hashicorp/terraform · error

failed to translate outputs

Error message

failed to translate outputs: %w

What it means

Thrown during PersistState when jsonstate.MarshalOutputs fails to translate the state's RootOutputValues into a JSON-serializable structure. This conversion step walks each output value's cty type and builds a JSON representations; it fails when an output value uses a type or nesting depth the marshaler cannot handle. The %w preserves the marshaler's underlying error.

Solutions

1. Identify which output value triggers the failure by checking the wrapped error message for type information
2. Temporarily remove or simplify the problematic output (e.g. flatten a deeply nested object) and re-run apply
3. Upgrade terraform to the latest patch release to pick up fixes to jsonstate output marshaling
4. If the output type originates from a provider, upgrade or pin the provider to a version whose output schema is compatible with your terraform version

Example fix

// before
output "raw_config" {
  value = some_resource.this  // full resource object, complex type
}
// after
output "raw_config" {
  value = some_resource.this.id  // simple string
}

// Before persisting, verify all root outputs can be marshaled:
for name, ov := range state.RootOutputValues {
    if ov == nil || ov.Value.IsNull() {
        continue
    }
    // attempt a cty walk to detect unsupported types early
    if !ov.Value.Type().IsObjectType() && !ov.Value.Type().IsPrimitiveType() && !ov.Value.Type().IsListType() && !ov.Value.Type().IsMapType() {
        log.Printf("[WARN] output %s has potentially unserializable type %s", name, ov.Value.Type().FriendlyName())
    }
}

err := stateMgr.PersistState(schemas)
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to translate outputs") {
    // identify and simplify the offending output, then retry
    log.Print("output translation failed; simplify root outputs and retry")
}
return err

When it happens

Trigger: A root output value has a cty type (e.g. deeply nested object, dynamic/pseudo-type, or null with missing type info) that jsonstate.MarshalOutputs cannot encode; state corrupted by a provider returning an unencodable output type; a terraform version where output type tracking is incomplete.

Common situations: After upgrading a provider that changed an output's type to a complex nested shape; when outputs reference resources whose schema changed between terraform versions; large configurations with many interconnected outputs after a schema-breaking provider update.

Related errors

• failed to marshal outputs to json
• could not decode output
• could not interpret output
• could not interpret value
• could not marshal output

AI-assisted analysis of hashicorp/terraform@d32a084675 (2026-08-11). Data as JSON: /api/errors/40e37df62982bcba. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at internal/cloud/state.go:224

		return err
	}

	var jsonState []byte
	if schemas != nil {
		jsonState, err = jsonstate.Marshal(f, schemas)
		if err != nil {
			return err
		}
	}

	stateFile, err := statefile.Read(bytes.NewReader(buf.Bytes()))
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to read state: %w", err)
	}

	ov, err := jsonstate.MarshalOutputs(stateFile.State.RootOutputValues)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to translate outputs: %w", err)
	}
	jsonStateOutputs, err := json.Marshal(ov)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("failed to marshal outputs to json: %w", err)
	}

	err = s.uploadState(s.lineage, s.serial, s.forcePush, buf.Bytes(), jsonState, jsonStateOutputs)
	if err != nil {
		s.stateUploadErr = true
		return fmt.Errorf("error uploading state: %w", err)
	}
	// After we've successfully persisted, what we just wrote is our new
	// reference state until someone calls RefreshState again.
	// We've potentially overwritten (via force) the state, lineage
	// and / or serial (and serial was incremented) so we copy over all
	// three fields so everything matches the new state and a subsequent
	// operation would correctly detect no changes to the lineage, serial or state.
	s.readState = s.state.DeepCopy()

View on GitHub (pinned to d32a084675)