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đŸŸĸ Beginner: The Foundation Stones#

The Merchant's Quarter needs essential services, but the previous Guild engineer left the OpenTofu configuration incomplete and misconfigured. Your mission: Fix the issues, complete the setup, and establish proper infrastructure management for the Guild.

⏰ Deadline#

Wednesday, 4 February 2026 at 23:59 CET

ℹī¸ You can still complete the challenge after this date, but points will only be awarded for submissions before the deadline.

đŸ’Ŧ Join the discussion#

Share your solutions and questions in the challenge thread in the Open Ecosystem Community.

đŸŽ¯ Objective#

By the end of this level, you should:

  • Provision storage vaults and ledger databases for each district dynamically
  • Deploy the audit database only when there is more than one district
  • Store state remotely in a GCS backend following best practices so the Guild can collaborate
  • Resolve all TODOs in the code and successfully run tofu apply

🧠 What You'll Learn#

  • OpenTofu/Terraform basics
  • Remote state backends for team collaboration
  • Dynamic resource provisioning with for_each
  • Conditional resources with the brand new enabled meta-argument

🧰 Toolbox#

Your Codespace comes pre-configured with the following tools to help you solve the challenge:

  • tofu: The OpenTofu CLI for infrastructure provisioning
  • gcp-api-mock: A mock GCP API running locally to simulate cloud resources without real cloud costs

⚠ī¸ Note: The mock API only supports Cloud Storage and Cloud SQL, and only the functions needed for this challenge have been properly tested.

✅ How to Play#

1. Start Your Challenge#

📖 First time? Check out the Getting Started Guide for detailed instructions on forking, starting a Codespace, and waiting for infrastructure setup.

Quick start:

  • Fork the repo
  • Create a Codespace
  • Select "🌆 Adventure 02 | đŸŸĸ Beginner (The Foundation Stones)"
  • Wait ~2 minutes for the environment to initialize (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P → View Creation Log to view progress)

2. Access the GCP API Mock UI#

  • Open the Ports tab in the bottom panel
  • Find the GCP API Mock row (port 30104) and click the forwarded address
  • This UI lets you explore the mock cloud resources (buckets, databases) created by your OpenTofu configuration

3. Fix the Configuration#

The Merchant's Quarter is waiting for their infrastructure, but the previous engineer left things in a mess. Your task is to investigate, identify, and fix the issues.

Review the đŸŽ¯ Objective section to understand what a successful solution looks like. The GCP API Mock UI can help you explore the resources created by your configuration.

Where to Look#

All OpenTofu files are located in:

adventures/02-building-cloudhaven/beginner/

💡 Tip: Run grep -r "TODO" . to find all TODOs left by the previous engineer.

Review the existing files and look for TODO comments:

  • main.tf: Provider and backend configuration
  • state.tf: State bucket configuration
  • variables.tf: District definitions
  • merchants.tf: Resource definitions for vaults and ledgers
  • audit.tf: Audit database configuration
  • outputs.tf: Infrastructure outputs

Apply Your Changes#

After making your fixes, test and apply them using tofu apply.

💡 Tip: If you change the backend configuration, you'll need to run tofu init -migrate-state to migrate the state to the new backend.

Helpful Documentation#

4. Verify Your Solution#

Once you think you've solved the challenge, it's time to verify!

Run the Smoke Test#

Run the provided smoke test script from the repo root:

./smoke-test.sh

If the test passes, your solution is very likely correct! 🎉

Complete Full Verification#

For comprehensive validation and to officially claim completion:

  1. Commit and push your changes to your fork
  2. Manually trigger the verification workflow on GitHub Actions
  3. Share your success with the community

📖 Need detailed verification instructions? Check out the Verification Guide for step-by-step instructions on both smoke tests and GitHub Actions workflows.