Experimental Feature Controls

Atmos now provides granular control over experimental features with the new settings.experimental configuration option—giving teams the flexibility to explore new capabilities safely while maintaining stability in production environments.

What's New

Experimental features in Atmos are now clearly marked and controllable. The new settings.experimental configuration option lets you choose how Atmos handles experimental commands:

• warn (default) — Show a notification when running experimental commands, then continue
• silence — Run experimental commands without any notification
• disable — Block experimental commands entirely
• error — Show notification and exit with an error code

CLI Visibility

Experimental commands are now clearly marked in help output with an [EXPERIMENTAL] badge:

AVAILABLE COMMANDS

      devcontainer [command] [EXPERIMENTAL]  Manage development containers
      terraform                              Execute terraform commands
      toolchain [command] [EXPERIMENTAL]     Manage CLI tool versions

When you run --help on an experimental command, you'll see a prominent badge at the top:

[EXPERIMENTAL]

Manage development containers with full lifecycle support.

Configuration

Control experimental features in atmos.yaml:

settings:
  # Control experimental feature handling
  # Values: "silence", "disable", "warn" (default), "error"
  experimental: warn

Or via environment variable:

export ATMOS_EXPERIMENTAL=disable

Current Experimental Features

The following features are currently marked as experimental:

Feature	Command	Description
Devcontainers	atmos devcontainer	Development container lifecycle management
Toolchain	atmos toolchain	Tool version management and installation
Backend Provisioning	atmos terraform backend	Terraform state backend management
Workdir Management	atmos terraform workdir	Component working directory management
Affected Components	atmos list affected	Identify changes for targeted CI/CD

Use Cases

Development Environment

For local development where you want to experiment with new features:

settings:
  experimental: warn  # See warnings but continue working

CI/CD Pipeline

For continuous integration where you want stability:

settings:
  experimental: disable  # Block experimental commands in CI

Production Environment

For production where experimental features must be explicitly enabled:

settings:
  experimental: error  # Require explicit opt-in

Why This Matters

As Atmos continues to evolve, we're adding powerful new capabilities like devcontainers, toolchain management, and advanced Terraform features. These features need real-world testing before they're considered stable.

The experimental feature flag gives you:

• Clear visibility — Know immediately when you're using an experimental feature
• Granular control — Choose how to handle experimental features per environment
• Safe exploration — Try new features locally while keeping CI stable
• Predictable behavior — Same configuration works identically across environments

Documentation

For complete documentation on experimental features and configuration options, see:

• Experimental Features Configuration
• Settings Reference