It seems like sometimes I have to change the variable name for it to pick up, or in rare situations no matter what I do I just have to go edit them manually in AWS'

This is a known issue. Update to the latest version and it should work properly simple smile

oh, gotcha

you could also set the pulumi version update check can be skipped by setting the environment variable PULUMI_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK to 1 or true if it's bothersome in the future! here's the issue for reference: https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi-aws/issues/751

Although you can skip the update warnings like Dan has shown, personally, I think it is good to be aware of the latest CLI releases. At least then you can consciously ignore a release for a specific reason, than to not know at all that a new release is available. Typically, updating to a new CLI version should be low risk. Like updating to a newer browser version.