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Terraform Infrastructure

The infra/ directory contains Terraform configuration that provisions all required cloud resources for The Data Packet on Google Cloud Platform (GCS + TTS) and AWS (S3).

Resources created

Resource Purpose
Cloud Text-to-Speech API Long Audio Synthesis
Cloud Storage API GCS bucket access
GCS Bucket Intermediate audio storage (30-day lifecycle)
Service Account data-packet-service Minimal-permission app identity
IAM roles/cloudtts.user TTS operations
IAM roles/storage.admin GCS bucket management
IAM roles/storage.objectAdmin Object-level GCS access
Resource Purpose
S3 Bucket the-data-packet Podcast file hosting
Public access config Allows public read for distribution

Prerequisites

Install these before running Terraform

Step-by-step setup

Step 1 — Authenticate

# Google Cloud
gcloud auth login
gcloud auth application-default login
gcloud config set project your-gcp-project-id

# AWS
aws configure

Step 2 — Configure variables

cd infra/
cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars

Edit terraform.tfvars:

project_id        = "your-gcp-project-id"
region            = "us-central1"
audio_bucket_name = "your-unique-gcs-bucket-name"

Step 3 — Deploy

terraform init
terraform plan   # review what will be created
terraform apply

Step 4 — Retrieve the service account key

terraform output -raw service_account_key > key.b64
base64 -d key.b64 > service-account-key.json
chmod 600 service-account-key.json

Never commit this file

Add service-account-key.json to .gitignore immediately.

Step 5 — Export environment variables

export GCS_BUCKET_NAME="$(terraform output -raw gcs_bucket_name)"
export S3_BUCKET_NAME="$(terraform output -raw aws_s3_bucket_name)"
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="./service-account-key.json"
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-claude-api-key"

Terraform outputs

Output Description
gcs_bucket_name Value for GCS_BUCKET_NAME env var
service_account_email Service account email
service_account_key Base64-encoded key (sensitive)
aws_s3_bucket_name Value for S3_BUCKET_NAME env var

Cost considerations

Costs are typically very low

  • GCS: Pay-per-use storage. The 30-day lifecycle deletes old audio automatically.
  • Google Cloud TTS Long Audio: ~$16 per million characters. A typical episode is 5,000–10,000 characters.
  • AWS S3: Pay-per-use storage + GET requests (podcast downloads).

Cleanup

terraform destroy

Warning

Download any audio or episode files you want to keep from GCS and S3 before destroying.

Useful commands

terraform show                              # current state
terraform state list                        # all resources
terraform output gcs_bucket_name            # single output
terraform state show google_storage_bucket.audio_bucket
terraform refresh                           # sync state with cloud

Troubleshooting

Error Solution
Project not found Check project_id in terraform.tfvars
Permission denied Ensure your GCP account has Owner or Editor role
Bucket name already exists GCS bucket names are globally unique — choose a different name
API not enabled Terraform enables required APIs automatically on first apply