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PATTERN Cited by 1 source

Use-case-based provisioning

An infrastructure provisioning pattern where engineers specify what they're trying to accomplish (in plain language or from a use-case catalog) rather than which resources they need. The platform maps intent to a configured infrastructure template.

Structure

  • Input: natural-language description or catalog selection of purpose (e.g., "demo for a financial services customer", "reproduce support issue", "hackathon session")
  • Mapping layer: matches intent to a pre-configured template from a governed catalog
  • Output: fully-configured environment tailored to the stated purpose

Rationale

Resource-based provisioning ("give me a workspace with X vCPUs in us-east-1") pushes configuration burden onto engineers who may not know the optimal setup for their use case. Use-case-based provisioning inverts this: the platform owns configuration knowledge, engineers own intent.

Benefits

  • Engineers don't need to know infrastructure details
  • Consistent configuration per use case (every "financial services demo" gets the same governed setup)
  • Natural integration with AI agents — agents describe intent in language, not in IaC syntax
  • Template updates propagate to all future provisioning without user changes

Trade-offs

  • Template catalog must be maintained and expanded as use cases evolve
  • Edge cases that don't fit existing templates require platform-team intervention
  • Abstraction can hide important configuration when engineers do need control

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