agent-advisor

AWS Agent Advisor

Helps startups decide how and where to run AI agents on AWS. Deterministic scoring recommends a runtime; the conversation adapts to the user's technical background.

Definitions

• "Load" = Read the file with the Read tool and follow it. Do not summarize or skip.
• $RUN_DIR = the run directory under .agent-advisor/ (e.g. .agent-advisor/0630-1430/), created in Intake.
• $PLUGIN = ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} (the installed plugin root). On Claude Code this token substitutes inline. If ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} does not resolve (some Cursor/Codex builds, or a literal ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} string showing up in a path error), fall back to the skill's own directory: this SKILL.md lives at <plugin>/skills/agent-advisor/SKILL.md, so the engine and its data are all inside this skill — scripts at ./scripts/..., runtime profiles at ./references/runtimes/..., and decision refs at ./references/decision-refs/... relative to it. Prefer ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/agent-advisor/...; use the relative fallback only when it fails to resolve.

Prerequisites

• uv available (for scoring). Check: uv --version. If missing, tell the user to install it (curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh) and stop.

Phase Structure (frontmatter)

Phase, fragment, and assembler files carry a YAML frontmatter block that declares how each phase is composed — its inputs, triggers, fragments, assembler, artifacts, gates, and ordering. The execution contract is the vendored references/vendored/dsl/INTERPRETER.md: it defines every frontmatter key, the fragment/assembler model, the gate protocol (HANDOFF_OK / GATE_FAIL), and the interpreter loop. Load it first (once, at the start of a run), then execute each phase file's prose body. Elsewhere in this skill, INTERPRETER.md (without a path) refers to this loaded contract.

Execution

This skill is driven by the interpreter loop in INTERPRETER.md (§ The interpreter loop): it reads .phase-status.json, determines the current phase, runs each phase's _preconditions / fragments / _assemble / _postconditions, advances on HANDOFF_OK via _advances_to, and validates state. The backbone (intake → discover → clarify → confirm → design → estimate → generate → migration-plan → poc → complete) and the three checkpoint branches (add-capabilities, temporal-worker, temporal-poc) are derived from the phase files' frontmatter — they are not restated here.

Cold start (entry phase). With no run under .agent-advisor/ carrying a .phase-status.json, begin at references/phases/intake/intake.md — this skill's entry phase (the one carrying _init: true). On a warm start, current_phase in .phase-status.json is authoritative (INTERPRETER.md § The interpreter loop).

Skill bindings (INTERPRETER.md § Skill bindings). This skill declares:

• Run root: .agent-advisor/ — $RUN_DIR is this skill's name for the run directory (.agent-advisor/[MMDD-HHMM]/). Intake's own prose performs the _init bootstrap.
• State shape: § State file below (advisor-specific keys such as entry_point, audience, recommendation_reviewed, migration_plan_ctx); the shared state schema is not vendored.
• Resolved statuses: skipped (routing resolved the phase without running it), plus not_applicable for migration_plan only.
• Conditional backbone routing: the entry-point routing below. When a routing rule marks a phase not-applicable, set it skipped and advance through its _advances_to in the same state write.

Routing & gates (orchestration)

Checkpoint placement and conditional backbone routing are orchestration prose owned by this file (INTERPRETER.md § Skill bindings, § Backbone vs checkpoint).

Entry-point routing:

• build_scratch → skip Discover; Clarify → Confirm → Design → Estimate → Generate → Gate 2 → POC (if AgentCore). No migration plan (nothing existing to migrate).
• build_deploy → Discover (if code) → Clarify → Confirm → Design → Estimate → Generate → Gate 1 → Migration Plan (if existing non-AWS AI workload detected and user confirms) → Gate 2 → POC (if AgentCore).
• migrate → Discover (if code) → Clarify → Confirm → Design → (skip Estimate) → Generate → Gate 1 → Migration Plan (in-skill, reusing the sibling gcp-to-aws skill) → Gate 2 → POC (if AgentCore and the plan was produced). Declining Gate 1 keeps the classic handoff: pointer to /migration-to-aws:llm-to-bedrock with handoff-summary.md.
• add_capabilities → load references/phases/add-capabilities/add-capabilities.md and follow it (no runtime scoring; writes capabilities-recommendation.md). This is a self-contained branch — it does NOT pass through Clarify / Confirm / Design / Estimate / Generate, so the phase gate below never applies to it.
• temporal_worker → load references/phases/temporal-worker/temporal-worker.md and follow it (moves Temporal Workers to AWS; Workflow orchestration code untouched; writes temporal-migration-plan.md). Same self-contained-branch exemption as add_capabilities. Entered two ways: Intake detects a Temporal signal in the opening message and the user confirms, or Discover (under migrate / build_deploy) detects the Temporal SDK and the user accepts the offer — both persist entry_point = temporal_worker in .phase-status.json before loading the branch. If the user DECLINES Discover's offer, temporal_branch_declined: true is persisted and the normal flow continues; a resumed session must not re-offer the branch.

Checkpoint re-entry order: on resume, evaluate the temporal_poc trigger (phases.temporal_poc == "in_progress", set when the user answers Gate T "yes" — temporal-worker.md Step 5.7) BEFORE the temporal_worker trigger, which would otherwise swallow the route.

Gate semantics (backbone tail):

• Gate 1 → migration_plan runs only when generate is done AND recommendation_reviewed == true (generate.md Step 5.5) AND entry point ∈ {migrate, build_deploy} AND the run is migration-eligible (generate.md Step 6) AND the user confirmed Gate 1. Otherwise resolve it: not_applicable (build_scratch / no migratable workload) or skipped (declined) — and advance.
• Gate 2 → poc runs only when phases.poc == "in_progress" (set when the user answers Gate 2 "yes" — asked in generate.md Step 7 or migration-plan.md Step 6) AND recommendation_reviewed == true. Any winning runtime (agentcore / ecs / eks / lambda / lambda_microvms) — the POC shape follows the verdict (poc.md Step 3 dispatch on references/decision-refs/poc-shapes.md). Gate 2 is only offered when migration_plan ∈ {completed, skipped, not_applicable} — or in_progress on build_deploy only (Stage 2 failed/aborted; fallback POC from design.json per migration-plan.md failure handling); for entry point migrate, only when migration_plan == "completed" (a migrate-POC without a plan has nothing to implement).
• Persisting Gate 2 as phases.poc = "in_progress" BEFORE poc.md loads makes the confirmation resumable: if the session breaks between the "yes" and the load, the interpreter re-enters poc without re-asking. (A declared deviation from INTERPRETER.md § The interpreter loop step 5's gate-then-in_progress ordering — the user's confirmation is the entry event worth persisting.)

Phase gate: Do NOT load design.md / estimate.md / generate.md unless $RUN_DIR/.phase-status.json exists and BOTH phases.clarify == "completed" AND phases.confirm == "completed". Confirm confirms the deployment model, the service set, and (for a co_recommend tie) the user's chosen_runtime — Design and the diagram depend on its confirm.json output, so it must not be skipped. If the user asks to skip Clarify or Pass 2, refuse briefly and run it.

State file (.phase-status.json)

{
  "run_id": "0630-1430",
  "entry_point": "build_scratch",
  "audience": "technical",
  "current_phase": "clarify",
  "phases": {
    "intake": "completed",
    "discover": "skipped",
    "clarify": "in_progress",
    "confirm": "pending",
    "design": "pending",
    "estimate": "pending",
    "generate": "pending",
    "migration_plan": "pending",
    "poc": "pending"
  }
}

Status values: pending → in_progress → completed, plus skipped. Use read-merge-write: read before each update, change only the advancing keys, keep prior phases.

recommendation_reviewed (top level, boolean) is set to true by generate.md Step 5.5 when the user explicitly confirms they have seen the recommendation. Gate 1, Gate 2, and the migration_plan / poc states all require it — no gate may be asked while it is absent.

migration_plan additionally uses not_applicable (build_scratch, or no migratable workload detected). When Stage 2 runs, migration_plan_ctx is added at the top level: {"repo": "<abs path to target repo>", "migration_dir": "<abs path to .migration/<id>/>"} — Stage 3 reads gcp-to-aws artifacts ONLY via this recorded path, never by re-globbing.

Files

File	Purpose
references/vendored/dsl/INTERPRETER.md	Vendored DSL execution contract (interpreter loop + gate protocol)
references/phases/intake/intake.md	Entry point + technical background + open context
references/phases/discover/discover.md	Lightweight code detection
references/phases/clarify/clarify.md	Clarify orchestrator + answer mapping to scoring keys
references/phases/clarify/clarify-technical.md	Technical-background question wording
references/phases/clarify/clarify-business.md	Business-background question wording
references/phases/confirm/confirm.md	Winner-specific follow-ups
references/phases/design/design.md	Assemble recommendation; Migrate handoff branch
references/phases/estimate/estimate.md	Coarse cost magnitude
references/phases/generate/generate.md	Layered recommendation doc + scaffolding
references/phases/migration-plan/migration-plan.md	Stage 2: full migration plan via the sibling gcp-to-aws engine
references/phases/temporal-worker/temporal-worker.md	Temporal Worker migration branch (self-contained)
references/phases/temporal-poc/temporal-poc.md	Temporal worker POC (Gate T): smoke worker + ECS Terraform
references/decision-refs/temporal.md	Temporal branch source of truth: Tier 1/2 tables, runbooks, commercials
references/decision-refs/poc-shapes.md	Per-runtime POC deploy shapes (ECS/EKS/Lambda/MicroVMs/Temporal)
references/decision-refs/*.md	Runtime service cards, model defaults, freshness
references/runtimes/*.json	Runtime registry (read by scoring.py)
scripts/scoring.py	Deterministic scoring engine
scripts/test_temporal_decision_refs.py	Content lock for the Temporal decision reference
scripts/test_poc_shapes.py	Content lock for the POC deploy shapes