Content review: content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md

[pulumi-bot]

Important

This PR is set to auto-merge (squash). Once it has an approving review and the required build check passes, GitHub will merge it automatically — approving this PR will merge it. To prevent that, disable auto-merge (or convert the PR back to a draft) before approving.

Why this page

• Page: content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md → /docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state/
• Lane: priority
• Strategic tier: 1 (no_retire: true)
• Traffic: 626 monthly visits (period 2026-02-03 to 2026-08-03; source CLICKSTREAM.FCT_PAGEVIEWS)
• Last reviewed: 2026-06-24 (attempts: 0)
• Selection score: 33.8305

This section is composed deterministically from the selection queue; do not edit it.

Fixes applied

Claim / finding	Authoritative source	Correction
Readthrough missing-step (L497-501): "With the program in place, deploy it with pulumi up:"	readthrough coherence pass	The walkthrough jumped straight to pulumi up, but the program reads ../infrastructure/terraform.tfstate, which nothing on the page had created. Added the prerequisite terraform init / terraform apply step (run from infrastructure/), a sentence naming the state file it produces, and a pointer to pulumi new for initializing the Pulumi project/stack before deploying.

Findings not applied

• Readthrough self-redundancy (L398-416): the second HCL block repeats the first (L30-49) but silently switches the output from ecs_cluster_name to ecs_cluster_arn — Real observation, but the proposed fix offers a choice between deleting the block and rewriting it to call out the difference, and the artifact's own rationale is truncated mid-sentence with a "skip": true fragment, so the finding isn't clean enough to act on mechanically. Deferred: a human should decide whether to merge the two Terraform snippets or add an explicit note about the changed output name.
• Claim (c28): the Fargate task definition sets cpu: 128 and memory: 512 — unverifiable — Worth a human look: AWS Fargate's supported CPU/memory table starts at 256 CPU units, so cpu: 128 may not be a valid task-level value. The verifier could not confirm what the container-level cpu field permits under awsx.ecs.FargateService (container-level CPU can legitimately be lower than the task total), so correcting it would be a guess, not a defensible fix.
• Vale heading capitalization (L26): 'Referencing Existing Infrastructure State' should be sentence case — Not stamped deterministic_fix; re-casing an H2 changes its anchor, which would break any inbound deep links to #referencing-existing-infrastructure-state. Left for a human who can pair the rename with an anchor-redirect decision.
• Vale narrative voice (L445): "Next, we'll make a TypeScript Pulumi program…" — Style nag, not a defect. The whole "Example: Containerized application on ECS" section is written in first-person-plural walkthrough voice; converting one sentence would leave it inconsistent, and converting the section is a rewrite, not a fix.
• Vale wordiness (L503): "all of" is too wordy — Style nag. In "a Fargate service that uses all of the above", "all of" is doing real work (it refers back to three preceding artifacts); dropping it reads worse.
• Not surfaced by any pre-step artifact, so out of the publish gate's fix scope, but worth a human pass: the Go remote-state example misspells its variable as workspacesPrefiix (L270, L278), and the Java remote-state example uses .prefix("together-guide") where every other language uses "dev".

For the judgment-level items above, run /glow-up content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md.

Screenshot check

No images. The page source references no screenshots, diagrams, or other content images (only the generic shared meta_image card, if any), so there is nothing to verify. (Determined from the source; the screenshot pass was skipped.)

Rendered content

Skipped — the page source uses only render-safe chrome (choosable, chooser, get-started-stepper), so the rendered HTML and markdown carry no content beyond the source prose (nothing data-sourced or partial-included to fact-check). No make build or rendered pass required. (Determined from the source.)

Verification

• make lint: ✅ make lint re-verified by the workflow on c65e3214d3
• Pre-step artifacts:
  • .verified-claims.json: 38 verdict(s); 0 contradicted/mismatch, 1 unverifiable
  • .vale-findings.json: 3 finding(s)
  • .readthrough-findings.json: ran=True, 2 finding(s)
  • .frontmatter-validation.json: 1 file(s); 0 alias collision(s)

[pulumi-bot]

Your site preview for commit c65e321 is ready! 🎉

http://www-testing-pulumi-docs-origin-pr-20735-c65e3214.s3-website.us-west-2.amazonaws.com

Changed pages:

• /docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state/

[github-actions]

Pre-merge Review — Last updated 2026-08-06T15:15:23Z

Tip

Summary: This is a small docs fix to the Terraform get-started tutorial page reference-state.md, adding two missing prerequisite steps to the ECS/Fargate walkthrough: applying the Terraform configuration (terraform init / terraform apply from infrastructure/) so the state file the Pulumi program reads actually exists, and initializing a Pulumi project and stack with pulumi new before pulumi up. The wrongness that would block a reader here is a broken command sequence — a pulumi up that fails because ../infrastructure/terraform.tfstate was never written, or a step ordering that contradicts the rest of the tutorial series. Neither is present: the state path matches the getLocalReferenceOutput call earlier on the page, the infrastructure/ directory name matches the page's own # infrastructure/main.tf sample, and the terraform apply → pulumi up ordering matches the sibling orchestrate.md. Passes run: fact verification of the added claims, a cross-sibling consistency read of all nine pages in the Terraform get-started section, internal-link and code-example checks on the added block, and a frontmatter sweep. No blocking findings.

Review confidence:

Dimension	Level	Notes
mechanics	HIGH
facts	HIGH
cross-sibling consistency	HIGH	All 9 pages in the Terraform get-started section read; no contradiction with the new steps.
code correctness	HIGH	Added block is two standard Terraform CLI commands; no program code changed.

Investigation log

• Cross-sibling reads: 9 of 9 siblings
• External claim verification: 2 of 5 claims verified (0 unverifiable, 0 contradicted) · 4 specialists (numerical, cross-reference, capability, framing); 0 cross-specialist corroborations · routed: 0 inline, 5 Pass 1, 0 Pass 2, 0 Pass 3.
• Cited-claim spot-checks: not run (no cited claims)
• Frontmatter sweep: ran on body + meta_desc
• Temporal-trigger sweep: ran (recency words present in diff; spot-check in-review)
• Code execution: not run (no static/programs/ change)
• Code-examples checks: ran (3 specialists: structural, existence, body-code-coverage); 0 findings
• Editorial-balance pass: not run (not under content/blog/)

🚨 Outstanding	⚠️ Low-confidence	💡 Pre-existing	✅ Resolved
0	0	0	0

🔍 Verification trail

5 claims extracted · 2 verified · 0 unverifiable · 0 contradicted

• L497-502 in content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md "Before deploying the Pulumi program, you must apply the Terraform configuration in the infrastructure/ directory (using terraform init followed by terrafo…" → ➖ not-a-claim (evidence: The claim is a direct restatement of the doc's own tutorial instructions: "Before deploying, apply the Terraform configuration so that the state file the Pulumi program reads actually exists. From the infrastructure/` directory: terraform…; source: repo:content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md)
• L499-502 in content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md "Running terraform init followed by terraform apply applies the Terraform configuration." → ✅ verified (evidence: The doc's own workflow shows terraform init followed by terraform apply under the instruction "Before deploying, apply the Terraform configuration... From the infrastructure/ directory", matching standard Terraform CLI behavior: init…; source: repo:content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md (L497-504); general Terraform CLI behavior (terraform init/apply))
• L504 in content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md "The Pulumi program referenced in this guide reads the Terraform state file at the relative path ../infrastructure/terraform.tfstate." → ➖ not-a-claim (evidence: Line 504 ("That writes infrastructure/terraform.tfstate, which the Pulumi program references at ../infrastructure/terraform.tfstate.") is a faithful restatement of the code sample earlier in the same file (line 456-458: `path: "../infr…; source: repo:content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md)
• L506 in content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md "Running pulumi up deploys the Pulumi program." → ➖ not-a-claim (evidence: "pulumi up deploys the Pulumi program" is standard, well-established Pulumi CLI behavior description, not a novel or disputable assertion requiring external verification — it's foundational documentation language consistent throughout Pulu…; source: repo:content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md)
• L506 in content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md "After initializing the Pulumi project and stack, the program is deployed by running pulumi up." (also L508-509) → ✅ verified (evidence: The doc text reads: "initialize a Pulumi project and stack for it with pulumi new ... then deploy it with pulumi up" followed by a code block running pulumi up. This matches the standard Pulumi CLI workflow where pulumi new scaffol…; source: repo:content/docs/iac/get-started/terraform/reference-state.md)

🚨 Outstanding in this PR

No outstanding findings in this PR.

⚠️ Low-confidence

No low-confidence findings.

💡 Pre-existing issues in touched files (optional)

No pre-existing issues in touched files.

✅ Resolved since last review

No items resolved since the last review.

📜 Review history

• 2026-08-06T15:15:23Z — Reviewed the added terraform init/apply and pulumi new prerequisite steps; state path, directory name, and step ordering all check out against the page and its 9 siblings — no blocking findings. (c65e321)

---

• Refresh this review — comment @claude #update-review. Say what you fixed, or which finding you dispute and why; both work in the same mention.
• Ask for anything else — comment @claude with no hashtag (questions, one-off fixes). Leaves this review untouched.

Important

Please don't hide, resolve, or delete this comment! It breaks things!

📖 How pre-merge review works — the full lifecycle, short-circuits, and escape hatches.