diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 3dd1c6704b7f707daf638d1a5c913cfafcc97e48..68edd26c5f28b85212e6e6a79bef9a897678b844 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -8,12 +8,8 @@
 # Crash log files
 crash.log
 
-# Exclude all .tfvars files, which are likely to contain sentitive data, such as
-# password, private keys, and other secrets. These should not be part of version 
-# control as they are data points which are potentially sensitive and subject 
-# to change depending on the environment.
-#
-*.tfvars
+# Exclude default terraform.tfvars file
+terraform.tfvars
 
 # Ignore override files as they are usually used to override resources locally and so
 # are not checked in
diff --git a/deploy/vars/dev.tfvars b/deploy/vars/dev.tfvars
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..35e13d2bd25c800b85a1e028c7e8d840e1fc9c87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/deploy/vars/dev.tfvars
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+dynamodb_read_capacity  = 1
+dynamodb_write_capacity = 1
+dynamodb_enable_pitr    = false