Overview

Output

• Drift detection report with resource-level detail: resource type, ID, drifted attributes, expected vs. actual values
• Remediation commands: terraform apply, terraform import, or IaC code updates
• CI/CD pipeline step for automated drift detection on a schedule
• Alert configuration for drift detection results (Slack, email, PagerDuty)
• Prevention recommendations: IAM policy restrictions, SCP guardrails, automated enforcement

Error Handling

Examples

• "Run drift detection against all Terraform-managed infrastructure and generate a report of resources that have changed since last apply."
• "Set up a daily GitHub Actions workflow that runs terraform plan and posts drift results to Slack if any resources are out of sync."
• "Detect CloudFormation stack drift for the production VPC stack and provide remediation steps for any MODIFIED resources."

Resources

• Terraform drift detection: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/state/resource-drift
• CloudFormation drift detection: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/detect-drift-stack.html
• Pulumi drift detection: https://www.pulumi.com/docs/using-pulumi/pulumi-packages/guides/drift-detection/
• Preventing drift: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/state/refresh45:["$","$L4a",null,{"content":"$4b","frontMatter":{"name":"detecting-infrastructure-drift","description":"Execute use when detecting infrastructure drift from desired state. Trigger with phrases like "check for drift", "infrastructure drift detection", "compare actual vs desired state", or "detect configuration changes". Identifies discrepancies between current infrastructure and IaC definitions using terraform plan, cloudformation drift detection, or manual comparison.\n","allowed-tools":"Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash(terraform:), Bash(aws:), Bash(gcloud:*)","version":"1.0.0","author":"Jeremy Longshore [email protected]","license":"MIT","compatible-with":"claude-code, codex, openclaw"}}]