Skills cloudformation-best-practices
📦

cloudformation-best-practices

Content revision r1 Safe ⚙️ External commands🌐 Network access

Review CloudFormation Templates Safely

CloudFormation templates can become fragile, hard to review, and risky to update. This skill guides template structure, validation, drift checks, and production deployment patterns.

Supports: Claude Codex Code(CC)
🥉 78 Bronze

Install with my Agent

Copy this request to your Agent. It includes the canonical Skill page and manifest.

Agent request
Review the Skillstore skill "cloudformation-best-practices" from https://skillstore.io/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices.md and its manifest at https://skillstore.io/api/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/manifest. Verify the artifact. You may proceed after verification, subject to the environment's own policy.

Your Agent should still show its plan and request any confirmation required by the security policy.

Agent-readable resources

Use these links when an AI agent, crawler, or script needs clean context instead of reading the full page.

Markdown detail GET /skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices.md Signed manifest GET /api/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/manifest Signed lockfile GET /api/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/lockfile

Test it

Using "cloudformation-best-practices". A VPC template uses hardcoded environment names and lacks outputs.

Expected outcome:

  • Move environment names into parameters with allowed values.
  • Add outputs for stable cross-stack references.
  • Use substitution for environment-specific names.

Using "cloudformation-best-practices". A production database template has no retention policies.

Expected outcome:

  • Add retention protection for stateful resources.
  • Review update replacement behavior before deployment.
  • Document recovery expectations for production data.

Using "cloudformation-best-practices". A stack update failed and entered rollback recovery.

Expected outcome:

  • Identify the failing resource before retrying deployment.
  • Use rollback recovery only after understanding the root cause.
  • Fix the template so the skipped resource can be reconciled.

Security Audit

Safe
v4 • 7/6/2026 Open versioned report

Static findings are false positives caused by Markdown inline-code and fenced-code formatting in SKILL.md. The hardcoded CIDR is a private VPC example, and no prompt injection or malicious intent was found.

1
Files scanned
81
Lines analyzed
0
Review items
0
False positives ignored

Risk Factors

⚙️ External commands (13)
SKILL.md:26 SKILL.md:27 SKILL.md:28 SKILL.md:29 SKILL.md:30 SKILL.md:36-67 SKILL.md:67-71 SKILL.md:71 SKILL.md:72 SKILL.md:73 SKILL.md:74-79 SKILL.md:79-80 SKILL.md:80
🌐 Network access (1)
SKILL.md:46
No confirmed security findings were detected by the latest completed static and semantic audit. This does not prove the skill has no side effects.
Audited by: codex View Audit History →
Share & cite this report

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Open versioned report
Security Assessment

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Academic citations (APA · BibTeX · CFF)

APA citation

sickn33. (2026). cloudformation-best-practices security audit report (audit version 4) [Author version unspecified]. Skillstore. https://skillstore.io/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/audits/4

BibTeX citation

@techreport{sickn33-sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices-2026, author = {sickn33}, title = {cloudformation-best-practices security audit report (audit version 4)}, institution = {Skillstore}, year = {2026}, number = {4}, url = {https://skillstore.io/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/audits/4}, note = {Author version unspecified} }

CITATION.cff

cff-version: 1.2.0 message: "If you use this Skill, cite its author and this versioned security audit report." title: "cloudformation-best-practices security audit report (audit version 4)" version: "unspecified" type: report authors: - name: "sickn33" date-released: "2026-07-06" url: "https://skillstore.io/skills/sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices/audits/4" identifiers: - type: other value: "skillstore:sickn33-cloudformation-best-practices:audit:4" description: "Skillstore immutable audit report identifier"

Skillstore Score

Why this score Evidence Confidence: High
55
Architecture
85
Maintainability
87
Content
68
Community
83
Spec Compliance

What You Can Build

Template Review

Assess a CloudFormation template for readability, parameters, conditions, outputs, and stateful resource protection.

Production Readiness

Prepare stack templates for repeatable deployments across development, staging, and production environments.

Stack Troubleshooting

Analyze update failures, rollback states, and drift symptoms before planning corrective actions.

Try These Prompts

Review a Template 
Review this CloudFormation YAML for readability, parameters, conditions, outputs, and stateful resource protection. Summarize risks before suggesting changes.
Improve Reuse 
Suggest changes that make this CloudFormation template reusable across dev, staging, and prod. Focus on parameters, mappings, conditions, and naming.
Design Nested Stacks 
Design a nested CloudFormation stack structure for this infrastructure. Separate ownership boundaries, exports, dependencies, and deployment order.
Diagnose Rollback Failure 
Analyze this CloudFormation rollback failure. Identify likely root causes, resources to inspect, recovery commands to consider, and follow-up template fixes.

Best Practices

  • Parameterize environment-specific values and keep static lookups in mappings.
  • Use outputs and exports for stable cross-stack references.
  • Protect stateful resources with retention and replacement policies.

Avoid

  • Hardcoding account IDs, ARNs, or environment names in templates.
  • Combining unrelated resources into one monolithic stack.
  • Deploying templates without linting, validation, or change review.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this skill deploy CloudFormation stacks?
No. It gives review and design guidance. Deployment requires your AWS tooling and approval.
Can it review existing templates?
Yes. It can analyze structure, parameters, outputs, conditions, and production readiness.
Does it support Terraform or CDK?
No. The skill is focused on raw AWS CloudFormation templates.
Can Claude, Codex, or Claude Code use this skill?
Yes. The report marks support for Claude, Codex, and Claude Code.
Does it include security review?
It can suggest CloudFormation review points, but account-specific security checks remain your responsibility.
What template format works best?
YAML works best because the skill guidance emphasizes readability and CloudFormation intrinsic functions.

Developer Details

Author

sickn33

License

MIT

Skillstore revision

r1

Version notice

The author did not declare a version.

Repository

https://github.com/sickn33/antigravity-awesome-skills/tree/main/skills/cloudformation-best-practices

Ref

01171b582d636c013315c5e0d969c64f8d9cdff2

Maintenance freshness

7/18/2026

Usage

6 downloads · 83 views

File structure

📄 SKILL.md