Techniques are disclosed for provisioning Internet of Things (IoT) devices in accordance with a state machine model. More particularly, collections of IoT devices may be organized into enclaves, groups or “shoals” that operate as autonomous or semi-autonomous groups of devices functioning as a collective having a common objective or mission. IoT devices participating in a shoal may be provisioned with shoal-specific context information as part of their device-specific provisioning activity. By way of example, a shoal context object can include a current state variable and a target next state variable. The shoal's target next state variable establishes a goal (e.g., for provisioning activity) without dictating how the individual shoal members (IoT device) are to achieve that goal. This mechanism may be used to drive a shoal's separate devices through their individual provisioning state machines until the shoal itself is made operational.