Platform & DevOps·Infrastructure described in a file
somebody fixed it in the console during an incident, and the next apply politely undid the fix.
Infrastructure drift
Also calleddrift, out-of-band change, console change
Divergence between what the code declares and what actually exists, caused by manual changes, other automation or the provider itself. It is inevitable in any estate humans can still reach, and its danger is not the change itself but the next apply, which will reconcile it away without anyone connecting the two events. The incident-time console fix is the classic instance and the reason a follow-up code change belongs in the incident's action list.