Drupal Config Reconcile

A guided workflow for resolving the gap between your tracked config (config/default, plus any split dirs) and a deployed environment's active configuration. Most teams have the mechanics (config:status, cim, cex) but no disciplined way to walk drift item-by-item and decide which side wins. This is that discipline.

The core decision: import vs export vs skip

For every divergent config item, exactly one of three things is true, and you pick a direction:

• Import = disk → DB. The tracked file is the source of truth; it deploys to the environment on the next code deploy + config import. No file change — you keep what's in git.
• Export = DB → disk. The environment's value wins; you write its config into your tracked files (or git rm the file if the environment doesn't have it).
• Skip. Leave the divergence unresolved and move on (the right call for benign uuid/_core-only diffs).

Never run config write operations against production. This workflow only reads from a reference environment and only writes to local files. It never writes to any remote database.

Remote CLI — host-neutral

Examples below use Pantheon's Terminus. The workflow is the same on any host — substitute your platform's remote-drush command. If your platform provides Drush site aliases, the generic drush @<alias> <cmd> form works everywhere and is the simplest baseline.