Understanding recipes
A Composer recipe is a reusable definition that evaluates cloud resources against conditions you set. You choose which resources to evaluate, add query conditions, and set metadata such as severity and pillars. When you publish a recipe, matching resources can surface as proprietary Insights.
For a guided walkthrough, see Tutorial: Your first recipe. For field-by-field reference, see Create and edit recipes.
Prerequisites
Before you build or run recipes:
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Enable Composer for the cloud accounts you want to evaluate.
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Confirm account scans are successful. Until scans complete, query results and Insights may be incomplete or out of date. See Account coverage.
Recipe workflow
At a high level:
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Build the recipe in the Recipe builder.
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Test with Run query, then Save and publish when ready. Optionally enable continuous evaluation. See Recipe lifecycle.
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Matching resources can appear as proprietary Insights on the Composer dashboard and in Insights.
Recipe builder
The Recipe builder is the workspace where you create and edit recipes. When you open it, the page includes:
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Top bar: Actions such as Run query, Save and publish, and the kebab menu (⋮) for options like Duplicate recipe, Clear all, and Create new recipe. See Edit, duplicate, and clear.
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Resources panel: Lists cloud resource types you can drag onto the canvas. You can limit the list with Only show my resources. See Resources.
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Canvas: The center area where you place resources and optional relations. The canvas defines what the query evaluates.
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Recipe builder side panel: Configuration for the recipe across three tabs:
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Details: Title, description, provider, severity, pillars, compliance standards, continuous run, and related options such as cost function and group results by.
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Query: Rules and groups that define which resources match the recipe.
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Remediate: Optional guidance shown on the related insight details page (steps, impact, complexity, references, and fix time).
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Account scan status: Shows when Composer last scanned your accounts. Successful scans are required before query results reflect current resources. See Account coverage.
For step-by-step field reference, see Create and edit recipes.
Recipe lifecycle
Recipes move from design to live evaluation through status, testing, publishing, and optional continuous runs. You can also edit, duplicate, or reset a recipe as you iterate.
Draft and published
On the Composer dashboard, each recipe shows a status of Draft or Published.
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Run query tests the current configuration immediately. It does not publish the recipe.
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Save and publish saves the recipe and marks it published so it can run as a live evaluation.
A draft recipe is useful while you are still designing the query. Unpublished recipes do not behave as live continuous insight policies.
We recommend that, before you publish, search the Composer dashboard for a recipe that already targets the same resource and condition. This enables you to reuse or customize an existing recipe instead of publishing a duplicate. Overlapping Cost recipes that match the same resources can inflate savings totals.
Check and run continuously
Select Check and run continuously on the Details tab when you want Composer to keep evaluating resources after the recipe is published. Use Run query anytime to test on demand, whether or not continuous run is enabled.
Edit, duplicate, and clear
How you change a recipe depends on whether your organization owns it:
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Edit in place: Open a recipe your organization owns, change details or the query, then select Save and publish.
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Duplicate: Open any recipe (including DoiT-provided recipes), select Duplicate recipe from the kebab menu (⋮), customize the copy, and save it as a new recipe. Duplicating is the safest way to learn from an existing recipe.
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Select Clear all or Create new recipe to reset the builder canvas and details without leaving the page. See View recipes.
You can view recipes you do not own, but you typically cannot overwrite them. Duplicate the recipe first if you need your own editable copy.
Pillars
Pillars classify the type of insight the recipe generates. On the Details tab, select one or more pillars that match the problem the recipe is designed to find. Those values travel with the published recipe into proprietary Insights, where teams can filter findings by category (Cost, Operations, Performance, or Security).
Pillars are useful because they:
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Tell you what kind of problem the recipe addresses before you open the query.
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Help FinOps, platform, and security teams find relevant Insights on the Insights dashboard without scanning every finding.
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Support multi-select when a finding spans concerns (for example, an idle resource that wastes spend and indicates poor utilization).
Supported values:
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Cost: Cost optimization, waste, and savings opportunities (for example, unused or rightsizable resources).
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Operations: Operational health, automation, monitoring, and governance.
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Performance: Utilization, capacity, and responsiveness of workloads.
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Security: Misconfigurations, access risk, exposure, and related hardening checks.
Example
You create a recipe that finds unattached AWS EBS volumes. On Details, you select the Cost pillar and, optionally, the Resource deletion cost function, because the intended outcome is to stop paying for unused storage. After you publish the recipe, matching volumes appear as Cost Insights. Someone reviewing the Insights dashboard can filter to Cost and see those findings alongside other spend-related recommendations.
If the same recipe also flagged volumes that were attached but barely used, you might add Performance as a second pillar so utilization-focused teams can find those Insights as well.
For longer category descriptions used on Insights, see Insights categories.
Compliance standards (for example, SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR) are optional tags on the recipe. They do not replace pillars; they help label insights for compliance-oriented filtering.
When Cost is selected, you can also set a Cost function (for example, resource deletion or extended support). See Create and edit recipes.