Platform & DevOps·Infrastructure described in a file
the tool's record of what it built is a third thing, sitting between your file and the real cloud, and all three can disagree.
Infrastructure state
Also calledstate, infrastructure inventory
The recorded mapping between the resources declared in your configuration and the real objects that exist, held in a file or a backend. It exists because most cloud APIs cannot tell you which of their objects came from which declaration, so the tool has to remember. Almost every advanced problem in this space — drift, imports, replacements, corrupt state — is a consequence of that third copy existing at all.