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Overview of Changes in Overmind

A change in Overmind represents any modification to your infrastructure that you want to analyze for impact and risk. This could be a Terraform deployment, a manual infrastructure update, or any other modification to your cloud resources.

What is a Change?​

In Overmind, a change is created whenever you:

  • Run overmind terraform plan to analyze proposed infrastructure modifications
  • Submit a Terraform plan through CI/CD integration

Each change includes:

  • Blast radius analysis — What resources might be affected
  • Risk assessment — Potential issues with your modifications
  • Before/after snapshots — State comparison to validate results

Quick Start​

The quickest way to create a change is through the CLI:

# Navigate to your Terraform project
cd your-terraform-project

# Create and analyze a change
overmind terraform plan

This command will:

  1. Parse your Terraform configuration
  2. Generate a plan of proposed changes
  3. Discover your existing infrastructure
  4. Calculate the blast radius and potential risks
  5. Open results in your browser

For detailed CLI usage, see the Terraform Workflow Guide.

Change Creation Methods​

Local Development (CLI)​

Use the CLI for local development and testing:

# Analyze planned changes
overmind terraform plan

# Apply changes with tracking
overmind terraform apply

Best for: Local development, testing changes, individual deployments

See the Terraform Workflow Guide for complete CLI documentation including authentication, flags, and examples.

CI/CD Integration​

Integrate Overmind into your existing pipeline for automated analysis:

# GitHub Actions example
- uses: overmindtech/actions/submit-plan@main
  with:
    ovm-api-key: ${{ secrets.OVM_API_KEY }}
    plan-json: ./tfplan.json

Best for: Team deployments, automated workflows, consistent analysis

For CI/CD setup including API key configuration, see:

Understanding Change Analysis​

When you create a change, Overmind performs a multi-step analysis:

  1. Mapping Resources — Matches Terraform resources to cloud resources
  2. Simulating Blast Radius — Discovers dependencies and impact scope
  3. Recording Observations — Captures infrastructure state and relationships
  4. Forming Hypotheses — AI identifies potential risk scenarios
  5. Investigating Hypotheses — Validates and classifies risks by severity

Identified risks are displayed prominently in the UI. For a detailed breakdown of each step, see Change Analysis Process.

Blast Radius​

Blast radius analysis automatically reveals dependencies and potential impacts:

  • Dependency Mapping — Identifies connections between resources
  • Cross-Account Support — Maps resources across AWS accounts
  • Impact Visualization — Interactive graphs showing affected resources

Configure analysis depth (Quick, Detailed, or Full) in your account settings. See Understanding Blast Radius for configuration guidance.

Common Workflows​

Individual Developer​

  1. Make infrastructure changes locally
  2. Run overmind terraform plan to analyze impact
  3. Review risks and adjust as needed
  4. Deploy with overmind terraform apply

Team Deployment​

  1. Create pull request with infrastructure changes
  2. Overmind automatically analyzes changes via CI/CD
  3. Team reviews blast radius and risks
  4. Deploy after approval with tracking enabled

Prerequisites​

Before creating your first change, ensure you have:

Next Steps​