Policy as Code for Cost Control, Not Just Compliance

Policy as code is typically associated with compliance, but it can also serve as a proactive cost control mechanism. By embedding guardrails directly into provisioning workflows, platform teams can prevent wasteful infrastructure decisions before they reach production. Practical approaches include requiring resource tags, enforcing TTL on ephemeral environments, and restricting compute sizing for non-production workloads. The key is layering policies as defaults and warnings rather than hard blocks, making the cost-efficient path the easiest path for engineers. Success is measured not by policy count but by how many wasteful decisions are prevented upstream.