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Core concepts

Overview​

StackGuardian organizes your infrastructure around a set of resources that cover the full lifecycle from template to deployment. This page explains each resource and how they relate to each other.

Workflow Groups, Workflows, and Stacks​

Workflow Group​

A Workflow Group is a folder-like container for organizing your Stacks and Workflows. Use Workflow Groups to reflect your team structure, environment boundaries, or project hierarchy.

Workflow​

A Workflow is a running instance of a Workflow Template. It executes your IaC code against a target environment. You can deploy Workflows standalone or as part of a Stack. In both cases, you pass parameters at deployment time to configure the Workflow for its specific context.

Stack​

A Stack is an instance of a Stack Template. It groups multiple Workflows that belong to the same infrastructure unit and runs them together.

Workflow Templates and Stack Templates​

Workflow Template​

A Workflow Template is a reusable definition for a single Workflow. It captures your IaC configuration, parameters, and execution settings so you can deploy consistently across environments without repeating setup.

Stack Template​

A Stack Template is a collection of Workflow Templates grouped to represent a complete infrastructure unit — for example, a network layer paired with an application layer.

IaC Integration Diagram

IaC integration diagram

Deploying an individual Workflow Template triggers a workflow within the development environment, effectively managing specific tasks or resources. In contrast, deploying a Stack Template, which includes multiple templates, structures the deployment as a Stack. This arrangement creates a network of interconnected workflows, where the output of one workflow becomes the input for one of the following workflows.