DevOps Dictionary

Terragrunt is a thin wrapper around Terraform that helps teams manage infrastructure-as-code across multiple environments by reducing duplication and centralizing shared settings. It works by letting you define common configuration once (such as remote state storage, provider settings, and reusable module inputs) and then reference it from per-environment folders, using a simple hierarchy and inheritance model to keep differences explicit. With Terragrunt, updates to shared patterns are applied consistently and deployments stay aligned across dev, staging, and production; without it, engineers often copy and edit Terraform files across directories, which increases drift (unintended differences), review overhead, and the chance of subtle misconfigurations. This gap exists because Terraform modules are reusable, but coordinating environment-specific wiring and shared defaults at scale requires additional structure that Terraform alone does not enforce.