DevOps Dictionary

Terragrunt is a thin wrapper around Terraform that helps teams manage infrastructure code across many environments by centralizing shared configuration and reducing copy-paste. It works by letting you define common settings (like providers, remote state, and input variables) once, then reference them from per-environment modules using a small Terragrunt configuration file; at runtime, Terragrunt assembles the final Terraform inputs and orchestrates commands across directories in a consistent way.

With Terragrunt, changes to shared defaults and environment conventions are applied predictably across stacks, while without it teams often duplicate Terraform blocks across repos or folders, leading to configuration drift, inconsistent state management, and higher risk of mistakes during upgrades. This gap exists because Terraform modules encourage reuse of resources, but they do not natively provide strong patterns for inheriting and enforcing shared operational settings across many environments.