Properties and validation

Every asset is described in the properties panel, and KPD checks the design continuously as you work.

The properties panel

Select an asset and the panel underneath the canvas shows its tabs. They come from the asset's palette, so a topic has General, Partitions & durability, Retention, Schema, Data contract and Governance, while a Flink statement has General, Inputs & Outputs and SQL. Fields explain themselves with a tooltip (ⓘ), and invalid values are marked straight away.

A topic selected: the warning badge on the asset, and its General tab underneath.

The header also has the asset's shade swatches (see Groups, notes and shading) and a Docs link to the matching Confluent documentation.

With nothing selected, the panel shows the pipeline: its name, description and Kafka cluster (General), its Decisions, the Shading key, the palettes it uses, and its Problems.

Validation

Validation runs on every change. Results appear in four places at once:

a red (error) or orange (warning) badge on the asset, with the messages in its tooltip;
markers in the explorer;
the count in the status bar (click it to open the Problems tab);
the Problems tab, where clicking a problem selects the asset and opens the right field.

What is checked includes: required properties and value ranges from the palette; ports and connection types; cycles; topic names (Kafka's own rules and your naming standard); duplicate topic names; schema files that exist and parse; contract rules and their dead letter routes; compute pools; service accounts, their clusters and credentials; governance; Flink statement kinds; and deprecated palettes.

Not checked: the text of Flink SQL and ksqlDB queries. KPD checks how a statement is wired, but not its syntax, or whether the tables and columns it names exist. See SQL is not checked.

Saving with problemsErrors never stop you saving. A design is often deliberately incomplete; validation tells you what is left to do.

Severities

Severity	Meaning	Example
Error	Can't be built as drawn. Blocks Terraform generation.	A topic name with a space in it; two different topics with the same name in one pipeline.
Warning	Probably wrong, or a standard isn't followed.	A topic name that doesn't match the naming rule; a topic with no schema.
Info	A hint about something not filled in yet.	No service account chosen; no cluster chosen for the pipeline.

The status bar's problem count opens the open pipeline's Problems tab.

Validate project

The toolbar Validate button, Pipeline → Validate project… or Ctrl/⌘+Shift+V checks the whole project at once: every pipeline (open ones as they are on screen, the rest as last saved), every schema file against its specification, and the project's clusters, service accounts, compute pools and contract rules.

The Inclined Labs sample: the project validates and Terraform will generate.

The dialog gives two verdicts side by side:

Verdict	Means
✅ Project validates	No errors and no warnings. Messages may remain: they are reminders (such as a cluster id still to add) and don't count against it.
⚠️ Validates with warnings	No errors, but something probably needs a look, for example a topic name that breaks the naming standard or a topic with no schema.
❌ Errors to fix	Something can't be built as drawn.

The second verdict is about Terraform, using the same pre-flight as the Terraform page:

Verdict	Means
✅ Terraform will generate	How many files from how many pipelines, and how many TODOs, warnings and permission suggestions will be left to review.
❌ Terraform won't generate	Errors in pipelines that run on a cluster, or two pipelines that describe the same topic differently, block it.
⊘ Nothing for Terraform yet	No pipeline runs on a cluster, so there is nothing to generate. Choose the cluster on a pipeline's General tab.

Below the verdicts, every error, warning and message is listed under its pipeline, Schemas, Project or Terraform, with the asset or file it concerns. Use the three buttons to show or hide each kind, and Check again after fixing things. Click an item to go to it: an asset is selected and its Problems tab opened, a schema or definition opens in its editor, and Terraform items open the Terraform page.

A duplicated topic: one error, and Terraform is blocked until it is fixed.

Fixing old designs

When a palette changes, older pipelines still open; new optional properties appear with defaults (an info message says so). When an asset type is retired, the Problems tab offers a Convert action. KPD never converts a design silently.