inspec/inspec

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

3085 stars · 678 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Chef InSpec is an open-source testing framework for infrastructure that expresses compliance, security, and policy requirements as human- and machine-readable code. It provides a CLI to run tests locally or remotely via SSH, WinRM, or Docker, making compliance-as-code executable anywhere.

Use cases

• audit server security configurations as code
• run compliance tests on remote hosts via ssh
• verify infrastructure meets policy requirements
• test that insecure packages are not installed
• automate security compliance checks in ci/cd
• codify cis benchmark controls
• scan docker containers for configuration compliance

When to choose

• you need compliance and security requirements expressed as automated, repeatable tests
• you want to audit local machines, remote hosts over SSH/WinRM, or containers with one tool
• your team practices DevSecOps and wants compliance checks early in the release cycle
• you need human-readable profiles with controls, impact levels, and metadata for auditors

When to avoid

• you only need unit or end-to-end testing of application code rather than infrastructure state
• you want a fully open-source tool without EULA/license acceptance requirements
• you need continuous configuration management (enforcement) rather than auditing - Chef Infra or Ansible may fit better
• you prefer writing checks in a general-purpose language instead of a DSL

Facets

framework · maturity active

testing security infrastructure-as-code cli developer-tools security testing self-hosted windows ruby cli cross-platform compliance-as-code infrastructure-testing audit devsecops policy-as-code tdd devops automation linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="inspec/inspec")