AWS Services Covered by Core Skills in the Agent Toolkit for AWS

The Agent Toolkit for AWS provides 13 core skills covering serverless computing, observability, messaging, IAM, containers, infrastructure as code, cost management, and AI/ML services through dedicated SKILL.md files in the skills/core-skills/ directory.

The aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws repository organizes operational knowledge into modular, reusable skills that target specific AWS service domains. Each core skill isolates the expertise required to build, operate, and troubleshoot particular AWS primitives, enabling AI agents to deliver precise, context-aware guidance backed by official patterns and code snippets.

Core Skills Architecture

The core-skills directory follows a service-centric design pattern. Every skill contained within skills/core-skills/ focuses on a distinct operational domain, from low-level SDK usage to high-level architecture patterns. According to the source code structure, importing a specific skill grants access to validated guidance, troubleshooting steps, and infrastructure-as-code templates for that service area.

This architecture ensures that each AWS service receives dedicated coverage for its unique operational characteristics, whether you are debugging Lambda concurrency issues in aws-serverless or optimizing S3 transfer costs in aws-billing-and-cost-management.

Service Coverage by Category

Compute and Serverless Services

The AWS Serverless skill delivers comprehensive coverage for event-driven and serverless architectures. Located at skills/core-skills/aws-serverless/SKILL.md, this skill addresses Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, EventBridge, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, S3, and Kinesis. It provides end-to-end guidance for building, deploying, debugging, and optimizing serverless applications, including concurrency tuning and architecture patterns.

SDK and Development Frameworks

Three distinct skills cover AWS SDK implementation patterns across major programming languages:

• AWS SDK Python Usage (skills/core-skills/aws-sdk-python-usage/SKILL.md): Covers all services reachable via boto3, including S3, DynamoDB, IAM, EC2, and Lambda. This skill provides best-practice patterns for client/resource creation, pagination, waiters, error handling, and logging.

• AWS SDK JS v3 Usage (skills/core-skills/aws-sdk-js-v3-usage/SKILL.md): Addresses all services accessible via the AWS SDK for JavaScript v3, with guidance on client construction, retries, middleware, and TypeScript-specific patterns.

• AWS SDK Swift Usage (skills/core-skills/aws-sdk-swift-usage/SKILL.md): Documents Swift SDK patterns for credential handling, request signing, and service-specific APIs across all supported AWS services.

Security and Identity Management

The AWS IAM skill (skills/core-skills/aws-iam/SKILL.md) provides deep coverage for IAM roles, policies, STS, Organizations, and SAML integration. It includes edge-case handling for policy evaluation logic, trust policy configuration, and privilege escalation detection.

Complementing IAM, the Signing-in-to-AWS skill (skills/core-skills/signing-in-to-aws/SKILL.md) covers authentication fundamentals including SSO, IAM identity providers, and OIDC configuration—serving as a foundation for all other operational skills.

Infrastructure as Code

Two skills manage infrastructure deployment patterns:

• AWS CDK (skills/core-skills/aws-cdk/SKILL.md): Covers CDK v1 to v2 migration, bootstrap procedures, custom constructs, and compliance validation for infrastructure-as-code development.

• AWS CloudFormation (skills/core-skills/aws-cloudformation/SKILL.md): Focuses on template authoring, pre-deployment validation, drift detection, and compliance checks for CloudFormation stacks.

Observability and Operations

The AWS Observability skill (skills/core-skills/aws-observability/SKILL.md) spans the full monitoring stack: CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Metrics, CloudWatch Alarms, CloudWatch Dashboards, X-Ray Tracing, CloudTrail, Synthetics, and Logs Insights. This skill provides instrumentation strategies, alerting configurations, and troubleshooting workflows.

For event-driven architectures, the AWS Messaging & Streaming skill (skills/core-skills/aws-messaging-and-streaming/SKILL.md) covers SQS, SNS, Kinesis, EventBridge, and MQ, offering patterns for durable queues and streaming pipelines.

Containers and Orchestration

The AWS Containers skill (skills/core-skills/aws-containers/SKILL.md) addresses ECS, Fargate, ECR, App Runner, ECS-Exec, and Firelens logging. It includes task definition templates, service scaling strategies, spot pricing optimization, and container-specific security configurations.

Cost Management and AI Services

The AWS Billing & Cost Management skill (skills/core-skills/aws-billing-and-cost-management/SKILL.md) covers Cost Explorer, Budgets, CUR (Cost and Usage Reports), Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, EC2 Right-Sizing, EBS optimization, Lambda cost tuning, and Free Tier monitoring.

For generative AI workloads, the Amazon Bedrock skill (skills/core-skills/amazon-bedrock/SKILL.md) provides end-to-end guidance for Bedrock model invocation, prompt engineering, guardrails configuration, and agent development.

Implementation Examples

The following examples demonstrate how these core skills translate into production code across different AWS services.

Python SDK Pattern for S3 Operations

This example from the AWS SDK Python Usage skill demonstrates boto3 client best practices:

import boto3

# Re-use a single client – clients are thread-safe

s3 = boto3.client("s3")

def list_buckets():
    resp = s3.list_buckets()
    for bucket in resp.get("Buckets", []):
        print(bucket["Name"])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    list_buckets()

Reference: skills/core-skills/aws-sdk-python-usage/SKILL.md

CDK TypeScript Stack for Lambda Deployment

This implementation covers both the AWS CDK and AWS Serverless skills:

import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import * as lambda from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-lambda';

export class SimpleLambdaStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: cdk.App, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    new lambda.Function(this, 'HelloWorld', {
      runtime: lambda.Runtime.PYTHON_3_11,
      code: lambda.Code.fromAsset('lambda'),   // folder with handler.py
      handler: 'handler.main',
      memorySize: 256,
      timeout: cdk.Duration.seconds(10),
    });
  }
}

Reference: skills/core-skills/aws-cdk/SKILL.md

CloudFormation Template for DynamoDB

This YAML template demonstrates the AWS CloudFormation skill approach:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
Description: Minimal DynamoDB table for demo
Resources:
  DemoTable:
    Type: AWS::DynamoDB::Table
    Properties:
      TableName: DemoTable
      AttributeDefinitions:
        - AttributeName: Id
          AttributeType: S
      KeySchema:
        - AttributeName: Id
          KeyType: HASH
      BillingMode: PAY_PER_REQUEST

Reference: skills/core-skills/aws-cloudformation/SKILL.md

Least-Privilege IAM Policy for S3 Access

This JSON policy demonstrates the AWS IAM skill security patterns:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetObject",
        "s3:PutObject"
      ],
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-bucket/*"
    }
  ]
}

Reference: skills/core-skills/aws-iam/SKILL.md

Enabling X-Ray Tracing for Lambda Functions

This Python example from the AWS Observability skill configures distributed tracing:

import boto3

lambda_client = boto3.client('lambda')
lambda_client.update_function_configuration(
    FunctionName='my-function',
    TracingConfig={'Mode': 'Active'}
)

Reference: skills/core-skills/aws-observability/SKILL.md

Summary

• The Agent Toolkit for AWS organizes 13 core skills within the skills/core-skills/ directory, each targeting specific AWS service domains.
• Service coverage spans compute (Lambda, ECS), storage (S3, EBS), databases (DynamoDB), messaging (SQS, SNS, Kinesis), security (IAM, STS), and emerging AI services (Bedrock).
• SDK-specific skills provide language-optimized patterns for Python (boto3), JavaScript/TypeScript (v3), and Swift implementations across all AWS services.
• Operational skills include dedicated coverage for observability (CloudWatch, X-Ray), cost management, and infrastructure as code (CDK, CloudFormation).
• Each skill maintains its canonical guidance in a SKILL.md file, offering validated code snippets, architecture patterns, and troubleshooting procedures specific to that service area.

Frequently Asked Questions

What AWS services are covered by the core skills for serverless development?

The AWS Serverless skill covers Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, EventBridge, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, S3, and Kinesis. According to the source code in skills/core-skills/aws-serverless/SKILL.md, this skill provides architecture patterns for building event-driven applications, concurrency tuning strategies for Lambda functions, and integration patterns for connecting these services.

How do the SDK-specific core skills differ from service-specific skills?

The AWS SDK Python Usage, AWS SDK JS v3 Usage, and AWS SDK Swift Usage skills cover all AWS services accessible through their respective SDKs, focusing on language-specific implementation patterns like client configuration, pagination, and error handling. In contrast, service-specific skills like AWS Serverless or AWS IAM focus on architectural patterns and operational procedures for specific AWS service groups, regardless of programming language.

Which core skill should I reference for cost optimization across multiple AWS services?

The AWS Billing & Cost Management skill (skills/core-skills/aws-billing-and-cost-management/SKILL.md) provides comprehensive cost optimization guidance covering Cost Explorer, Budgets, Savings Plans, Reserved Instances, and service-specific optimizations for EC2, EBS, and Lambda. This skill aggregates cost management patterns across the AWS ecosystem into a single reference point.

Are authentication and identity covered by the core skills?

Yes. The AWS IAM skill covers granular IAM policy evaluation, trust policies, and privilege escalation detection, while the Signing-in-to-AWS skill provides foundational authentication guidance including SSO and identity provider configuration. Both skills are located in skills/core-skills/aws-iam/ and skills/core-skills/signing-in-to-aws/ respectively, ensuring comprehensive security coverage alongside operational skills.

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