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Use Claude Code with Agent Toolkit for AWS to build, deploy and manage your AWS environment

9 minute read
Content level: Intermediate
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How to install Agent Toolkit for AWS including AWS MCP server for Claude Code

Overview

Agent Toolkit for AWS is a production-ready suite of tools and guidance that gives AI coding agents the tools, knowledge, and guardrails they need to work effectively with AWS services, which helps to improve success rates and reduce wasted effort. Claude Code is an AI-powered coding assistant by Anthropic.

This article shows how to configure Claude Code CLI with Agent Toolkit for AWS

Similar article on Agent Toolkit for AWS is also available for Kiro IDE and Codex IDE

What can I do with Agent Toolkit for AWS?

Agent Toolkit for AWS includes

  • AWS MCP Server — A managed server that gives agents access to AWS through the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
  • Agent skills — Curated packages of instructions, code scripts, and reference materials that help agents complete specific AWS tasks
  • Plugins — Single-install packages for Claude Code and Codex that bundle the AWS MCP Server configuration and a curated set of agent skills
  • Rules files — Project-level configuration files that set guardrails and preferences for how agents work in your project

You can use Agent Toolkit for AWS to do the following

  • Get real-time AWS knowledge – Search and retrieve up-to-date AWS documentation, API references, best practices, and regional availability information to inform your AI assistant's responses and decisions.
  • Make authenticated AWS API calls – Execute most of the 15,000+ AWS APIs with SigV4 through your existing IAM roles and policies, with automatic syntax validation and error handling.
  • Troubleshoot AWS issues – Analyze CloudWatch logs and CloudTrail events, investigate permission problems, debug application failures, and diagnose performance issues using guided workflows and access to comprehensive AWS knowledge sources.
  • Provision and configure infrastructure – Create and configure AWS resources like VPCs, databases, compute instances, and storage with automated workflows that implement security best practices and proper resource tagging.

AI agent setup prompt

Besides following the guidance in this article, you can also setup Agent Toolkit with the following prompt

Set up Agent Toolkit for AWS by following instructions:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/refs/heads/main/setup-instructions/setup.md

Software Requirements

Besides installing Claude Code CLI, the following software are required

Install software

Install AWS CLI

Installation files

To install, you can download latest binaries/installer

Do refer to AWS CLI documentation for installation guidance and other installation options.

To verify

aws --version

Output should be similar to below

aws-cli/2.35.15 Python/3.14.5 Windows/2025Server exec-env/EC2 exe/AMD64

Configure AWS CLI

You need to configure AWS credentials on your local machine. The server uses these credentials to authenticate your requests.

Option 1: AWS Management Console credentials

If you have username and password that allows you to sign in to the console.

aws login

Option 2: AWS SSO (IAM Identity Center)

If you login using IAM Identity Center

aws configure sso

Follow the prompts to set up your SSO configuration.

Option 3: IAM User

If you have a IAM user

aws configure

Enter your Access Key ID, Secret Access Key, default region, and output format.

Option 4: EC2 Instance

On EC2 instances with no AWS profiles configured, AWS CLI automatically and securely retrieves the credentials from the instance metadata without additional configuration.

If you wish to configure a profile, for example EC2, that uses EC2 instance metadata

aws configure set --profile EC2 credential_source Ec2InstanceMetadata
aws configure set --profile EC2 region ap-southeast-1

Do replace ap-southeast-1 with the correct Region Code

AWS profile

Do note the profile name. If you do not specify one, the profile name is usually default. You can retrieve profile name from ~/.aws/config file or with the following command

aws configure list-profiles

Output could be similar to below

default

Verify

aws sts get-caller-identity

You should get a output with details about your IAM user or role

{
    "UserId": "AROAXD2DB4IT6MCPEU35:awsadmin",
    "Account": "123456789012",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:sts::123456789012:assumed-role/AWSReservedSSO_AdministratorAccess_4eaed2acd485a10b/awsadmin"
}

Install UV

Windows

From PowerShell

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Linux / MacOS

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Verify

uvx --version

You should get output that list UVX version, e.g.

uv 0.11.26 (396ef7ce4 2026-06-30 x86_64-pc-windows-msvc)

Do refer to UV documentation for details including other installation options

Install Git

Refer to Git documentation for installation options

Verify

To verify

git --version

Output should be similar to below

git version 2.54.0.windows.1

Git for Windows

For Git Windows app, enable long paths to allows Git to bypass the standard Windows maximum path length limitation of 260 characters

git config --global core.longpaths true

Install Agent Toolkit

Option 1: Anthropic Marketplace

Plugins for the Agent Toolkit for AWS are single-install packages that bundle the AWS MCP Server configuration and a curated set of agent skills. To install Agent Toolkit aws-core plugin from official Anthropic marketplace

/plugin marketplace update claude-plugins-official
/plugin install aws-core@claude-plugins-official
/reload-plugins

install from marketplace

After installing, use /plugin to navigate to browse through and install other AWS plugins

discover

Refer to Agent Toolkit Github for details,

Claude Marketplace may not list specialized skills. You can use AWS CLI in the next section to install them

Option 2: AWS CLI

To install Agent Toolkit skills and/or AWS MCP server using AWS CLI version 2.35 or later

aws configure agent-toolkit --region us-east-1

AWS CLI will detect your installed Claude code software

  ✗ Gemini CLI — ~/.agents/skills (not found)
  ✗ Kiro — ~/.kiro/skills (not found)
  ✗ OpenClaw — ~/.openclaw/skills (not found)
  ✗ OpenCode — ~/.agents/skills (not found)
  ✗ Pi — ~/.pi/agent/skills (not found)
  ✗ Windsurf — ~/.agents/skills (not found)

Select agents to configure (space to toggle, up/down arrows to navigate, enter to confirm):
  [x] Claude Code — C:\Users\Administrator/.claude/skills

Ensure that Claude code is selected (i.e. [x]) and press Enter to proceed

AWS CLI will fetch and list available core agent skills to install

Fetching default AWS skills...
  Found: amazon-bedrock, aws-billing-and-cost-management, aws-blocks, aws-cdk, aws-cloudformation, aws-containers, 
aws-iam, aws-messaging-and-streaming, aws-observability, aws-sdk-js-v3-usage, aws-sdk-python-usage, aws-sdk-swift-usage, 
aws-serverless, signing-in-to-aws

Install 14 default AWS skills? [Y/n]:

Output should be similar to below. Enter y to install AWS core skills. Select n if you only wish to install MCP server

Install 14 default AWS skills? [Y/n]: y

Installing 14 default AWS skills...
  [1/14] amazon-bedrock
  [2/14] aws-billing-and-cost-management
  [3/14] aws-blocks
  [4/14] aws-cdk
  [5/14] aws-cloudformation
  [6/14] aws-containers
  [7/14] aws-iam
  [8/14] aws-messaging-and-streaming
  [9/14] aws-observability
  [10/14] aws-sdk-js-v3-usage
  [11/14] aws-sdk-python-usage
  [12/14] aws-sdk-swift-usage
  [13/14] aws-serverless
  [14/14] signing-in-to-aws

Skills installed to:
  Claude Code — C:\Users\Administrator/.claude/skills

Configure AWS MCP server connection? [Y/n]:

If you enter y

Configure AWS MCP server connection? [Y/n]: y

AWS MCP server configured for:
  ✓ Claude Code — C:\Users\Administrator/.claude.json: updated

You can discover additional skills with 'aws agent-toolkit search-skills --search-query <text>'

Updating, adding and removing skills with AWS CLI

You can use aws agent-toolkit command to install, update, remove, list, and search for skills

To list installed skills

aws agent-toolkit --region us-east-1 list-installed-skills

To list available core and specialized skills

aws agent-toolkit --region us-east-1 list-available skills

To install a skill, e.g. cloudfront

aws agent-toolkit --region us-east-1 add-skill --skill-name cloudfront

To update a skill, e.g. amazon-bedrock

 aws agent-toolkit --region us-east-1 update-skill --skill-name amazon-bedrock

Refer to AWS CLI integration guide for more details, and Agent Toolkit Github for listing of specialized skills

Configure AWS MCP server

To configure the installed AWS MCP server, edit ~/.claude.json file. Search for the following text

  "mcpServers": {
    "aws-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-proxy-for-aws@latest",
        "https://aws-mcp.us-east-1.api.aws/mcp",
        "--metadata",
        "INSTALL_SOURCE=aws-cli"
      ]
    }

You may want to configure default AWS Region as follows.

  "mcpServers": {
    "aws-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-proxy-for-aws@latest",
        "https://aws-mcp.us-east-1.api.aws/mcp",
        "--metadata",
        "INSTALL_SOURCE=aws-cli",
        "--metadata",
        "AWS_REGION=ap-southeast-1"
      ]
    }

Do replace ap-southeast-1 with the correct AWS Region Code.

To specify one of more AWS profiles,

  "mcpServers": {
    "aws-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-proxy-for-aws@latest",
        "https://aws-mcp.us-east-1.api.aws/mcp",
        "--metadata",
        "INSTALL_SOURCE=aws-cli",
        "--metadata",
        "AWS_REGION=ap-southeast-1"
      ],
      "env": {
        "AWS_MCP_PROXY_PROFILES": "EC2"
      }
    }

Refer to MCP Proxy for AWS Python package page for more details

Install CLAUDE.md

Agent Toolkit for AWS includes a recommended CLAUDE.md file that give Claude persistent instructions on how to work with AWS — for example, to use the AWS MCP Server for API calls, to search for available skills before starting a task, and to prefer infrastructure-as-code over direct CLI command.

Copy the raw contents of aws-agent-rules.md from GitHub. Save the contents as CLAUDE.md to either your project root folder or ~/.claude folder

Using Claude Code

Start claude. If you have installed the AWS MCP server, enter /mcp to verify AWS MCP connection status


❯ /mcp

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 Manage MCP servers
  1 server

    User MCPs (C:\Users\Administrator\.claude.json)
  ❯ aws-mcp · ✔ connected · 9 tools

  https://code.claude.com/docs/en/mcp for help
 ↑/↓ to navigate · Enter to confirm · Esc to cancel

Ensure the aws-mcp status is connected before using. In the screenshot below, Claude Code uses AWS MCP server to query for running EC2 instances

Claude Code query AWS

More information

Blog post The AWS MCP Server is now generally available provides an overview of AWS MCP Server.

Refer to Agent Toolkit for AWS User Guide for more information

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