Terraform Provider for Onyx

Manages Onyx application configuration declaratively via the Onyx admin API: LLM providers, the deployment default model, API keys, workspace settings, and embedding providers.

Not to be confused with deployment/terraform/, which provisions the infrastructure Onyx runs on (EKS, RDS, ...). This provider configures what runs inside an Onyx deployment.

Resources & data sources

Name	Manages	Import id
onyx_api_key	API keys (/admin/api-key)	numeric id
onyx_llm_provider	LLM providers + their model list (/admin/llm/provider)	numeric id
onyx_llm_provider_default	The deployment default (and vision) model — a singleton	default
onyx_settings	Workspace settings — a singleton, partially managed	settings
onyx_embedding_provider	Cloud embedding provider credentials	provider type (e.g. openai)
onyx_credential	Connector credentials (/manage/credential)	numeric id
onyx_connector	Connector definitions (/manage/admin/connector)	numeric id
onyx_cc_pair	Connector-credential pairs (/manage/connector/.../credential/...)	numeric id
onyx_document_set	Document sets (/manage/admin/document-set)	numeric id
onyx_custom_tool	Custom actions (/admin/tool/custom)	numeric id
onyx_agent	Agents / assistants (/persona)	numeric id
onyx_mcp_server	MCP servers Onyx connects to (/admin/mcp)	numeric id
onyx_user_group	User groups: roster, managers, permission grants (EE only)	numeric id
data.onyx_llm_providers	Read-only list of providers + defaults	—
data.onyx_embedding_providers	Read-only list of embedding providers	—
data.onyx_settings	Read-only current settings (incl. license tier)	—
data.onyx_connectors	Read-only list of connectors	—

Generated per-resource docs live in docs/.

examples/bootstrap/ is a runnable day-one configuration: a chat model, one indexed site, a document set built from it, and an agent that answers from it.

Authentication

The provider needs an API key in the seeded Admin group (or an unrestricted PAT created by an admin user). Create one in the Onyx admin panel (API Keys) or via the API — pass the Admin group id, since a key with no group has no admin permissions:

curl -X POST https://your-onyx/api/admin/api-key \
  -H "Cookie: fastapiusersauth=<admin session>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "terraform", "group_ids": [<admin group id>]}'

examples/bootstrap/mint_api_key.sh does the whole sequence — register, log in, resolve the Admin group, mint the key — for a scripted setup. It requires ONYX_ADMIN_EMAIL and ONYX_ADMIN_PASSWORD rather than defaulting them: on a deployment with no users it registers that account, and the first user to register becomes an admin.

This first key is inherently chicken-and-egg: it must exist before Terraform can run, so either leave it unmanaged, or terraform import it afterwards (its api_key attribute stays null — the material is only ever returned at creation).

provider "onyx" {
  endpoint = "https://your-onyx.example.com" # or ONYX_SERVER_URL
  api_key  = var.onyx_api_key                # or ONYX_API_KEY
  # api_prefix defaults to "/api" (the web proxy). Set to "" when pointing
  # directly at the backend (e.g. http://localhost:8080). Also: ONYX_API_PREFIX.
}

API keys work regardless of the deployment's human AUTH_TYPE (basic/OIDC/SAML/cloud), and on Onyx Cloud the tenant is embedded in the key itself.

Keeping secrets out of state

Every secret this provider takes has two forms. The plain attribute is stored in Terraform state, where anyone who can read the state file can read the secret. The _wo twin is a write-only argument: Terraform strips the value from the plan and the state, so it lives only in your configuration and never reaches a state file. Prefer the twin.

Resource	Stored	Write-only
onyx_llm_provider	api_key, custom_config	api_key_wo, custom_config_wo
onyx_embedding_provider	api_key	api_key_wo
onyx_credential	credential_json	credential_json_wo
onyx_mcp_server	api_token, admin_credentials	api_token_wo, admin_credentials_wo
onyx_custom_tool	custom_headers	custom_headers_wo

Set one or the other, never both. onyx_credential needs exactly one of the two, because the payload is mandatory.

Three secrets have no twin, and cannot get one:

• onyx_api_key.api_key is the key Onyx mints, not one you supply. Terraform can only hand back a generated value through state. Treat the state file as holding it.
• onyx_mcp_server.auth_template_headers is computed — Onyx writes the template itself for a shared token — and Terraform does not allow an argument to be both computed and write-only. Its placeholder values are filled from admin_credentials_wo.
• The provider's own api_key is provider configuration, which Terraform does not write to state at all. Supply it from ONYX_API_KEY rather than in a .tf file.

resource "onyx_llm_provider" "openai" {
  name          = "openai"
  provider_type = "openai"

  api_key_wo         = var.openai_api_key
  api_key_wo_version = 1

  model_configurations = [{ name = "gpt-5-mini" }]
}

Write-only arguments need Terraform 1.11 or later. An older CLI rejects a configuration that sets one.

Rotating a write-only secret

A value Terraform never stores is a value it cannot diff, so changing api_key_wo on its own plans nothing at all. Each twin has a _wo_version counter for this: raise it, and the diff that produces makes the next apply send the current secret.

Do not derive the counter from the secret (md5(var.token) and friends). Unlike the secret, the counter is kept in state.

The counter only decides when an apply is triggered. Onyx replaces all fields on update, so the provider sends the secret on every apply it runs, whatever moved the plan.

Two things to know

onyx_custom_tool stops refreshing its headers. Onyx returns action headers in full rather than masked, so custom_headers is normally refreshed and out-of-band edits show up in terraform plan. It cannot do that for custom_headers_wo without writing the secret into state, so it does not: a header changed in the admin UI goes unreported until the next apply overwrites it. This is the one place where the write-only form gives up something.

Importing takes one extra apply. Import reads what the server has, so a secret Onyx returns unmasked lands in the stored attribute. The first apply against a configuration that uses the twin clears it from state and moves the resource onto the write-only path.

Known limitations (by API design)

• Secret drift is undetectable. The API masks api_key/custom_config on read, so rotating them out-of-band (e.g. in the admin UI) is invisible to terraform plan. The configured value is authoritative and is re-asserted on the next apply.
• onyx_settings and onyx_llm_provider_default don't really delete. Onyx has no reset-settings API and no unset API for the text/vision defaults; destroy removes them from state with a warning and leaves the live values alone. The chat-naming default is the exception: it has an unset API and is cleared on destroy when managed.
• onyx_embedding_provider updates replace all fields. Keep api_key (or api_key_wo) in configuration — an update applied without it clears the stored key (the API has no keep-stored-key flag). The currently-active embedding provider also cannot be deleted.
• model_configurations is the list of record. Models omitted from it are removed server-side, and removing the model currently set as deployment default fails — repoint onyx_llm_provider_default first (references order this correctly).
• onyx_credential payloads are never read back. The API always returns the payload masked, so it is never refreshed or diffed. admin_public, curator_public and groups have no update endpoint and force replacement instead.
• onyx_connector does not own its access control. access_type and groups are validated on write but stored on the cc-pair, so Terraform cannot refresh them. Onyx also rewrites an unset prune_freq to 7 days on the first update, which the provider then keeps as the value of record.
• onyx_connector does not set access control. Onyx applies it when a credential is associated, so it belongs to the connector-credential pair. The connector endpoints still require an access_type in the request body but ignore it, so the provider sends a fixed value rather than offering a knob that would do nothing.
• A private credential can look deleted. The API hides a credential with admin_public = false from admins other than its creator, and that is indistinguishable from a deleted one, so Terraform would drop it from state and recreate it. Keep admin_public = true (the default) for credentials Terraform manages, or run Terraform with the key that created them.
• Deleting an agent leaves a tombstone. Onyx marks the row deleted instead of removing it, so the name stays taken. A later create under that name revives the tombstone, which is why destroy-then-apply returns the same agent id rather than a new one.
• A deleted agent answers 400, not 404. The lookup raises a plain ValueError, which Onyx renders as a bad request, so "gone" cannot be read off the status. The provider confirms against the agent listing instead of matching on the message text. Making that endpoint return 404 is a worthwhile backend fix.
• onyx_agent does not own every field on an agent. Attached folders and documents are cleared by an omitted list, and sending null is rejected (422), so the provider reads them and sends them back unchanged. That leaves a narrow window in which an attachment added between the read and the write is reverted; making the two fields nullable server-side would close it. Also, search_start_date is sent but never read back, because Onyx returns it as a parsed timestamp that would not match a plain date. Avatar images are not managed at all.
• display_priority is create-only on the upsert. Onyx reads it when an agent is created and ignores it on every later write, so the provider applies a change through the display-priority endpoint as a second call. That endpoint only sets a number, so the attribute is computed: removing it from the configuration leaves the last value rather than reporting a difference that never settles.
• Two built-in actions are hidden from the API. OktaProfileTool and MemoryTool are left out of the agent snapshot, so an agent holding one reports fewer tool_ids than were written and the difference never settles. Attach custom actions and the ordinary built-ins instead.
• Deleting a custom action detaches it from every agent that uses it, including agents Terraform does not manage, without an error or a warning.
• onyx_user_group is Enterprise Edition only. The routes live in the EE application and do not exist on Community Edition, where every call answers 404. Its acceptance tests skip when ee_features_enabled is false.
• onyx_user_group does not manage what a group can see. Connectors, document sets, agents, LLM providers, MCP servers and credentials each carry their own groups attribute and own that link. The group exposes cc_pair_ids, document_set_ids and agent_ids read-only, so the two sides never fight over the same edge.
• A roster change must not disturb those links, and how it avoids that depends on the change. Onyx's update endpoint replaces connector links along with members. A roster that only gains members therefore goes through the add-users endpoint instead, which takes members alone and lets Onyx preserve the links itself, inside the transaction that holds the membership lock. A roster that loses one has no such endpoint: the provider reads the connector ids and sends them back, so a connector share made between that read and the write is overwritten by the older list. The window is one round-trip and only opens for a removal. Sending an empty list instead — the obvious-looking alternative — would unshare every connector from the group with nothing in the plan saying so.
• A group's computed links lag by one apply. Terraform creates a group before the onyx_cc_pair that references it, so cc_pair_ids is still empty in the state written by that first apply and fills in on the next refresh.
• Onyx refuses membership, rename and delete while a group is syncing, and a newly created group starts out syncing, so the provider waits before each of those. Managers, incognito and permissions are not gated. The user group tests therefore need Celery beat as well as the workers — the sync that clears the gate is beat-scheduled every 20 seconds, so without beat every one of those writes waits until it times out.
• A syncing group answers HTTP 404, not a conflict, on the membership routes and on delete, because those handlers map every ValueError to not-found. The rename route gets this right. So a 404 from any of them does not mean the group is gone — the destroy confirms each one against the listing before reporting success, since trusting it would drop a live group out of state and leave the next apply failing on the name it still holds.
• onyx_user_group permissions use Onyx's wire tokens, for example manage:connectors, not the enum names. Only toggleable permissions can be set; basic, admin, craft_sandbox, manage:skills and the implied read tokens are managed by Onyx and are neither read back nor writable.
• A seeded default group (Admin, Basic) holds members and nothing else. Importing one and managing its roster works, but a rename, a delete, or a permission or incognito change is refused with a conflict.
• Onyx refuses a membership removal that would strand someone, leaving them in no group at all — a person with no group has no permissions. Destroying a group is checked the same way, because it drops the whole roster, so a terraform destroy can fail on a member whose only group this is. It also guards self-removal by a manager, privilege amplification, and the survival of admin access.
• onyx_mcp_server manages only servers that need no interactive sign-in. NONE and API_TOKEN are supported; OAUTH and PT_OAUTH need a browser round-trip and are refused while the plan is built, with a diagnostic naming the admin panel.
• Which tools an MCP server exposes is not managed. Onyx only learns them by calling the server, and it rejects both a tool selection and a Craft approval policy naming a tool it has never seen. Neither attribute is exposed rather than exposing one that silently does nothing on a server Terraform just created.
• An MCP server's description left out of the configuration is cleared, not kept. Onyx reads a missing description as "leave it alone", so the provider always sends the field and an unstated one goes out empty — the same rule as groups and users below. The upsert cannot carry available_in_craft, which lives on a different endpoint, so setting it costs a second call.
• An MCP server added from the admin panel but never configured imports with empty strings. That flow leaves auth_type and transport unset, and Terraform has no value to show for them, so the first plan after such an import moves them to the schema defaults. It settles in one apply.
• A configured auth_template_headers is never refreshed from Onyx. A header value may be a literal rather than a {placeholder}, and Onyx masks those on the way out, so refreshing would store the mask and leave a difference that never settles. Onyx's own template is read back only when the configuration states none. Editing the headers in the admin panel is therefore invisible to terraform plan, like any other secret.
• auth_performer = "PER_USER" credentials belong to the identity that applied them. Onyx stores admin_credentials against the applying user rather than the server, so a Terraform-managed per-user server holds the API key's own credentials, not an administrator's. It also masks them partially rather than fully, unlike a shared token.
• An MCP server's header template is never reset. Onyx keeps the stored template whenever a write omits one, so switching a server from PER_USER to a shared token leaves the per-user headers in place rather than restoring the default Authorization header. Recreate the server to start over.
• groups and users on an MCP server are owned by the configuration. Onyx reads a missing list as "leave it alone", so the provider sends an empty one instead. Removing either from the configuration clears it on the server, including entries added from the admin panel.
• An MCP server URL cannot point at the Onyx host. The SSRF guard refuses localhost and link-local addresses by name at every protection level, not only the strictest.
• The model list read is the API's display view. It hides obsolete models and dated duplicates, so writes (including the auto-mode pass-through, which is also not atomic with its read) cannot preserve rows the API hides. The admin UI round-trips the same filtered view; a keep-models flag on the upsert API is the planned structural fix.

Development

Requires Go (see go.mod) and the Terraform CLI.

go build ./...        # build
go test ./...         # unit tests (no Onyx needed)

Running it against a local build

Point Terraform at your locally-built binary with a dev_overrides block in ~/.terraformrc:

provider_installation {
  dev_overrides {
    "onyx-dot-app/onyx" = "/path/to/onyx/terraform-provider-onyx"
  }
  direct {}
}

Then go build here and run terraform plan/apply (skip terraform init) in any config using the provider.

Acceptance tests

Acceptance tests run real CRUD cycles against a live Onyx deployment (they create and destroy providers/keys and briefly modify workspace settings — use a dev deployment):

TF_ACC=1 ONYX_TF_ACC_SERVER_URL=http://localhost:8080 go test ./internal/provider/ -v

• ONYX_TF_ACC_API_PREFIX defaults to "" (direct backend). Set /api when targeting the web server.
• Auth: set ONYX_TF_ACC_API_KEY to an existing admin key, or let the harness bootstrap one by logging in as ONYX_TF_ACC_ADMIN_EMAIL/ONYX_TF_ACC_ADMIN_PASSWORD (defaults: admin_user@example.com / TestPassword123!; on a fresh deployment the first registered user becomes admin automatically).

Without TF_ACC these tests skip, so plain go test ./... stays green with no Onyx running. That is also what pr-golang-tests.yml runs, so the acceptance suite does not run there.

pr-terraform-provider-tests.yml is the lane that does run it. It stands up api_server and background from docker compose, so the workers and beat below come with it, and runs the suite twice: once letting the harness bootstrap its own key, and once against a key minted first by examples/bootstrap/mint_api_key.sh. On pull requests it only triggers for provider and compose changes; the nightly run is what catches a backend change that breaks the provider.

To test against an API server that does not touch your dev database, give it a database of its own. This reuses the running Postgres, Redis, OpenSearch and MinIO containers (the container name follows your compose project, so adjust it if yours differs):

docker exec onyx-relational_db-1 psql -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE onyx_tf_acc;"
cd backend && POSTGRES_DB=onyx_tf_acc uv run alembic upgrade head
POSTGRES_DB=onyx_tf_acc AUTH_TYPE=basic LICENSE_ENFORCEMENT_ENABLED=false \
  ENABLE_PAID_ENTERPRISE_EDITION_FEATURES=true \
  USER_AUTH_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  uv run uvicorn onyx.main:app --port 8081

Each variable earns its place. AUTH_TYPE=basic gives the harness a login to bootstrap its key with. License enforcement must be off or API key creation answers 402. The enterprise features flag registers the user-group routes, which the harness reads to find the Admin group its key needs.

The onyx_cc_pair, onyx_document_set and onyx_user_group tests also need Celery, because those objects are synced and deleted in the background. Without a worker the rows never go away and the destroy step waits until it times out. They need the same environment as the API server, plus PYTHONPATH pointing at backend/ so beat can load the Enterprise schedule:

source /path/to/the/same/env   # the variables above
export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/onyx/backend
celery -A onyx.background.celery.versioned_apps.beat beat --loglevel=INFO &
celery -A onyx.background.celery.versioned_apps.primary worker \
  --pool=threads --concurrency=4 --loglevel=INFO --hostname=tfacc-primary@%n -Q celery &
celery -A onyx.background.celery.versioned_apps.light worker \
  --pool=threads --concurrency=8 --loglevel=INFO --hostname=tfacc-light@%n \
  -Q vespa_metadata_sync,connector_deletion,doc_permissions_upsert,checkpoint_cleanup,index_attempt_cleanup,opensearch_migration &

The primary worker picks up the deletion checks the API server dispatches; the light worker runs the deletions and the document set sync themselves.

Beat is required for the user group tests specifically. Onyx refuses to change or delete a group while it is syncing, a new group starts out syncing, and only the beat-scheduled check-for-vespa-sync (every 20 seconds) clears that state. The workers alone never run it, so without beat every group rename, membership change and destroy waits until it times out.

The pair tests use the mock_connector source on purpose. Creating a pair runs the connector's real validate_connector_settings, which reaches the source system; Onyx short-circuits that check for mock_connector and ingestion_api, so the tests cover the whole lifecycle without any live source or credentials.

Docs

docs/ is generated — edit schema MarkdownDescriptions and examples/, then:

go generate .   # runs tfplugindocs; needs terraform on PATH

Publishing

The public Terraform Registry only serves a provider from a repository named after it, so releases go out through a mirror, onyx-dot-app/terraform-provider-onyx. The mirror holds no source of its own. It is written from this directory and never edited directly.

Two workflows split the work, one in each repository:

1. ods release tf-provider pushes a tf-provider/vX.Y.Z tag on the monorepo.
2. .github/workflows/release-terraform-provider.yml commits this directory's tree onto the mirror's history and tags it vX.Y.Z. (git subtree split would walk all ~10,000 monorepo commits to find the handful that touch this directory, which takes longer than the rest of the release put together.)
3. That tag starts publish.yml in the mirror. It lives here, at .github/workflows/publish.yml, and travels with the directory it publishes — GitHub only reads workflows from a repository's root, so it is inert in the monorepo.
4. goreleaser builds every platform archive, signs the checksum file with the release GPG key, and publishes a GitHub release. The registry ingests it from there.

goreleaser runs in the mirror rather than the monorepo because it takes the version from whatever tag the checkout has. Here it would find tags like nightly-latest-... and stamp them into every artifact name.

Cutting a release

$ ods release tf-provider              # bumps the patch version
$ ods release tf-provider --bump minor
$ ods release tf-provider --version 1.0.0

To rehearse, run Publish by hand from the mirror's Actions tab. It defaults to a dry run, which builds every archive and publishes none of them.

One-time setup

v0.1.0 is published, so everything the registry needs is in place:

• The public repo onyx-dot-app/terraform-provider-onyx exists.
• The mirror carries its own LICENSE.
• The release GPG key exists and its public half is registered under the onyx-dot-app namespace.
• The mirror holds TF_PROVIDER_GPG_PRIVATE_KEY and TF_PROVIDER_GPG_PASSPHRASE, which is where the signing happens. The monorepo never holds the key.
• The mirror is linked on registry.terraform.io as the onyx-dot-app organisation.

One step is left, and it is the only reason a release is still cut by hand:

• Give this repo a credential that can push to the mirror. The release-terraform-provider environment exists but is empty, so release-terraform-provider.yml has nothing to authenticate with and has never run. Create a GitHub App, install it on the mirror alone with contents: write, and put two values in that environment: - variable TF_PROVIDER_RELEASE_APP_CLIENT_ID — the App's Client ID (Iv23li...) from its settings page, not the numeric App ID. - secret TF_PROVIDER_RELEASE_APP_PRIVATE_KEY — the whole generated .pem, BEGIN/END lines included.

Until that exists, a release is the workflow's own commands run locally against the mirror, followed by the tag — about a minute. That is how v0.1.0 shipped.

Licence

MIT, the same terms the Onyx monorepo applies to content outside its ee directories. The provider contains no Enterprise-licensed code. LICENSE holds the plain MIT text with nothing added, so licence scanners and GitHub detect it as MIT rather than reporting NOASSERTION.