| name | alibaba-expert |
| description | Alibaba Cloud expert guardrails — RAM least-privilege, data boundaries, residency (mainland/international split), cost, and official-source validation. Trigger when designing or reviewing any Alibaba Cloud workload, especially agents or LLMs (Model Studio/Bailian, Qwen, AgentScope). |
Alibaba Cloud Expert
Same discipline, different control plane: RAM and ActionTrail are the guardrails; Model Studio and AgentScope are the agent surface. The mainland/international split is a design input, not an afterthought.
This skill enforces the discipline that makes Alibaba Cloud workloads production-safe: identity, data boundaries, cost controls, and residency. It is not a feature tour — it is a checklist of the things that cause incidents and compliance failures when skipped.
When to use
- Designing any Alibaba Cloud infrastructure (new or modified)
- Before deploying agents or LLM workloads (Model Studio / Bailian, DashScope, PAI, AgentScope)
- When reviewing a Terraform plan or architecture for an Alibaba Cloud workload
- When a system touches regulated data or spans mainland-China and international regions
Procedure
-
Identity and RAM — verify least-privilege for every principal:
- RAM roles with STS temporary credentials over long-lived AccessKey pairs. No AccessKeys in code or config.
- Policies scoped to the specific function; resource groups used to bound blast radius.
- ActionTrail enabled on all account activity and shipped to a central audit store.
-
Data boundaries — for every data store:
- Classification recorded (public / internal / confidential / regulated — note PIPL and Data Security Law categories where in scope).
- OSS bucket policies explicit; public access blocked; KMS CMK where required.
- Cross-account sharing explicit and documented.
-
Data residency — for each resource:
- Mainland-China vs international accounts are separate control planes — decide which side the workload and its data live on; regulated mainland data stays in mainland regions.
- For Model Studio / DashScope calls: confirm the endpoint region matches the residency requirement.
-
Cost controls — for every LLM, compute, or storage resource:
- Budget alerts configured (User Center budgets) at staged thresholds.
- DashScope token quotas and rate limits set; unbounded agent loops are unbounded spend.
- Auto-scaling maximums bounded.
-
Network and egress — confirm:
- PrivateLink / PrivateZone used where public endpoints are avoidable.
- Security groups default-deny; egress costed for cross-border traffic (cross-border egress is materially expensive).
-
Observability — confirm:
- CloudMonitor dashboards and alerts on error rate, latency, and cost.
- SLS (Log Service) retention configured for audit — evidence before go-live.
-
Run the Adversarial Gate — common Alibaba Cloud failure modes: long-lived AccessKeys, public OSS buckets, mainland/international residency confusion, uncapped DashScope spend, missing ActionTrail.
Official sources — validate before you assert
- Documentation:
alibabacloud.com/help (international) · help.aliyun.com (mainland)
- Live docs via MCP: official MCP coverage is thinner here than the other vendors — verify what exists before pinning; spring-ai-alibaba ships MCP integrations (
github.com/alibaba/spring-ai-alibaba).
- GitHub, foundations:
github.com/aliyun (incl. terraform-provider-alicloud and landing-zone modules)
- GitHub, agent examples:
github.com/modelscope/agentscope · github.com/alibaba/spring-ai-alibaba · github.com/QwenLM
- Rule: every service/API claim cites an official doc. Service names, quotas, and model IDs are dated facts — stale until re-verified against the source.
Outputs
- Alibaba Cloud guardrail checklist (pass/fail per item)
- RAM matrix: principal | role | scope | justification
- Data classification and boundary map (incl. residency side)
- Budget alert confirmation
- Open findings for human review
Guardrails
- No long-lived AccessKeys in workloads. STS or nothing.
- Residency is a constraint, not a preference. The mainland/international split is decided in design, recorded in the ADR.
- Budget alerts are not optional. An unmonitored LLM workload will produce a surprise invoice.
- ActionTrail is evidence. Enable it before go-live, not after an incident.