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Quick Start Guide

Get your first risk analysis in 5 minutes

This quick start will walk you through analyzing your first Terraform change with Overmind. In just 5 minutes, you'll see exactly which resources might be affected by your infrastructure changes and identify potential risks before you deploy.

Here's what you'll accomplish:

  1. Analyze a local Terraform change - See blast radius and risks in minutes
  2. Set up CI/CD integration - Automatically analyze pull requests
  3. Explore your infrastructure - Discover dependencies across your environment

Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

  • A Terraform project ready to analyze
  • AWS credentials configured (same ones Terraform uses)
  • 5 minutes to complete the setup

Don't have a Terraform project ready? No problem - we'll show you how to explore your existing infrastructure too.

Step 1: Install and Run Your First Analysis

Install Overmind CLI

macOS:

brew install overmindtech/overmind/overmind-cli

Windows:

winget install Overmind.OvermindCLI

Linux: See installation options

Run Your First Risk Analysis

Navigate to any Terraform project and run:

overmind terraform plan

What happens next:

  1. Overmind will prompt you to sign up (takes 30 seconds)
  2. It runs terraform plan to see your proposed changes
  3. Discovers your existing AWS infrastructure
  4. Calculates which resources might be affected
  5. Opens results in your browser

Success looks like this:

  • A web page showing your change's blast radius
  • A list of potential risks in plain English
  • An interactive graph of resource dependencies

No Terraform changes ready? Skip to Step 3 to explore your current infrastructure.

Step 2: Set Up CI/CD Integration

Once you've seen Overmind work locally, integrate it into your development workflow.

Add this to your .github/workflows/terraform.yml:

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

What this gives you:

  • Risk analysis on every pull request
  • Automatic comments showing blast radius
  • Team visibility into infrastructure changes

Complete GitHub Actions setup guide

Other CI/CD Systems

For GitLab, Jenkins, or other systems:

# Submit plan for analysis
overmind changes submit-plan tfplan.json

# Get results as markdown
overmind changes get-change --format markdown

Custom integration guide

Step 3: Explore Your Existing Infrastructure

Even without Terraform changes, you can explore your current infrastructure:

  1. Open the Explore page: Visit app.overmind.tech/explore
  2. Try a search: Enter "ec2-instance" in the search bar and select "List"
  3. View dependencies: Click on any resource to see what it connects to

What you'll discover:

  • Hidden dependencies between services
  • Resources created outside Terraform
  • Cross-account relationships
  • Security group configurations

What You Just Accomplished

In 5 minutes, you've:

Analyzed your first change - Saw exactly what might be affected before deploying ✅ Set up automated analysis - Your team gets risk insights on every PR ✅ Explored your infrastructure - Discovered dependencies you might not have known about

Next Steps

Now that you've seen Overmind in action, here's how to get the most value:

For Individual Developers

For Teams

For Advanced Users

Troubleshooting

Command not found?

  • Make sure the CLI installed correctly
  • Try restarting your terminal

Authentication issues?

  • Check your AWS credentials with aws sts get-caller-identity
  • Ensure you're in a directory with Terraform files

No blast radius showing?

  • Verify you have AWS resources in your account
  • Check that your Terraform plan shows actual changes

Need help? Join our Discord community or check our support documentation.

Ready to Deploy with Confidence?

You've just experienced how Overmind turns infrastructure uncertainty into confidence. Every time you run overmind terraform plan, you're seeing the risks and dependencies that could affect your deployment - before it's too late.

Create your free account and start analyzing your infrastructure changes today.