Operations monitoring

See what's running, what failed, and what's happening across your infrastructure.

Scenarios covered:

I want to destroy all resources in a stack quickly

When to use this

Use this workflow when you:

  • Need to tear down an entire environment — dev, staging, a feature branch stack
  • Are cleaning up after a demo or experiment — ephemeral infrastructure that's served its purpose
  • Want to decommission a project — remove everything in one shot rather than resource by resource

This is a destructive operation. formae will delete every resource in the stack, respecting dependency order automatically (dependents are deleted before their dependencies).

Step-by-step

Before you begin: review the baseline prerequisites and confirm the stack has previously been applied (i.e., there are managed resources to destroy).

Step 1: Check what's in the stack

Before destroying anything, see what you're about to delete:

formae inventory resources --query="stack:my-app"

To see more than the default 10 results:

formae inventory resources --query="stack:my-app" --max-results=100

Tip: Double-check the stack name. Stacks are case-sensitive.

Step 2: Simulate the destruction

Run a dry-run first to see the full destruction plan without executing it:

formae destroy --simulate --query="stack:my-app"

Review the output carefully. Every resource listed will be deleted.

Step 3: Destroy the stack

Once you're confident, run the destroy command with --watch to monitor progress in real time:

formae destroy --watch --query="stack:my-app"
Skip the confirmation prompt

If you're scripting or already sure:

formae destroy --watch --yes --query="stack:my-app"
Destroy using a forma file instead

You can also destroy by pointing at the original forma:

formae destroy --watch my-app.pkl

This destroys resources that match the forma's stack, which is useful when you have the source file handy.

Step 4: Verify cleanup

After the command completes, confirm the stack is empty:

formae inventory resources --query="stack:my-app"

This should return no results. The stack itself is automatically removed once its last resource is deleted.

Tips + gotchas

Tip Details
Dependency order is automatic You don't need to worry about ordering. Subnets are deleted before their VPC, instances before their security groups, etc.
Partial failures are recoverable If some deletions fail, re-run the same destroy command. It picks up where it left off.

Common gotcha: Destroying a stack doesn't remove unmanaged (discovered) resources. Only resources that formae manages within that stack are affected.

What's next

Goal Guide
Redeploy after cleanup Formae 101 → Fundamentals
Understand stacks Core Concepts → Stack
Monitor command status CLI → Status
Cancel a running command CLI → Cancel