Digger is an open source infrastructure-as-code orchestration tool that runs Terraform natively within your existing CI pipeline instead of requiring a separate specialized system.
Terraform CI/CD introduces complexity around secret management, compute scaling, and coordination across pull requests. Digger solves this by embedding orchestration directly into your CI environment. The tool consists of a CLI component that executes within your CI jobs and calls Terraform with appropriate arguments, plus a minimal backend orchestrator that triggers CI jobs in response to events like PR comments. State locks, plan caching, and coordination metadata are stored in your cloud account rather than a third-party service, keeping sensitive data within your infrastructure boundary.
Teams should adopt Digger if they want to consolidate their CI/CD stack and avoid paying for separate compute resources dedicated to infrastructure automation. It suits organizations already invested in GitHub Actions or similar CI systems who prefer not to maintain an additional server or share cloud credentials with external platforms. Compared to Atlantis, Digger requires no server hosting, runs jobs within your CI's compute environment for better scalability, and includes drift detection and OPA-based RBAC. Against Terraform Cloud and similar specialized systems, the tool offers open source code with self-hosting options, unlimited runs regardless of tier, execution within your CI rather than third-party infrastructure, and no credential sharing with external services.
The project maintains active development with regular updates to documentation and feature additions. The codebase shows ongoing refinement of core functionality including support for Terragrunt, multiple Terraform versions, and static analysis integration. Community engagement is facilitated through documented channels including a Slack community and scheduled demos. The project has undergone significant evolution in scope and positioning, expanding beyond its original focus on Terraform PR automation to address broader production infrastructure needs.
