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Ownership, placement and resource IDs

Keep cloud ownership, visual hosting and cross-resource associations distinct.

Three different relationships

ConceptExampleEffect
Cloud ownershipVPC belongs to an AWS Account; EC2 belongs to a VPC.Canonical cloud hierarchy. Parent fields are read-only summaries in the generic inspector.
Atlas visual placementAn EC2, NAT Gateway, Route Table, Load Balancer or RDS appears on a Subnet.Controls the Atlas scene host. It does not make the subnet the cloud owner.
Association or dependencyA balancer references subnets; RDS references a DB subnet group; a NAT depends on an Internet Gateway.Represents network/configuration relationships and creation/validation prerequisites, separate from position.

Canonical IDs, display IDs and AWS IDs

Each Atlas resource has a canonical Id: a 32-character GUID in N form, without hyphens. Cross-resource relationships store that canonical ID. Name is a human label and may be duplicated. Reference labels prefer the name; unnamed or duplicate-name entries append a short ID, normally 8 characters and extended to 12 for a short-ID collision. A short display ID is not the complete relationship value.

AWS Account ID is a separate 12-digit account-number field. Image ID, external route IDs, certificate identifiers and other AWS physical IDs/ARNs are distinct from canonical Atlas resource IDs. Do not paste an AWS ARN into a field that expects an Atlas ID or edit a shared Id to rename a resource.

Selectors may show missing/stale/unavailable targets. Missing, invalid or duplicate identities do not become valid by rendering a label. An unresolved selected ID remains visible for inspection, but is not a valid new candidate; no silent repair is implied. Inspect the target type, VPC/region, classification and AZ constraints and correct only through supported controls.

Shared resource fields

Labels preserve current inspector wording: CIDR Block and Account ID use acronyms, while Db Subnet Group, Kms Key, Ssl Policy, Ai Hint and Allocated Storage Gi B retain the panel’s generated wording. A stored extension payload is implementation data, not an additional public field authoring feature.

LabelEditing / meaningConstraints / defaults
IDScalar editable when shown; canonical identity, not AWS physical ID. Prefer changing Name; changing Id can invalidate references.Required, exactly 32 characters; newly authored resources receive a generated canonical ID.
NameEditable user-facing design label.Required, max 128. Interactive creation supplies a name; bare model empty.
Ai HintOptional editable descriptive hint in the design. It is not a promise of a running AI feature.Max 2048; bare null. Do not put secrets in design text.
Cloud ProviderRead-only provider display.AWS for these types.
TagsSeparate add/edit/remove key/value controls in the inspector draft.At most 50. Key required, max 128; Value max 256. Empty/duplicate keys reject panel changes. Empty bare collection.
… ParentRead-only ownership summary; resource association controls are separate.Required ownership cannot be inferred from visual location.

Reference destination guide

AWS Account, VPC, Subnet, Internet Gateway, Security Group, Load Balancer, TargetGroup and DB subnet group have dedicated guides. Data-only or unexposed destinations including Elastic IP, IAM roles/profiles, KMS keys, certificates, network interfaces and volumes are explained in supporting resource references.

All guides · Help and troubleshooting