Understanding the Inkdrop UI

The Inkdrop user interface is designed to provide an intuitive way to visualize and explore your Terraform infrastructure.

Here's a breakdown of the main UI components:

1. Diagram Canvas

The main canvas area displays your cloud resources and their dependencies. Resources are represented by icons (sourced from cloud providers), with arrows indicating dependency relationships flowing from top to bottom.

Resource colors indicate their state:

  • Gray: Unchanged resource

  • Green: New resource being created

  • Orange: Existing resource being modified

  • Red: Resource being destroyed

Canvas Navigation

  • Zoom: Use a pinch/scroll gesture or mouse scroll wheel

  • Pan: Click and drag with your mouse/trackpad, or use spacebar+drag

2. Navigation Sidebar

The left sidebar allows you to navigate between different modules/directories in your Terraform project. It also provides filtering options to customize the diagram view.

Filtering

The "Select Filters" sidebar provides several options to customize your view:

  • Resource Types: Filter by AWS/GCP/Azure service categories like Compute, Networking, Storage, etc.

  • Tags: Show only resources with specified tag keys/values

  • Show Unchanged: Toggle displaying unchanged resources

  • Disaggregated View: Expand/collapse subresources and minor resources

3. Resource Details Pane

When clicking on a resource node in the diagram, the right pane displays detailed information about that resource from the Terraform plan file.

4. Dependency Indicators

The thin bars at the top and bottom of the UI show resources that the currently selected resource depends on or that depend on it, respectively. You can click these boxes to easily navigate between dependencies.

With Inkdrop's visual UI, you can quickly grasp an overview of your infrastructure changes while still being able to inspect the details. The integrated filtering and navigation tools allow you to properly scope your Terraform deployments.

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