Drift Components
A Drift installation is made up of components. A component is either an executable, such as drift-verify, or a plugin, such as kafka.plugin, that adds support for a specification format, transport, or payload type.
Core and optional components
Every component has a tier:
Tier | Meaning |
Core | Included in the Drift download. Available as soon as you install Drift. |
Optional | Published separately. Install it with |
Core components cover what most users need: OpenAPI and AsyncAPI testing, JSON and form payloads, datasets, and reporting. Transports and specialized formats, such as Kafka, Amazon SNS and SQS, gRPC, and MCP, are optional. This keeps the Drift download small and lets you install only what your tests use.
Component status
Tier | Meaning |
Stable | Supported for production use. |
Beta | Usable, but behavior and configuration may change. Beta components are always optional. |
Deprecated | Still included, but scheduled for removal. |
Unknown | Installed, but not part of your Drift release. For example, a plugin you built yourself. |
An unknown component is not an error. drift component list shows it as unmanaged so you can see it and remove it if you no longer need it.
Versions
Components are released together. When you run drift component update, Drift updates the core components and any optional components you have installed to the same release. Updating never removes a component.