launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices

launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws. It costs 71 tokens per session (414 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for launching Amazon EC2 virtual machines with secure, cost-aware settings. It covers the machine image, size, network placement, access permissions, firewall rules, encrypted storage, tags, and connection checks.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose an AMI and instance type, configure networking and security groups, attach permissions, set up storage, and verify a new EC2 instance.
Why use it?
It reduces the risk of launching a server with excessive network exposure, weak access controls, unsuitable storage, or poor cost tracking.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to choose an AMI and instance type, configure networking and security groups, attach permissions, set up storage, and verify a new EC2 instance.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices
About the project

Agent Toolkit for AWS is a collection of AWS-supported MCP servers, skills, plugins, commands, and hooks that help AI coding agents build, deploy, and manage applications on AWS. It is used by developers working with AWS services through agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Kiro. The catalogue entries are the toolkit's own agent extensions for AWS development and operations.

aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws · 2,886 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 414 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • Socket pass 14 Sept 2026
  • Snyk pass 14 Sept 2026
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00071 $0.00414
Opus 5.5 $0.00028 $0.00166
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00014 $0.00083
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00041

Measured 1mo ago against content hash c118661a9e19, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 1mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/specialized-skills/ec2-skills/launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices/SKILL.md · 42 lines

What it actually says

Launching EC2 Instances with Best Practices

Overview

Domain expertise for launching EC2 instances with sensible defaults optimized for security, cost-efficiency, and operational best practices. Covers AMI selection, instance type recommendation, network configuration, IAM role creation, security group hardening, storage configuration, tagging strategy, and post-launch verification.

Launch an EC2 instance

To launch a fully configured EC2 instance with best-practice defaults, follow the procedure exactly. See EC2 instance launch procedure.

The procedure handles:

  • Intelligent defaults based on workload type and environment
  • Network validation (VPC, subnet, public/private placement)
  • AMI selection with architecture compatibility checks
  • Least-privilege IAM roles for required AWS service access
  • Hardened security groups with minimal port exposure
  • Encrypted gp3 storage with environment-appropriate retention
  • Comprehensive tagging for cost tracking and organization
  • Post-launch verification and connection instructions

Troubleshooting

Insufficient instance capacity

Try a different availability zone or instance type (e.g., t3a instead of t3). See the full troubleshooting guide in the launch procedure.

Instance immediately terminates

Check console output with aws ec2 get-console-output. Verify EBS volume size is sufficient and AMI is compatible with the instance type.

Cannot connect via SSH

Verify the security group allows SSH from your IP, key file permissions are 400, and the instance is running. Consider AWS Systems Manager Session Manager as an alternative.

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 1mo ago First seen · 42 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A c118661a9e19

Subscribe to this mod's changes

launching-ec2-instance-with-best-practices is a skill published in the GitHub repository aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws (2,886 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 414 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

gke-compute-classes

Configures, optimizes, and troubleshoots GKE ComputeClasses. Use when configuring Spot VMs with on-demand fallback, targeting specific accelerators (GPUs/TPUs) or machine families, restricting ComputeClass access, or debugging pending pods related to node pool auto-creation. Do not use for cluster-level Node Auto…

google/skills · 83 tokens

gke-reliability

Improves GKE workload reliability, using PDBs, health probes, and topology spread constraints. Use when configuring GKE workload reliability, setting up PDBs, or configuring GKE health probes (liveness, readiness, startup). Don't use for generating K8s YAML manifests (use gke-manifest-generation) or disaster recovery…

google/skills · 85 tokens

gke-workload-security

Audits, configures, and hardens workload-level security controls for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) applications and namespaces. Covers running security audits (auditcluster.sh), enforcing Network Policies (default-deny and Dataplane V2 logging), isolating high-risk pods inside GKE Sandbox (gVisor), enforcing Pod…

google/skills · 171 tokens

cloud-architect

Designs cloud architectures, creates migration plans, generates cost optimization recommendations, and produces disaster recovery strategies across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Use when designing cloud architectures, planning migrations, or optimizing multi-cloud deployments. Invoke for Well-Architected Framework, cost…

Jeffallan/claude-skills · 71 tokens

nemo-automodel-launcher-config

Configure NeMo AutoModel job launches for interactive runs, Slurm clusters, and SkyPilot cloud execution.

NVIDIA/skills · 30 tokens

azure-mgmt-botservice-dotnet

Azure Resource Manager SDK for Bot Service in .NET. Management plane operations for creating and managing Azure Bot resources, channels (Teams, DirectLine, Slack), and connection settings. Triggers: "Bot Service", "BotResource", "Azure Bot", "DirectLine channel", "Teams channel", "bot management .NET", "create bot".

microsoft/skills · 78 tokens