How to use Drift Detection & Narration in rConfig V8

After reading this page, you can generate an AI narration of a configuration change directly from the config changes panel, and understand exactly what’s read to produce it.

When to use this

Use Drift Detection & Narration when a config diff shows a change and you want a plain-English explanation of what it does: useful during change review, incident triage, or when the person reviewing the diff isn’t the one who made the change.

Prerequisites

• An active AI provider (see Set up an AI provider)
• Drift Detection & Narration turned on in AI Configuration
• Permission to view the config change in question

Step-by-step walkthrough

1. Open the config changes panel

Navigate to a device’s config change or diff view and open the config changes panel.

2. Click Analyze with AI

Click Analyze with AI. The button label changes to Analyzing… while the request is in flight.

If Drift Detection & Narration is turned off in AI Configuration, the Analyze with AI button doesn’t appear on the panel at all.

3. Read the result

The narration appears in a collapsible AI Analysis panel below the button, with a summary, a breakdown of the specific changes detected, an operational impact assessment, and a risk assessment.

What the analysis reads

rConfig sends the device name, the trigger for the change, its severity, and the computed diff between versions (as plain text, converted from the same diff shown on screen) to the active provider. If no diff has been computed yet for that change, it falls back to sending the full previous and current configuration files instead. See Governance, audit & privacy for the complete data-handling table across all capabilities.

Read-only, by instruction and by code

The AI behind this feature is explicitly instructed never to propose pushing a change to a device. It narrates what already happened, it doesn’t suggest remediation actions to take.

Common gotchas

Common issues

• Analyze with AI button missing: the button only appears when Drift Detection & Narration is turned on in AI Configuration. If it’s absent, check that capability toggle first.
• No result appears: confirm an AI provider is active on AI Settings; a disabled or misconfigured provider produces an error rather than a narration.
• Narration references the whole config, not just the diff: this happens when no diff had been computed yet for that change, which triggers the full-file fallback. Expect a broader summary in that case rather than a change-focused one.

What’s next

• Compare configuration versions and review diffs
• Narrate a policy compliance result and draft new rules with AI
• Review what data each capability sends to your provider