This field test was against Terraform core.
The issue was a crash in terraform console:
https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/38671
A user reported that entering a full resource reference caused Terraform to panic with:
value is marked, so must be unmarked first
Accessing a specific attribute worked, but asking the console to display the whole resource object crashed.
That pointed to a display boundary.
Terraform values can carry internal marks. Some marks affect how values should be shown to users. But lower-level value-formatting helpers expect marks to be handled before they try to render the value.
Scarab Diagnostic Suite helped identify that boundary:
marked runtime value → console formatter → lower-level formatter that requires unmarked values
A focused repair candidate was submitted:
https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/pull/38674
The repair preserved sensitive and ephemeral redaction while preventing marked values from reaching the formatting path in a way that could panic.
Shortly after, a Terraform maintainer opened a narrower official PR for the same issue:
https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/pull/38676
Their version handled the specific mark involved in the reported crash.
That is a good result.
Field Test #006
Project: Terraform core
Issue type: console panic
Boundary: marked value → display formatter
Result: working repair candidate submitted; maintainer opened narrower official fix
Takeaway: Scarab can identify real failure boundaries inside major infrastructure software.
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