Phantom Changes

Overview

The Phantom Changes plugin identifies plan changes that are cosmetic only – they appear in the plan output but result in no actual infrastructure modification. Common causes include JSON field reordering, tag ordering differences, and semantically equivalent value serialization. Each phantom change includes an explanation of why it is a no-op.

Screenshot

Interactive (TUI)

Press P (uppercase) to open the Phantom Changes view. It requires a completed plan to analyze.

Keybindings

Key	Action	Context
j / k	Navigate up/down	List
Enter / Space	Expand/collapse phantom details	List
Esc	Go back	Always

Flow

Home ──P──→ Phantom Changes (loading) ──→ Phantom Changes (list)
                                             │
                                             ├── Enter/Space → Expand phantom details
                                             └── Esc → Home

Command Line (CLI)

Phantom Changes is an analysis view within the TUI. It does not have a standalone CLI command.

Phantom detection data is available in structured form via:

tfui plan -project ./infra -json

The JSON output includes a phantom boolean on each change and a phantom_resources array.

Equivalence

Goal	CLI	TUI
Identify phantom changes	tfui plan -json (filter phantom: true)	Press P
Count phantoms	tfui plan -ci (shows phantom count)	Phantom badge in plan header
See phantom explanations	tfui plan -json (parse phantom reasons)	P → expand change

Configuration

# tfui.hcl
plugin "phantom" {
  enabled = true
}

Option	Type	Default	Description
enabled	bool	true	Enable/disable the plugin

Related

• Plan – see all changes including phantoms
• Risk Analysis – phantoms are marked as cosmetic in risk view
• Blast Radius – phantoms are flagged in module groups