creating-ansible-playbooks

name	creating-ansible-playbooks
description	Execute use when you need to work with Ansible automation. This skill provides Ansible playbook creation with comprehensive guidance and automation. Trigger with phrases like "create Ansible playbook", "automate with Ansible", or "configure with Ansible".
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash(ansible:*), Bash(terraform:*)
version	1.27.0
author	Jeremy Longshore <[e-mail]>
license	MIT
tags	["devops","ansible-playbooks"]
compatibility	Designed for Claude Code, also compatible with Codex and OpenClaw

Creating Ansible Playbooks

Overview

Generate production-ready Ansible playbooks, roles, and inventories for infrastructure automation. Supports provisioning servers, deploying applications, configuring services, and enforcing desired state across fleets of machines using SSH-based agentless automation.

Prerequisites

• Ansible 2.14+ installed (ansible --version)
• SSH access to target hosts with key-based authentication
• Python 3.9+ on control node and managed nodes
• Inventory of target hosts (IPs or hostnames)
• Privilege escalation credentials (sudo) if configuring system-level resources
• ansible-lint installed for playbook validation

Instructions

1. Scan the project for existing Ansible files (ansible.cfg, inventory/, roles/, group_vars/) to understand current structure
2. Determine the automation target: server provisioning, application deployment, configuration management, or security hardening
3. Create the playbook YAML with proper structure: hosts, become, vars, tasks, handlers
4. Extract reusable logic into roles using the standard directory layout (tasks/, handlers/, templates/, defaults/, vars/, meta/)
5. Define variables in group_vars/ and host_vars/ for environment-specific values, keeping secrets in vault-encrypted files
6. Use Jinja2 templates for configuration files that vary across environments
7. Add handlers for service restarts triggered by configuration changes
8. Validate the playbook with ansible-lint and ansible-playbook --check --diff (dry run)
9. Test idempotency by running the playbook twice and confirming no changes on the second run

Output

• Ansible playbooks (.yml) with structured tasks, handlers, and variables
• Role directories following Ansible Galaxy structure
• Jinja2 templates (.j2) for dynamic configuration files
• Inventory files (INI or YAML) with host groups
• group_vars/ and for environment separation