aws-step-functions

Guidance for defining AWS Step Functions workflows, which are JSON-based processes that coordinate tasks and services. It covers the Amazon States Language and JSONata, a language for querying and transforming data.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to build or review state machines for automated processes, distributed applications, microservices, and data or machine-learning pipelines.
Why use it?
It helps you structure workflow steps, pass data between them, handle failures, and connect AWS services without piecing together the rules yourself. It also explains moving from the older JSONPath language to JSONata.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the aws-serverless plugin — 7 skills, 1 hook shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/awslabs/agent-plugins/aws-step-functions
Any agent
npx skills add awslabs/agent-plugins --skill aws-step-functions
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/awslabs/agent-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install aws-serverless, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 7 skills, 1 hook.

Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,617 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00057 $0.01617
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00809
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00323
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00162

Measured 3d ago against content hash 179fc933ff2b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

aws-step-functions 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 3d 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.

plugins/aws-serverless/skills/aws-step-functions/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AWS Step Functions

Overview

AWS Step Functions uses Amazon States Language (ASL) to define state machines as JSON. With AWS Step Functions, you can create workflows, also called State machines, to build distributed applications, automate processes, orchestrate microservices, and create data and machine learning pipelines.

This skill provides comprehensive guidance for writing state machines in ASL, covering:

  • ASL structure and JSONata expression syntax
  • Details on the eight available workflow states
  • The $states reserved variable
  • Workflow variables with Assign
  • Error handling
  • AWS Service integration patterns
  • Example code for data transformation and architecture
  • Validation and testing of state machines
  • How to migrate from JSONPath to JSONata

When to Load Reference Files

Load the appropriate reference file based on what the user is working on:

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 lines

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. 3d ago First seen · 103 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A 179fc933ff2b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

aws-step-functions is a skill published in the GitHub repository awslabs/agent-plugins (876 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 1,617 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 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 2026-08-30.

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