E199: Rethinking Infra-as-Code for the AI Era

This Open Source Startup Podcast episode has our co-hosts Robby and Tim in conversation with Pavlo Baron from Platform Engineering Labs - creators of open source infra-as-code platform formae.

This podcast explores why traditional infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform and Pulumi can struggle with state, drift, and the disconnect between code and real-world infrastructure. Pavlo shares lessons from building Instana and explains how those experiences led to Formae, an open-source approach that treats infrastructure state as accessible, executable code using Apple’s Pkl language.

The conversation also looks at what infrastructure management needs in the AI era. By reducing low-level complexity and giving both humans and AI agents safer abstractions for discovering, modifying, and reconciling infrastructure, Formae aims to make infrastructure automation more reliable and less labor-intensive.