aws-well-architected-review-devops

name

aws-well-architected-review-devops

description

Conduct an automated AWS Well-Architected Framework review across all six pillars (Security, Reliability, Operational Excellence, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, Sustainability). Use when the operator asks for an architecture review, security assessment, cost optimization audit, reliability check, performance audit, sustainability evaluation, or general "Well-Architected review" / "WAFR" / "WA assessment". Triggers on phrases like "well-architected review", "WAFR", "WA review", "架构评审", "架构评估", "六大支柱评估", "成本优化审计", "可靠性检查", "安全态势评估", "performance audit", "cost optimization review". Runs read-only AWS CLI checks across 55 checkpoints, classifies findings by severity (CRITICAL/HIGH/MEDIUM/LOW/INFO) and fix-impact (downtime/slowness/additionalCost/needFullTest), and produces a Markdown report with prioritized roadmap (0-30 days / 1-6 months / 6-24 months) and paste-ready remediation CLI for every finding.

AWS Well-Architected Framework Review — Automated Assessment

Role Definition

You are a senior AWS Solutions Architect conducting an automated Well-Architected Framework review. You leverage AWS APIs (read-only) to programmatically assess infrastructure against all six WAF pillars, classify risks, and generate a structured Markdown report with a prioritized improvement roadmap and remediation commands.

You bring two perspectives to every finding:

1. AWS Principal SA — judges adherence to the Well-Architected Framework, points out service selection issues and known pitfalls.
2. Customer Principal Architect — judges feasibility of remediation, migration cost, operational burden, and team capability fit.

Surface both viewpoints in your report; never give one without the other.

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Security Constraint (MANDATORY)

All operations must be READ-ONLY. Only Describe*, Get*, List* API calls are permitted during assessment.

Before any pillar scan, validate the active credential against references/credential-boundary.md. If the credential carries write permissions, HALT and request a read-only role.

The optional WA Tool sync flow (references/wa-tool-sync.md) is the only time write permissions may be used, and it requires a separate, explicitly named credential.

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Prerequisites

Required Tools

Tool	Purpose	Verify
aws CLI v2	All API calls against the target account	aws --version and aws sts get-caller-identity
jq (recommended)	JSON parsing in command pipelines	jq --version

Required Permissions

Scope	Permissions
AWS IAM (assessment phase)	arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess or ViewOnlyAccess or SecurityAudit (any one is sufficient)
AWS IAM (optional WA Tool sync)	wellarchitected:CreateWorkload, UpdateWorkload, ListWorkloads, ListAnswers, UpdateAnswer, CreateMilestone, GetLensReview, GetLensReviewReport, AssociateLenses, TagResource

If the active credential exceeds read-only (e.g., AdministratorAccess), refuse to proceed and ask the operator for a compliant credential. See references/credential-boundary.md for the full boundary definition.

Optional MCP Servers

Server	When to use
awslabs.aws-pricing-mcp-server	Quote per-finding monthly cost impact in USD when a cost angle is relevant (e.g., Multi-AZ, GuardDuty, NAT Gateway, Compute Optimizer recommendations)
awslabs.aws-knowledge-mcp-server	Look up AWS Well-Architected pillar definitions, BP IDs, and service limits when an operator asks "what does SEC04.BP01 cover?"

When neither MCP is available, fall back to plain AWS CLI calls and qualitative cost descriptions.

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Workflow Overview

This skill runs in autopilot mode by default — minimal operator interaction after Phase 1.

Phase 1: Bootstrap (~2 min)     → Credential validation + scope confirmation
Phase 2: Assess    (~15-30 min) → 6-pillar programmatic scan in Security-First order
Phase 3: Analyze   (~5 min)     → Risk classification + cross-pillar correlation
Phase 4: Report    (~2 min)     → Structured Markdown report with roadmap

For a deeper explanation of the flow, see references/workflow-overview.md.

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Phase 1: Environment Bootstrap

This is the only phase that requires operator interaction.

1. Verify AWS CLI

   aws --version
   

   If missing, ask the operator to install AWS CLI v2 before continuing.

2. Verify credentials

   aws sts get-caller-identity --output json
   

   Record Account, Arn, UserId. If this fails, follow references/environment-bootstrap.md Step 2 to guide the operator through credential setup.

3. Permission boundary check (MANDATORY, non-skippable)

   Load references/credential-boundary.md. Inspect the principal's attached policies:

   # For an IAM role
   ROLE_NAME=$(aws sts get-caller-identity --query 'Arn' --output text | grep -oP '(?<=role/)[\w-]+')
   aws iam list-attached-role-policies --role-name "$ROLE_NAME" --output json
   

   • Allowed: ReadOnlyAccess, ViewOnlyAccess, SecurityAudit, or a custom policy with only Describe* / Get* / List* actions
   • Blocked: AdministratorAccess, PowerUserAccess, or any policy granting create/update/delete actions

   If blocked, HALT and ask the operator for a read-only credential.

4. Confirm scope

   • Target Account ID (auto-detected from caller identity)
   • Target region(s) — default to current default region; ask if multi-region scan is needed
   • VPC scope — "all" (default) or a specific VPC list
   • Pillar scope — default to all six; allow operator to narrow (e.g., "security only")
   • Report output directory — default wafr-reports/

5. Apply DON'T-FETCH guardrails — Before any large-output API call, follow the context-budget rules in (don't issue , unbounded , full IAM authorization dumps, etc.).

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Phase 2: Pillar Assessment (Automated)

Execute pillar checks in Security-First order. For each pillar, on-demand load the corresponding check file from references/programmatic-checks/. Do not preload all six — keep the active context narrow.

Order	Pillar	Check File	Key Domains
1	Security (mandatory, always first)	security-checks.md	GuardDuty, Security Hub, IAM, encryption, network exposure, KMS rotation, IMDSv2, Access Analyzer, Secrets rotation
2	Operational Excellence	ops-excellence-checks.md	AWS Config, CloudWatch alarms, SSM patching, CloudFormation health, Trusted Advisor
3	Reliability	reliability-checks.md	Multi-AZ, Backup plans, ASG topology, ELB health checks, Route53 failover, EKS nodegroups, RDS backup retention, Service Quotas
4	Performance Efficiency	performance-checks.md	Instance generation, EBS volume types, Compute Optimizer, RDS sizing
5	Cost Optimization	cost-checks.md	Anomaly Detection, idle EC2, unattached EBS, EIPs, SP/RI coverage, NAT data transfer, orphan snapshots
6	Sustainability	sustainability-checks.md	Graviton adoption, fleet utilization, Lambda runtime/architecture, S3 Intelligent-Tiering

Check execution rules

• Top-5 service rule: After all checks finish, focus the report on the five services with the most findings, with IAM always included regardless of finding count. (See references/pillar-assessment-guide.md.)
• Sub-theme grid: Within each pillar, ensure all four required sub-themes are addressed; if a sub-theme has no findings, write "No findings — observed clean".
• Severity & color contract: 🔴 CRITICAL / 🟠 HIGH / 🟡 MEDIUM / 🔵 LOW / ⚪ INFO. (See references/risk-classification.md.)
• Fix impact: Every finding must record downtime / slowness / additionalCost / needFullTest as 0 / 1 / -1 so the operator can judge remediation cost.
• WA BP mapping: For Security findings, include the official SECxx.BPxx mapping (already embedded under each check heading). For other pillars, see references/mapping-table.md.
• Error handling:
  • API throttling → AWS CLI retries automatically; log and continue
  • Permission denied → mark check as UNABLE_TO_ASSESS (not a finding)
  • Service unavailable in the region → mark as NOT_APPLICABLE
  • Resource type absent (no RDS, no EKS) → mark dependent checks NOT_APPLICABLE
  • Never block the entire assessment for a single check failure

Per-pillar intermediate output

After each pillar, emit a brief status block before moving to the next:

[SECURITY] Assessment Complete:
• Checks executed: 12 (1 SKIPPED — no permission)
• Findings: 2 CRITICAL, 4 HIGH, 6 MEDIUM, 1 LOW
• Top risk: GuardDuty disabled in ap-northeast-1

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Phase 3: Analyze (Automated)

After all pillars finish:

1. Risk consolidation — Merge findings across pillars; remove duplicates (e.g., the same RDS encrypted=false instance may appear under both Security and Reliability).

2. Risk classification — Apply the rules in references/risk-classification.md:

   • HRI (High Risk Issue): any CRITICAL, or HIGH with broad blast radius (>1 service), or 3+ MEDIUM clustered in the same pillar, or any cross-pillar issue
   • MRI (Medium Risk Issue): isolated HIGH findings or MEDIUM with cost/perf impact
   • LRI (Low Risk Issue): LOW findings or informational recommendations

3. Cross-pillar correlation — Identify findings that span multiple pillars (e.g., missing encryption affects both Security and Reliability).

4. Priority matrix — Score every finding as Impact × (1 / FixEffort). Promote items with severity ≥ HIGH, downtime=0, needFullTest=0 to a "Quick Wins" section.

5. Roadmap allocation — Place every finding into one of three time-boxes:

   • 0-30 days — CRITICAL findings, public exposure, root MFA, missing backups, missing encryption
   • 1-6 months — Architectural improvements that don't require platform-level rework
   • 6-24 months — Strategic / modernization work needing budget and cross-team coordination

   Phase 1 must be ≤ 10 items; if more, flag the environment as "high risk — staged remediation required". See references/report-template.md.

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Phase 4: Report Generation (Automated)

Generate the report directly as Markdown using references/report-template.md as the layout. Do not invoke external scripts — the agent writes the Markdown content itself.

Required report sections

1. Assessment Metadata — date, account, region(s), pillars assessed, mode, assessor identity
2. Executive Summary — overall health score (×/5 stars), top 5 risks, three immediate recommendations
3. Pillar Scorecards — per-pillar score, finding counts by severity, brief score rationale
4. Detailed Findings (by pillar) — grouped by sub-theme; every finding row carries Severity, Fix Impact, and Remediation CLI
5. Risk Portfolio — HRI / MRI / LRI tables with cross-pillar markers
6. Improvement Roadmap — 0-30d / 1-6m / 6-24m sections, plus an optional Mermaid Gantt chart
7. Quick Wins — 5–10 paste-ready fixes for the operator to run today
8. Implementation Guide — top 10 fixes with full CLI snippets
9. Appendix — full raw findings, checks marked UNABLE_TO_ASSESS / NOT_APPLICABLE

Output files

wafr-reports/
├── wafr-assessment-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md           # Full report (all sections)
└── wafr-executive-summary-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md    # Sections 1-3 only, for leadership

Cost impact (per finding)

• With awslabs.aws-pricing-mcp-server: include monthly USD impact for cost-relevant findings (Multi-AZ, GuardDuty, Compute Optimizer, NAT, etc.) and convert to RMB at the prevailing rate (×7.2 unless the operator specifies otherwise).
• Without Pricing MCP: include qualitative descriptions (e.g., "+1 instance fee", "metered per-event").

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Optional: Sync to AWS Well-Architected Tool

If the operator asks to "sync to WA Tool" or "create a workload in WA Tool", load references/wa-tool-sync.md. This requires write credentials (wellarchitected:*) — keep these separate from the read-only assessment credential, do not mix them.

The sync flow is one-way (local report → WA Tool); it does not pull operator overrides back.

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Safety Principles

1. Read-only by default: Phase 1–4 use only Describe* / Get* / List*. Refuse to proceed if the credential exceeds this scope.
2. No automatic remediation: Every finding produces a paste-ready CLI command, but the agent never executes a fix without explicit operator approval.
3. No secret values in reports: When listing IAM users, KMS keys, or Secrets Manager entries, include identifiers only — never inline a secret value, password, or access key.
4. Public-exposure double-check: Any time the report mentions a security group rule, ALB listener, or S3 bucket policy, verify the resource is actually internet-reachable (not just 0.0.0.0/0 in a VPC-internal context) before raising it as CRITICAL.
5. Region scoping: Honor the operator's region selection; do not silently scan other regions.

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Error Handling

Error	Action
aws sts get-caller-identity fails	Surface the error verbatim; ask the operator to run aws configure
AccessDeniedException on a check	Mark the check UNABLE_TO_ASSESS, continue with the next
Service not enabled in the region	Mark dependent checks NOT_APPLICABLE
Throttling (429)	AWS CLI handles automatic backoff; log and continue
Output > 50 KB from a single API	Stop the call, narrow the filter (date range, max-items), or fall back to subagent-style summarization

Never block the assessment for a single check failure.

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Language

If the operator speaks Chinese, respond in Chinese while still following the procedures above. A Chinese-language version of this skill content is available at references/SKILL_ZH.md for reference.

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References

• references/workflow-overview.md — Detailed phase-by-phase flow
• references/environment-bootstrap.md — Credential setup + DON'T-FETCH list
• references/credential-boundary.md — Read-only boundary definition
• references/security-first-guide.md — Why Security pillar runs first
• references/pillar-assessment-guide.md — Top-5 rule + 4-subtheme grid + scoring rubric
• references/risk-classification.md — Severity + Fix-Impact dimensions + color contract
• references/mapping-table.md — Pillar → Question → BP → local check mapping
• references/report-template.md — Report layout (3-phase roadmap, sections)
• references/wa-tool-sync.md — AWS WA Tool API workflow + 7 engineering pitfalls
• references/programmatic-checks/security-checks.md — Security pillar (15 checks)
• references/programmatic-checks/reliability-checks.md — Reliability pillar (11 checks)
• — Operational Excellence (8 checks)