Alethia Labs
Design a Spec

Project Basics

Zone selection, project name, environment stage, and Terraform version.

Project Basics

The first section of the Design a Spec form establishes the project identity and target environment.

Fields

FieldTypeValidationDescription
ZoneSelectRequiredParent workspace for this spec
Project NameText inputRequired, lowercase, a-z0-9 + hyphens, max 25 charsUsed in resource naming and Terraform state paths
Environment StageSelectRequireddevelopment, staging, or production
Terraform VersionSelectRequiredDefault: 1.11.4. Also available: 1.10.5, 1.9.8

Zone Selection

The zone dropdown shows all zones owned by the current user. If no zones exist, the user must create one first. The selected zone determines the Terraform state path prefix:

{zone-name}/{project-name}/{environment}/{region}/terraform.tfstate

Project Name

The project name is used extensively:

  • Resource naming in Terraform (e.g., {project}-{env}-eks-cluster)
  • State file path (see Terraform State)
  • Display in the UI (spec cards, job listings)

Names are enforced lowercase with only letters, numbers, and hyphens. This ensures compatibility with cloud resource naming constraints across all three providers.

Environment Stage

Three options with distinct implications:

StagePurposeNaming Convention
developmentDev/testing{project}-dev-*
stagingPre-production{project}-staging-*
productionProduction workloads{project}-prod-*

The environment stage affects Terraform state isolation — each stage gets its own state file, even within the same project and region.

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