Stable Workspace Keys with metadata.name

New metadata.name field provides stable Terraform state paths when using versioned component folders.

The Problem

Atmos uses Terraform workspaces to isolate state for the same component deployed across different stacks. For remote backends like S3, state files are organized in a two-level hierarchy:

s3://bucket/
  └── {workspace_key_prefix}/      # Component identity (e.g., "vpc")
      └── {workspace}/             # Stack context (e.g., "ue2-dev")
          └── terraform.tfstate

The workspace_key_prefix groups all deployments of a component together—your VPC in dev, staging, and prod all share the same prefix. The workspace name (derived from the stack) keeps each environment's state separate.

The problem: Atmos auto-generated workspace_key_prefix from metadata.component, which includes the folder path. When you organize components in versioned folders (vpc/v1, vpc/v2), upgrading to vpc/v3 changed the workspace key prefix from vpc-v2 to vpc-v3. Terraform couldn't find your existing state—your infrastructure looked like it was never created.

You could always work around this by explicitly setting backend.s3.workspace_key_prefix in a base component (backend config is inherited). But this approach had drawbacks:

• Backend-specific: you'd set workspace_key_prefix for S3, prefix for GCS, or key for Azure.
• Intent unclear: nothing indicated this was the component's logical name.
• Easy to forget when creating new components.

The Solution

metadata.name provides a semantic way to declare a component's logical name. Atmos uses it to auto-generate the appropriate backend setting (workspace_key_prefix, prefix, or key) for any backend type:

Set it once in your base component:

# stacks/catalog/vpc.yaml
vpc/defaults:
  metadata:
    type: abstract
    name: vpc           # Logical name (excludes version)
    component: vpc/v2   # Physical path (includes version)

# stacks/prod.yaml
vpc-prod:
  metadata:
    inherits: [vpc/defaults]
    # State path stays at "vpc/" regardless of version

Upgrade by changing one line in the catalog:

vpc/defaults:
  metadata:
    name: vpc           # Unchanged - state path stable
    component: vpc/v3   # New version

All environments inherit the change. No state migration needed.

Convention

By convention, metadata.name should be the component name without version or release channel prefixes:

Component Path	metadata.name	Version/Channel
vpc/v2/	vpc	v2 (suffix)
v2/vpc/	vpc	v2 (prefix)
2024/vpc/	vpc	2024 (prefix)
stable/vpc/	vpc	stable (prefix)

The logical name is the component itself—strip the version or release channel whether it appears before or after.

See folder-based versioning for the complete pattern.