How to use Drift Detection & Narration in rConfig V8
How to use Drift Detection & Narration in rConfig V8
Section titled “How to use Drift Detection & Narration in rConfig V8”A diff tells you which lines changed. Drift Detection & Narration tells you what that change means. It’s 2 AM, a core switch config changed overnight, and the diff is 60 lines of ACL and VLAN edits: click Analyze with AI and get a summary of what changed, what it affects, and how risky it looks, before you’ve finished reading the first hunk.
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”- The AI Center set up with an active provider (see Getting Started).
- Drift Detection & Narration turned on in AI Configuration.
- You’ve accepted the AI Center terms, and you can view the device’s configs.
Where to find it
Section titled “Where to find it”Analyze with AI sits on the Config Changes panel, next to Diff View and Side by Side. You can reach that panel two ways:
| Starting point | Path |
|---|---|
| A device’s config history | Open a config in the config viewer → History in the left navigation → View Changes on a version |
| Change Pulse | Configs → Change Manager → Change Pulse → open a change |
For more on diffs themselves, see Config Diffs and Change Pulse.
Narrate a change
Section titled “Narrate a change”1. Open the change
Section titled “1. Open the change”Use either path above to open the Config Changes panel for the change you want explained.
2. Click Analyze with AI
Section titled “2. Click Analyze with AI”Click Analyze with AI. The button reads Analyzing… while the request runs, usually a few seconds.
3. Read the narration
Section titled “3. Read the narration”The answer appears in a collapsible AI Analysis panel, labelled AI-generated narration of this configuration change. It’s organised into the same sections every time, so it’s quick to scan:
| Section | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Summary | One or two sentences on what changed |
| Changes Detected | Each change, grouped and explained |
| Operational Impact | What traffic, services, or users the change affects |
| Risk Assessment | How risky the change looks, and why |
| Recommendations | What to check or verify next |
Use the copy icon (Copy narration) to paste the narration into a change ticket, incident timeline, or chat.
What the analysis reads
Section titled “What the analysis reads”rConfig sends the device name, what triggered the change, its severity, the diff (up to 8,000 characters, with secrets obfuscated), and the first 40 lines of the current config for context. If no diff is stored for the change, it sends the full previous and current configs instead. See Governance, audit & privacy.