What problem does it solve? Writing and deploying CloudFormation templates involves subtle schema rules, security pitfalls, and cryptic deployment failures. This Skill guides the full lifecycle: authoring templates with secure defaults, validating them before deployment, and diagnosing root causes when stacks fail. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Template Authoring with Secure Defaults: Applies best practices like S3 public access blocks, encryption at rest, DeletionPolicy on stateful resources, and Secrets Manager dynamic references instead of plaintext secrets. - Three-Layer Pre-Deployment Validation: Runs cfn-lint for syntax, cfn-guard for security compliance, and CloudFormation pre-deployment validation via change sets to catch errors before any resource is provisioned. - Failure Troubleshooting: Diagnoses failed stacks using describe-events with failure filters and CloudTrail correlation, distinguishing real errors from rollback cascade noise. - Use Case: A stack fails with UPDATE_ROLLBACK_FAILED. The Skill retrieves only failure events, identifies that an IAM role lacks permissions for multiple services, and enumerates every permission gap so you fix them all in one pass. ## Quick Start Ask the AI to review your CloudFormation template for security issues and validate it before deployment, for example: "Validate my template.yaml with cfn-lint and cfn-guard, then run pre-deployment validation with a change set."
