viper inside RunE, but before-* hooks run earlier in PreRunE — so the skip decision never saw the CLI value and before-hooks fired regardless. The flag is now resolved directly from the parsed command (with ATMOS_SKIP_HOOKS / config as fallback), the same way --ci and --verbose are read, making skipping reliable everywhere hooks run.

Init hooks close a gap in the lifecycle: teams that vendor sources, validate tooling, or notify systems around terraform init can now do it declaratively in stack config instead of wrapping the command.

How to Use It​

Define hooks once at the top-level terraform.hooks scope (inherited by every component) or per-component, and skip them on demand:

# Skip every hook for this run.
atmos terraform plan vpc -s plat-ue2-prod --skip-hooks

# Skip only the named hooks.
atmos terraform apply vpc -s plat-ue2-prod --skip-hooks=cost,policy

The before.terraform.init / after.terraform.init events fire around the explicit atmos terraform init command — not the implicit init that plan and apply run automatically. See the Hooks documentation for the full list of supported events.

Get Involved​

Have a lifecycle event you wish Atmos exposed? Open an issue or join the discussion on GitHub.