This is the payoff post. Part 4 walks through deploying an actual resource to MiniStack with Terraform — init, plan, apply, confirm it exists, then destroy — the exact loop you'll run for the rest of your cloud life, minus the part where you're afraid to run it.
That last step, terraform destroy, is the one worth building into muscle memory now. On real AWS, skipping it is how people end up quietly paying rent on something they forgot they created. Here, there's no bill to forget about — so it's the perfect place to make tearing down a reflex instead of an afterthought.
Setting up the provider and resource files for your first deploy
Running the full plan → apply → inspect → destroy loop against MiniStack
Why building the destroy habit here pays off once you're working against real AWS
Run it once, then run it again just because you can.
— JC
