How to review infrastructure-as-code changes
Infrastructure changes arrive as pull requests like any other code: a Terraform module, a Helm values file, a Kubernetes manifest, a Dockerfile, a GitHub Actions workflow. Linters and policy scanners check them against rules, and they belong in CI. tflint finds possible errors such as invalid instance types and enforces naming conventions;[1] Checkov scans Terraform, Kubernetes, Helm, Dockerfiles and CI workflow files for security and compliance misconfigurations with over 1,000 built-in policies;[2] actionlint checks GitHub Actions workflows for syntax errors, expression type errors and script injection;[3] hadolint lints Dockerfiles against best practices.[4]
A rule can say a value is wrong. It cannot say what the pull request was trying to do, what else in the repository depends on the line it changed, or what an outside caller can now reach. That is review work. Install the IonWarp GitHub app and every pull request — infrastructure included — is reviewed by AI reviewers that read the diff and the repository around it. A planner picks the reviewers each diff calls for.
Code Review traces the change across files and names its blast radius; Security Review looks for exposed secrets, auth and trust-boundary mistakes and newly exposed attack surface; CI/CD Performance flags pipeline changes that make every future run slower or weaker; SOC 2 Review flags a deploy gate or encryption setting the change turned off. IonWarp is not a linter and has no Terraform- or Helm-specific reviewer: keep tflint, Checkov, hadolint and actionlint for syntax and policy, and let IonWarp review the intent, the blast radius and the security of the change.
IonWarp next to infrastructure linters and scanners
Tool facts are from each project's README on GitHub, read on 2026-10-01. Each answers a different question, and they run side by side.
IonWarp next to infrastructure linters and scanners| Criterion | IonWarp | tflint | Checkov | actionlint |
|---|
| What it is | A GitHub app that reviews every pull request with a swarm of AI reviewers | A pluggable Terraform linter[1] | A static code analysis tool for infrastructure as code, and a software composition analysis tool for images and open source packages[2] | A static checker for GitHub Actions workflow files[3] |
|---|
| What it reads | Every reviewable file in the diff — Terraform, YAML, Dockerfiles, workflows and application code — plus the repository around it | Terraform; each feature comes from a plugin[1] | Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize, Dockerfile, Ansible, Bicep, ARM and OpenTofu files, and CI workflow files including GitHub Actions[2] | GitHub Actions workflow files, and the scripts in run steps through shellcheck and pyflakes[3] |
|---|
| What it finds | Defects in the change and their blast radius: exposed secrets, newly exposed attack surface, slower or weaker pipelines, disabled gates | Possible errors such as invalid instance types for AWS, Azure and GCP, deprecated syntax, unused declarations, best practices and naming conventions[1] | Security and compliance misconfigurations from over 1,000 built-in policies; secrets; CVEs in open source packages and images[2] | Syntax and expression type errors, wrong action inputs, script injection by untrusted inputs and hard-coded credentials[3] |
|---|
| How it decides | AI reviewers judge the change in the context of the repository and explain each finding with a suggested fix | Rules provided by its plugins[1] | Built-in policies, plus custom policies written in Python or YAML[2] | Its own checks against workflow syntax and expression types[3] |
|---|
| Where it runs | IonWarp's hosted service, through its GitHub app — no CI minutes | A binary or Docker image you run; a setup-tflint action runs it on GitHub Actions[1] | A CLI installed with pip or run from a Docker image[2] | A command you run in your repository, locally or on GitHub Actions[3] |
|---|
IonWarpbotcommented 15 min ago
P0A signed-in user can cross the workspace boundary · Security Review
The endpoint authenticates the caller but never binds the requested project to their membership. Changing the URL ID returns another workspace’s private project. Resolve membership before returning it.