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You can provide the return object from the `.apply` directly to a resource input - e.g. `userData` on an `aws.ec2.Instance`.

my problem is I'm composing it with other data, I suspect - so my userdata is an interpolated string, and I can't get a value of out `apply` that seems to ever show up in that string

do I need to basically nest `apply`, and then pass the resulting output (which will eventually resolve to what pulumi needs) to the userData?

You can use `.all(...).apply(...)` to combine multiple values into an interpolated string. Here's a contrived, but functional example:

```const config = new pulumi.Config()
const mySecret = config.requireSecret("mySecret");

// create the string `vpc-abc123: asdf1234`
const userData = pulumi.all([vpc.id, mySecret]).apply(([vpcId, secret]) =&gt; `${vpcId}: ${secret}`);```

But if you only have a single output that you're interpolating you can use `pulumi.interpolate`:

```// create the string `password: asdf1234`
const userData = pulumi.interpolate`password: ${mySecret}````


thank you so much <@UDEJ1F5SQ> - that solved my problem!

<@USBJ02SKA> there’s also a helpful little library for generating cloud init manifests in typescript that joe wrote: <https://github.com/joeduffy/pcloudinit|https://github.com/joeduffy/pcloudinit>