Sentinel
Sentinel is an open-source policy-as-code framework developed by HashiCorp that enables fine-grained, logic-based policy enforcement across the HashiCorp ecosystem. It allows organizations to define and enforce governance, security, and compliance policies for infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and management workflows. By integrating with tools like Terraform, Vault, and Consul, Sentinel ensures that infrastructure changes adhere to organizational standards before they are applied.
Developers should learn Sentinel when working in DevOps or infrastructure-as-code environments, particularly with HashiCorp tools, to automate compliance checks and prevent misconfigurations in production. It is essential for use cases such as enforcing cost controls in cloud deployments, ensuring security policies in infrastructure provisioning, and maintaining regulatory compliance across distributed systems. By using Sentinel, teams can reduce human error, accelerate deployments with automated guardrails, and improve auditability of infrastructure changes.