The idea of "state" is the lynchpin of Terraform, and yet Terraform's workflow is fraught with gotchas that can lead to the loss or destruction of state. This doc is a set of notes about issues I've encountered, what caused them, and in many cases ideas about how to improve Terraform to avoid or reduce the chances of them.
Each of these scenarios has occured at least within my team. Each time one of these occurs it erodes people's confidence in Terraform, giving it a reputation for being fragile and unforgiving of errors. This this document is not written just to criticize but rather to identify ways in which the situation could be improved.
