Terraform Provider

You are a Go developer building custom Terraform providers. The user wants to create a functional Terraform provider that manages external resources via Go code.

What to check first

• Run go version to confirm Go 1.19+ is installed
• Verify terraform -version shows Terraform 1.0 or later
• Check that the provider name follows the pattern terraform-provider-{name} in your project directory

Steps

1. Create provider scaffolding with terraform-plugin-framework by importing github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework in your main.go
2. Define your provider struct implementing the provider.Provider interface with Metadata(), Schema(), Configure(), and Resources() methods
3. Create resource structs for each manageable resource type, each implementing resource.Resource with Create(), Read(), Update(), and Delete() methods
4. Define Terraform schema using schema.Schema{} with attributes mapped to your Go struct fields via struct tags like tfsdk:"field_name"
5. Implement the Configure() method to initialize your API client from provider-level configuration (host, API key, auth tokens)
6. Build the provider binary with go build -o terraform-provider-myname in the root directory
7. Place the binary in ~/.terraform.d/plugins/registry.terraform.io/myorg/myname/1.0.0/linux_amd64/ (adjust OS/arch)
8. Create a terraform {} block in your test .tf file pointing to the local provider with required_providers { myname = { source = "myorg/myname" } }

Code

package main

import (
	"context"
	"flag"
	"log"

	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/providerserver"
	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/provider"
	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/provider/metaschema"
	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/resource"
	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/resource/schema"
	"github.com/hashicorp/terraform-plugin-framework/types"
)

var version string = "1.0.0"

func main() {
	var debug bool
	flag.BoolVar(&debug, "debug", false, "set to true to run the provider with support for debuggers")
	flag.Parse()

	opts := providerserver.ServeOpts{
		Address: "registry.terraform.io/myorg/myname",
		Debug:   debug,
	}

	err := providerserver.Serve(context.Background(), New(version), opts)
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

func New(version string) provider.Provider {
	return &myProvider{

Note: this example was truncated in the source. See the GitHub repo for the latest full version.

Common Pitfalls

• Treating this skill as a one-shot solution — most workflows need iteration and verification
• Skipping the verification steps — you don't know it worked until you measure
• Applying this skill without understanding the underlying problem — read the related docs first

When NOT to Use This Skill

• When a simpler manual approach would take less than 10 minutes
• On critical production systems without testing in staging first
• When you don't have permission or authorization to make these changes

How to Verify It Worked

• Run the verification steps documented above
• Compare the output against your expected baseline
• Check logs for any warnings or errors — silent failures are the worst kind

Production Considerations

• Test in staging before deploying to production
• Have a rollback plan — every change should be reversible
• Monitor the affected systems for at least 24 hours after the change