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See Every Atmos Command That Ran in CI, Without Parsing a Single Log

· 3 min read
Igor Rodionov
Igor Rodionov
Principal Engineer @ Cloud Posse

A pipeline runs a dozen Atmos commands across a dozen jobs. Something looks off — a plan that should have shown changes didn't, a command that used to take seconds now takes minutes. The only way to find out what actually happened is to open each CI job, scroll through raw log output, and reconstruct the timeline by hand. There was no automatic record of what ran, how long it took, or how much it cost.

The Problem​

CI logs are the system of record for infrastructure changes, but they're not built for review. Finding "which command ran against which stack, and did it succeed" means opening job after job and reading output meant for a terminal, not a dashboard. Resource usage — how long a command actually took, how much memory it needed — was never captured at all, so slow pipelines were diagnosed by guesswork.

The Fix​

When Atmos runs in a recognized CI environment with Atmos Pro configured, it now reports a lightweight execution record for every command automatically — no extra setup beyond what you already have. The record covers the Atmos version, the command and its exit code, and how long it took to run.

Most commands report this in the background and never slow anything down. terraform plan, terraform apply, and describe affected wait up to the configured timeout to confirm the record made it to Atmos Pro before the command finishes — and if delivery is slow or fails, the command still completes; it just logs a warning so a missed record doesn't disappear silently.

How to Use It​

There's nothing to turn on. If Atmos Pro is already configured and Atmos is running in a recognized CI environment with the usual CI prerequisites in place, execution records start flowing immediately — not every CI provider is supported yet.

The only knob is how long a critical command (terraform plan, terraform apply, describe affected) is willing to wait for Atmos Pro to confirm it received the record before moving on — 10 seconds by default:

settings:
  pro:
    exec:
      sync_timeout: 20s

Raise it if your network to Atmos Pro is slow; the default already covers most setups.

Get Involved​

This is the foundation for richer execution history in Atmos Pro — itemized resource changes from terraform plan/apply are next. Tell us what you'd want to see in an execution's timeline. Open an issue or start a discussion at github.com/cloudposse/atmos.