Spacelift Unveils First Codeless, Natural Language Infrastructure Provisioning Model -- No HCL or Terraform Required

Agentic and open source, Spacelift Intent delivers infrastructure provisioning that keeps pace with vibe coding — instant for developers, auditable and secure for enterprise DevOps teams

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Spacelift, creator of the infrastructure orchestration platform, today announced Spacelift Intent, a new agentic, open source deployment model that enables the provisioning of cloud infrastructure through natural language without needing to write or maintain HCL. Intent is available as open source, or an early access commercial version that is part of the Spacelift Infrastructure Orchestration Platform.

DevOps and Platform teams now have a choice: Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and GitOps for mission-critical workloads, or Spacelift Intent for non-critical workloads that require speed and agility without sacrificing compliance and control.

A New Path, Not a Replacement
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps have been the gold standard for production workloads. They bring rigor, repeatability and security, and remain essential for mission-critical systems. But not every workload needs that ceremony. Prototypes. Tests. Hackathon projects. Until now, every request, critical or not, was forced through the same process, slowing innovation, frustrating developers, and turning DevOps and Platform teams into a bottleneck. There have been attempts to apply AI to this problem, but they have all focused on producing HCL faster, rather than addressing the true underlying bottleneck.

That's where Intent comes in, a second, agentic path for agility, the only one that removes the need to produce and maintain HCL.

*** Read more about Spacelift Intent and the early access program in the blog post: https://spacelift.io/blog/announcing-spacelift-intent. ***

"Vibe coding has transformed how software is built, yet infrastructure automation is still stuck back in time," said Marcin Wyszynski, co-founder and chief R&D officer at Spacelift. "DevOps and Platform teams are writing HCL while their developer peers are prototyping and shipping features at lightning speed. With Intent, we asked, what if we could bring vibe coding to infrastructure provisioning, in a way that's safe, governed and complementary to IaC? That's what we've delivered with Spacelift Intent."

In "How Platform Engineering Teams Can Augment DevOps With AI," Manjunath Bhat, Cameron Haight and Bill Blosen of Gartner® Research find, "AI offers advantages beyond traditional automation to help product teams manage their software delivery infrastructure in a reliable, sustainable and cost-effective manner." The report recommends that "software engineering leaders driving platform engineering initiatives should optimize software delivery infrastructure by providing self-service access to AI-enabled infrastructure management capabilities as part of internal developer platforms."

"I see Spacelift's approach to integrating AI and IaC as ideal; it is flexible, open, governed and able to satisfy speed and precision," said Rob Strechay, managing director and principal analyst at theCUBE Research. "By having two happy paths to deployment for workloads of different criticality, this becomes a force multiplier. It also solves much of the toil that leads to platform engineering being seen as a roadblock and not an enabler. This has the potential to change the narrative."

Open Source and Commercial
Spacelift Intent is available via open source or as an early access commercial offering. The commercial offering leverages the policy and security controls of the Spacelift Infrastructure Orchestration Platform. DevOps and Platform teams control the who, what, where of infrastructure deployed by Intent. They also get complete visibility into deployed resources and the reasoning behind what Intent deploys.

Key Features

• Natural language provisioning – Developers interact with their preferred LLM or AI assistant via Model Context Protocol (MCP). Instead of generating code, Intent translates requests directly into provider API calls.
• Built on open foundations – Intent leverages the same Terraform providers used in IaC workflows. If it works in Terraform, it works in Intent.
• Governed by default – Inherits the Spacelift policy engine, state management and audit trails. Nothing slips through the cracks.
• Easy evolution – Any resource created by Intent can be promoted into full Terraform/OpenTofu code, making it simple to move from prototype to production.

Availability
Spacelift Intent is available now in two forms, as open source (available on GitHub) and in a commercial, early access program by Spacelift. Apply to join the Spacelift Intent early access program.

Join the Spacelift engineering team for a webinar on October 16 @ 11:00AM EDT. Attendees will learn where Intent fits alongside Terraform and GitOps, how it accelerates prototyping while maintaining governance, and see a live demo. Registration is free: https://learn.spacelift.io/introducing-spacelift-intent

Q&A
In what circumstances might a developer want to spin up cloud resources using natural language without writing Terraform or HCL?

When developing new features and capabilities, the ability to provision infrastructure quickly is important, and Spacelift Intent lets developers use plain-language prompts that translate directly into provider API calls, with no HCL required.

What other AI tools enable fast infrastructure prototyping while keeping governance and audit controls for DevOps teams?

Spacelift Intent is the first in an emerging category of AI tools that provide both natural language provisioning and governance. It uses Spacelift's established policy engine (OPA), with state management and audit trails.

Is there an open source option for AI-driven infrastructure provisioning that still leverages Terraform providers?

Yes. Spacelift Intent is open source and works with any Terraform provider, so if it works in Terraform, it works in Intent.

How can developers balance IaC rigor for production with lightweight self-service provisioning for tests and hackathons?

Intent complements traditional IaC by handling non-critical workloads quickly, while IaC remains the standard for production systems.

About Spacelift
Spacelift, via the Spacelift Infrastructure Orchestration Platform, manages the entire infrastructure lifecycle – provisioning, configuration and governance. Spacelift integrates with existing infrastructure tooling (e.g., Terraform, OpenTofu, CloudFormation, Pulumi, Ansible) to provide a single integrated workflow to deliver secure, cost-effective and resilient infrastructure, fast. Spacelift is redefining how infrastructure is provisioned and governed with Spacelift Intent, the first open source, agentic, natural language model for cloud infrastructure. Intent allows developers to provision resources instantly without writing HCL, while DevOps and Platform teams maintain full visibility, policy control, and auditability. Built on Terraform providers, Intent creates a new path for agility, complementing IaC and GitOps by making fast, low-ceremony provisioning safe and governed. Sign up for a demo or a free trial at spacelift.io.

Media Contact:
Cristin Connelly
Cathey.co for Spacelift
[email protected]

SOURCE Spacelift