Terraform allows infrastructure to be defined using configuration files instead of manually creating resources through a cloud provider's dashboard.

For example, instead of manually creating an AWS EC2 instance, security group, networking configuration, and other resources, Terraform can describe the desired infrastructure in code.

Terraform follows an Infrastructure as Code approach. This means infrastructure configurations can be stored in Git, reviewed through pull requests, versioned, and reused.

A typical workflow is:

Write Configuration → Terraform Plan → Review → Terraform Apply

This makes infrastructure deployment more predictable and repeatable.

Terraform also has providers that allow it to interact with platforms and services such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes.