How to Build a Terraform CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions

Running Terraform commands directly from a developer's laptop creates risks in team environments, including lack of audit trails, inconsistent tool versions, and insecure credential storage. Integrating Terraform with a CI/CD pipeline automates validation, planning, and deployment whenever code changes are pushed to a repository. The recommended approach uses two separate GitHub Actions workflows: one for continuous integration checks such as formatting and validation, and another for the actual infrastructure deployment. This separation ensures infrastructure changes are reviewed and approved before being applied, mirroring best practices used in application code development. Using GitHub Actions as the execution environment enforces consistency, improves visibility, and reduces the risk of human error across engineering teams.