Summary
CINC Auditor is an open-source, license-free rebuild of Chef InSpec that enables infrastructure compliance testing and auditing using the same profile format and DSL, maintained by the CINC community project.
What is CINC Auditor?
CINC (CINC Is Not Chef) is a community project that redistributes Chef Software tools under open-source terms, removing the requirement for a Chef commercial license. CINC Auditor corresponds directly to InSpec, sharing its profile format, resource library, and Ruby-based DSL.
Teams that want to use InSpec profiles—checking OS configuration, package versions, file permissions, or service state—can adopt CINC Auditor without licensing constraints. Profiles written for InSpec run unchanged on CINC Auditor, ensuring full compatibility.
CINC Auditor is commonly used in CI/CD pipelines and Test Kitchen suites as a drop-in InSpec replacement, allowing organizations to enforce compliance-as-code at scale across on-premises and cloud infrastructure.
Why is CINC Auditor relevant?
- License-free: Removes commercial licensing barriers while maintaining full InSpec profile compatibility
- Compliance-as-code: Infrastructure compliance rules are version-controlled, peer-reviewed, and automated
- CI/CD integration: Runs compliance checks as part of every deployment pipeline, preventing drift