Skip to content
Gruntwork Boilerplate

Boilerplate and Terragrunt

Terragrunt is the open-source IaC orchestrator for OpenTofu and Terraform. It helps teams organize and speed up large OpenTofu/Terraform code bases by segmenting infrastructure into independently manageable units and providing a collection of useful functionality to help manage all units at scale.

Terragrunt uses Boilerplate as its template engine for two key features: scaffold and catalog.

For the latest information on Terragrunt’s scaffold and catalog features, see the official Terragrunt documentation.

Scaffold

Section titled “Scaffold”

The terragrunt scaffold command generates a ready-to-use Terragrunt configuration for a given OpenTofu/Terraform module. Under the hood, it uses Boilerplate to render template files, automatically filling in variables, backend configuration, and provider blocks based on the target module.

This means you can go from a bare module URL to a fully wired Terragrunt unit in a single command:

Terminal window
terragrunt scaffold github.com/acme/terraform-modules//modules/vpc

Scaffold inspects the module’s variables and outputs, then runs Boilerplate to produce a terragrunt.hcl file with sensible defaults already filled in. Because Boilerplate powers the rendering, you get the same Go template syntax and helper functions you’re already familiar with.

Custom scaffold templates

Section titled “Custom scaffold templates”

You can provide your own Boilerplate templates to customize what scaffold generates. This lets your team enforce conventions like default tags, required provider versions, or standard backend config. Point Terragrunt at a directory containing a boilerplate.yml and your template files, and scaffold will use those instead of the built-in defaults.

Catalog

Section titled “Catalog”

The terragrunt catalog command launches an interactive terminal or web UI that lets you browse a collection of OpenTofu/Terraform modules. When you select a module from the catalog, Terragrunt calls scaffold behind the scenes, which in turn uses Boilerplate to generate the configuration.

The workflow looks like this:

  1. Run terragrunt catalog to browse available modules
  2. Select a module from the list
  3. Terragrunt scaffolds the configuration using Boilerplate
  4. You get a fully rendered terragrunt.hcl ready to customize and apply

This makes it easy for teams to maintain a curated library of approved modules and let developers self-serve without manually wiring up configurations.

Learn More

Section titled “Learn More”