Plan Noise & Custom Rules

Terraform plans often contain recurring changes that aren't real problems — attribute ordering, computed defaults, provider quirks. DriftWise detects these patterns automatically and lets you suppress or fix them. For endpoint shapes, see the policy tag of the API reference (plan-noise, custom-rules, disabled-rules all live there).

Built-in rules

DriftWise ships with a library of known noise patterns. Examples:

Rule	Provider	What it catches
aws-tags-all	AWS	tags_all attribute always showing as changed
aws-iam-policy-json	AWS	IAM policy JSON re-ordered on every plan
aws-sg-self-ref	AWS	Security group inline ingress/egress conflicts

Built-in rules are enabled by default. You can disable any built-in rule per-org without modifying the shipping catalog — the disable creates an exception row scoped to your org. Re-enabling deletes that row; re-disabling later creates a fresh one.

Disabling a built-in rule requires owner or admin role and a user identity for the audit trail (for API keys, the key's owning user is recorded).

The full catalog is available at GET /builtin-rules and can be filtered by provider (aws, gcp, azure).

Viewing noise patterns

DriftWise tracks recurring plan changes across your analyses. The GET /orgs/:id/plan-noise endpoint returns patterns that exceed your recurrence threshold within the detection window, bundled with the effective settings that drove the aggregation. The frontend dashboard renders both together.

Detection sensitivity

Two settings control what counts as noise:

Setting	Description
recurrence_threshold	Minimum occurrences before a pattern is flagged (min: 1)
window_days	Time window for counting recurrences (min: 1)

Settings are org-wide and changed via PUT /plan-noise/settings (owner/admin only). Changes take effect on the next list call — no re-aggregation job fires.

Suppressing noise

When you identify a pattern as noise, suppress it via POST /plan-noise/suppress. Suppressions are bulk — pass equal-length fingerprints and resource_addresses arrays; each index pair produces one suppression.

Field	Type	Required	Description
fingerprints	string[]	yes	Pattern fingerprints to suppress (max 100)
resource_addresses	string[]	yes	Terraform resource addresses (max 100)
reason	string	yes	Why this is being suppressed
duration	string	yes	7d, 30d, 90d, or forever
is_false_positive	bool	no	Flag as a false positive for tracking

Suppressions are org-wide — they hide drift from every member, so creation requires owner/admin role plus a user identity for the audit trail. The list endpoint accepts ?include_expired=true to include suppressions past their expiry (useful for audit). Deletion restores visibility.

Generating fixes

DriftWise can generate AI-powered fix recommendations for noisy patterns via POST /plan-noise/{fingerprint}/fix. Returns tiered fix options (quick patch, structural refactor, long-term rework) with explicit pros/cons and a trace ID for later retrieval.

Fix generation is gated by the same platform-LLM quota chain as AnalyzePlan: persisted BYOK bypasses; otherwise weekly+hourly reserve applies, released on transient LLM failure. Configure BYOK to bypass both platform gates.

info

Fix generation shares the platform-LLM quota with the analyze endpoint. If you hit the weekly quota on analyze, fix generation returns the same 402 plan_weekly_quota_exhausted response.

Custom rules

Create your own rules to detect org-specific noise or risk patterns. Creating a custom rule requires owner or admin role plus a user identity (recorded in the audit trail). Updates, toggles, and deletes require owner/admin only.

rule_type partitions the rule:

• Noise rules suppress recurring patterns specific to your infrastructure (e.g. "EKS auto-upgrades minor versions, causing plan noise"). Noise severity levels: harmless, warning, caution.
• Risk rules flag specific resource patterns as risky (e.g. "any S3 bucket without an explicit public-access block").

Config is validated per-type at save time — invalid configs return 400 with the specific validation failure. rule_type is immutable after creation; to change a rule's type, delete it and create a new one.

Rules can be toggled on/off via PATCH enabled: false without losing their config, or hard-deleted via DELETE.

Endpoint reference

All plan-noise, custom-rules, and disabled-rules endpoints are documented under the policy tag of the API reference. The global built-in rules catalog (GET /builtin-rules) lives under the same tag despite being outside /orgs/:id/.