Streamline your AWS infrastructure development with AI-powered documentation search, validation, and troubleshooting
Today, we’re excited to introduce the AWS Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) MCP Server, a new tool that bridges the gap between AI assistants and your AWS infrastructure development workflow. Built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), this server enables AI assistants like Kiro CLI, Claude or Cursor to help you search AWS CloudFormation and Cloud Development Kit (CDK) documentation, validate templates, troubleshoot deployments, and follow best practices – all while maintaining the security of local execution.
Whether you’re writing AWS CloudFormation templates or AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) code, the IaC MCP Server acts as an intelligent companion that understands your infrastructure needs and provides contextual assistance throughout your development lifecycle.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that enables AI assistants to securely connect to external data sources and tools. Think of it as a universal adapter that lets AI models interact with your development tools while keeping sensitive operations local and under your control.
The IaC MCP Server provides nine specialized tools organized into two categories:
These tools connect to the AWS Knowledge MCP backend to retrieve relevant, up-to-date information:
These tools run entirely on your machine
Instead of manually searching through documentation, ask your AI assistant natural language questions:
“How do I create an S3 bucket with encryption enabled in CDK?”
The server searches CDK best practice and samples, returning relevant code examples and explanations.
2. Proactive Template Validation
Before deploying infrastructure changes:
User: “Validate my CloudFormation template and check for security issues”
AI Agent: [Uses validate_cloudformation_template and check_cloudformation_template_compliance]
“Found 2 issues: Missing encryption on EBS volumes,
and S3 bucket lacks public access block configuration”
3. Rapid Deployment Troubleshooting
When a stack deployment fails:
User: “My stack ‘stack_03’ in us-east-1 failed to deploy. What happened?”
AI Agent: [Uses troubleshoot_stack_deployment with CloudTrail integration]
“The deployment failed due to insufficient IAM permissions.
CloudTrail shows AccessDenied for ec2:CreateVpc.
You need to add VPC permissions to your deployment role.”
4. Learning and Exploration
New to AWS CDK? The server helps you discover constructs and patterns:
User: “Show me how to build a serverless API”
AI Agent: [Searches CDK constructs and samples]
“Here are three approaches using API Gateway + Lambda…”
Local Execution: The MCP server runs entirely on your local machine using uv (the fast Python package manager). No code or templates are sent to external services except for documentation searches.
AWS Credentials: The server uses your existing AWS credentials (from ~/.aws/credentials, environment variables, or IAM roles) to access CloudFormation and CloudTrail APIs. This follows the same security model as the AWS CLI.
stdio Communication: The server communicates with AI assistants over standard input/output (stdio), with no network ports opened.
Minimal Permissions: For full functionality, the server requires read-only access to CloudFormation stacks and CloudTrail events—no write permissions needed for validation and troubleshooting workflows.
Configure the MCP server in your MCP client configuration. For this blog we will focus on Kiro CLI. Edit .kiro/settings/mcp.json):
Privacy Notice: This MCP server executes AWS API calls using your credentials and shares the response data with your third-party AI model provider (e.g., Amazon Q, Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code). Users are responsible for understanding your AI provider’s data handling practices and ensuring compliance with your organization’s security and privacy requirements when using this tool with AWS resources.
The MCP server requires the following AWS permissions:
For Template Validation and Compliance:
For Deployment Troubleshooting:
Example IAM policy:
IMPORTANT: Ensure you have satisfied all prerequisites before attempting these commands.
1. With the mcp.json file correctly set, try to run a sample prompt. In your terminal, run kiro-cli chat to start using Kiro-cli in the CLI.
Figure 1: Kiro-CLI with AWS IaC MCP server
Figure 2: Search the CDK best practices for Lambda functions
Figure 3: Search for CDK samples that use DynamoDB with Lambda
Figure 4: Validate my CloudFormation template with AWS IaC MCP Server
Figure 5: Check if my template complies with security best practices with AWS IaC MCP Server
The IAC MCP Server represents a new paradigm in the AI agentic workflow infrastructure development – one where AI assistants understand your tools, help you navigate complex documentation, and provide intelligent assistance throughout the development lifecycle.
The AWS IaC MCP Server is available now:
Ready to supercharge your infrastructure as code development? Install the IaC MCP Server today and experience AI-powered assistance for your AWS CDK and CloudFormation workflows.
Have questions or feedback? Reach out to the blog authors on the AWS Developer Forums.
Idriss is a Sr. Product Manager Technical on the AWS Infrastructure-as-Code team based in Seattle. He focuses on improving developer productivity through AWS CloudFormation and StackSets Infrastructure provisioning experiences. Outside of work, you can find him creating educational content for thousands of students, cooking, or dancing.
Brian Terry, Senior WW Data & AI PSA, is an innovation leader with more than 20 years of experience in technology and engineering. Brian is pursuing a PhD in computer science at the University of North Dakota and has spearheaded generative AI projects, optimized infrastructure scalability, and driven partner integration strategies. He is passionate about leveraging technology to deliver scalable, resilient solutions that foster business growth and innovation.
