Insider Brief
- Spacelift launched Intent, an agentic, open-source and early-access commercial model that provisions cloud infrastructure from natural language without writing HCL, positioned as a complement to IaC/GitOps rather than a replacement.
- Intent translates requests via MCP to provider API calls using Terraform providers, inherits Spacelift’s policy/state/audit controls, and can promote created resources into full Terraform/OpenTofu code.
- It targets faster delivery for non-critical workloads while preserving governance and visibility for DevOps/Platform teams, with early access available now and a webinar.
PRESS RELEASE — 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.
“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 point out that, “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 DevOps and platform teams “optimize software delivery infrastructure by providing self-service access to AI-enabled infrastructure management capabilities as part of internal developer platforms” and that AI should be used to optimize compute infrastructure.
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
