Plan explanation

Crust’s plan explanation feature uses AI to provide clear, human-readable explanations of your Terraform plan outputs, making it easier to understand complex infrastructure changes.

How It Works

When you run crust explain, Crust will:

1. Execute your Terraform plan
2. Analyze the plan output
3. Generate a clear explanation of the changes
4. Present the explanation in a readable format

Explanation Features

1. Change Summarization

• Clear descriptions of what’s changing
• Impact assessment of changes
• Resource-level explanations

2. Contextual Understanding

• Related resource changes
• Dependencies between changes
• Impact on existing infrastructure

3. Best Practices

• Suggestions for improvements
• Potential issues to watch for
• Alternative approaches

Usage

Basic Usage

crust explain

Advanced Usage

# Show detailed explanation
crust explain --verbose

Output Format

Table Format (Default)

Plan Explanation
===============

Resource Type     Change Type  Description
---------------  -----------  -------------------------
aws_ec2_instance Create       Creating t3.large instance for web server
aws_s3_bucket    Update       Updating bucket policy to restrict access
aws_rds_instance Delete       Removing old database instance

Summary:
- Creating new web server instance
- Updating S3 bucket security
- Removing unused database

Best Practices

1. Review explanations carefully: Make sure you understand all changes
2. Use in team reviews: Share explanations with team members
3. Check for warnings: Pay attention to any warnings or suggestions
4. Combine with other analyses: Use alongside security and cost analysis

Tips for Better Explanations

1. Keep plans focused: Make smaller, focused changes for clearer explanations
2. Use meaningful names: Use descriptive resource names
3. Document changes: Add comments to your Terraform code
4. Review regularly: Run explanations regularly during development