What is Infrastructure-as-Code?

Before infrastructure-as-code, provisioning a server meant logging into a management console and clicking through configuration screens. The result was snowflake infrastructure — servers configured slightly differently, undocumented changes, and the terror of 'don't touch that server, no one knows how it's configured.' IaC changed this by making infrastructure reproducible, reviewable, and version-controlled.

Tools like Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation proved that declarative configuration files are superior to manual processes for managing complex systems. The same principles apply to security policy management. Before policy-as-code, security rules were configured through admin UIs — clicks in a dashboard that left no audit trail, couldn't be reviewed in a pull request, and couldn't be tested before deployment.

Intercept's YAML policy files are the IaC equivalent for AI agent security. Just as a Terraform file declares 'this server should exist with these properties,' a YAML policy file declares 'this agent should have access to these tools under these conditions.' The declaration is the configuration — there is no separate manual step.

The IaC pattern also brings operational benefits: policies can be deployed across multiple environments (development, staging, production) from the same source, reducing configuration drift. Teams can use the same CI/CD pipelines, the same code review processes, and the same deployment tools they already use for infrastructure.

Intercept embodies IaC principles for AI agent security. Policies are declarative YAML files that define the desired enforcement state — which tools are allowed, what conditions apply, and what happens when a rule matches. These files are stored in git, deployed through CI/CD, and applied by the proxy without manual intervention. Organisations already practising IaC can add Intercept policies to their existing workflows — same repository structure, same review process, same deployment pipeline.