Most Terraform frustration does not come from broken code.
It comes from identity.
You write clean configuration, run terraform plan, and everything stops.
Access denied. Wrong account. Permission error. Nothing happens.
This video explains why Terraform fails before it ever touches your infrastructure.
Terraform does not have an identity of its own.
It borrows identity from the environment you run it in, and before any real work begins, it performs a pre-flight check.
That pre-flight phase answers three questions:
- Do I have an identity?
- Are the credentials valid?
- Am I allowed to do what this code declares?
Most failures are not connectivity issues.
They are permission problems.
In this lesson, you will build the mental model that lets you stop guessing and start diagnosing authentication issues with confidence. Once you understand pre-flight, Terraform errors stop feeling random and start making sense.