terraform zoom: 247 nodes for 43 resources — decide what is a card before drawing it (#378)

[lex00]

Child of #378. A design call before either of the other two lands, because it decides what they are drawing.

The number

chant graph --format ir over waterpark's six roots: 247 nodes for 43 resources.

kind	count
Terraform::Variable	108
Terraform::Output	53
Terraform::Resource	43
Terraform::Terraform	14
Terraform::Locals	10
Terraform::Data	8
Terraform::Module	7
Terraform::Provider	4

Four fifths of the estate graph is not infrastructure. A terraform {} block is a card. Every variable is a card. The picture that results is a 275KB SVG in which the resources are a minority of the ink.

This is the lexicon being right: it reads every block because the post-synth checks and chant audit need every block. It is the renderer's job to decide which of them are cards.

The decision

What is a card at each zoom, and it should be settled once rather than per-lens:

• Default. Resources, modules, data sources. Twenty-two nodes on waterpark instead of 247. This is the estate.
• Deeper. Outputs and variables, which are the estate's interface, and which carve's own report already treats as edge endpoints (output.* -value-> …) rather than dropping.
• Never a card, but reachable. terraform {}, provider {}, locals {} — settings, not estate. They belong in the inspect pane of the root's box, or in a panel row, not on the canvas.

behold has a zoom axis already (ZOOM_OPTS, ?detail=), and chant has its own detail tiers. Worth deciding which one carries this: a behold-side filter is honest about being a view choice, a chant-side one would make every consumer agree. My read is behold-side, because "what is worth drawing" is a rendering opinion and chant should keep emitting everything.

Definition of done

• A stated rule for which entity kinds are cards at which zoom, written down where the next lens can find it (AGENTS.md, beside the member-kind section).
• The default view of a Terraform estate leads with infrastructure.
• Nothing is dropped silently: a filtered-out kind is counted somewhere a person can see, the way edgelessNote says why a view has no edges rather than implying there are none.

Why now

#379 decides what a card says and #380 decides which box it sits in. Both are cheaper to do once against an agreed set than to redo when the default view turns out to be unreadable.

🤖 Claude Code — https://claude.ai/code/session_0124XP1LJTZxgJRy7Dh1UfXt

[lex00]

Decided and shipped in #383 (squashed as 4c6b6eb), and written into AGENTS.md under "Rendering a Terraform estate" so the next lens finds it rather than re-deciding it.

tier	blocks	why
default (detail 0-2)	resource, data, module	the estate: what is declared, what it reads, what it composes
attributes (detail 3)	+ output, variable	its interface — real, but a second question
never	terraform, provider, locals	settings, not estate

Detail 3 is where chant also starts carrying parsed bodies, so the tier that shows the interface is the tier that has the values to show.

Nothing is dropped silently: terraformElisionNote names what is not drawn and where to see it — on the fixture estate, showing the estate — 11 variables, 9 outputs, 3 terraform blocks, 2 locals blocks, 1 provider not drawn (outputs and variables appear at detail 3 — ⌘K → attributes). Four cards instead of thirty.

The filter is behold-side, as the issue proposed: what is worth drawing is a rendering opinion, and chant should keep emitting every block for the post-synth checks.

🤖 Claude Code — https://claude.ai/code/session_0124XP1LJTZxgJRy7Dh1UfXt