# How to Configure Smart Tags Rules: Step by Step

> How to Configure Smart Tags Rules. A practical walkthrough with ZopNight: read-only setup, production excluded by default, reversible at every step.

Source: https://zop.dev/learn/how-to/configure-auto-tagging-rules
Published: 2026-07-01 · Author: avinash-gaurav · Tags: zopnight, how-to, learn

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Set up ZopNight smart tags to predict environment and noStop tags from naming patterns, existing tags, and instance config. Accept or reject predictions, optionally sync back to cloud.

This is the practical version, the one you can follow in a single sitting. It starts read-only, touches no production resource by default, and every step is reversible, so there is no point at which you are committed to something you cannot undo. Budget about 20 minutes. Before you start you will want: Cloud accounts connected; Smart Tags enabled at the org level; A ZopNight account.

## The steps

1. Open Smart Tags under Insights.
2. Review prediction logic.
3. Accept or reject per resource.
4. Sync tags back to cloud (optional).
5. Track coverage on the dashboard.

## Why this is safe to do today

The reason this is a low-stakes change is that nothing here is destructive. Scheduling stops and starts resources; it never deletes them, and your data persists across a stop exactly as it does across a normal reboot. Production is excluded by default, actions run in dependency order, and every state change is logged with what triggered it.

If you want the fuller context behind this task, the [FinOps](https://zop.dev/learn/finops) guide covers where it fits, and the [AWS EC2 scheduling](https://zop.dev/zopnight/aws/ec2) page shows the same loop applied to a specific resource.

## Getting started

Getting started is intentionally low-stakes:

- Connect your cloud provider with a read-only role. Nothing is scheduled or changed at this stage.
- Let ZopNight discover your non-production resources and review exactly what it found, filtered by account, region, and status.
- Create a schedule in your timezone and attach the non-production resources or groups you want it to cover.
- Watch the first cycle run, with Slack, Teams, or Google Chat notifications on every start, stop, and failure, then layer in idle cleanup and guided rightsizing.

Production stays excluded by default throughout, and because discovery and recommendations are read-only, you can prove the value before you enable a single action.

## Frequently asked questions

### Will the tagger overwrite my existing cloud tags?

No. The default is fill-in-missing. You can opt in to overwrite per rule if you want smart tags to take precedence over manual tags.

### How does the noStop tag work?

noStop=true marks resources as never-schedule. Production databases, message brokers in active use, and similar always-on resources get noStop=true so they are excluded from any stop schedule.