How to use the Ansible Automation Expert agent skill

What is an agent skill and what does this one change?

An agent skill is a folder containing a SKILL.md file. The file holds instructions that an AI agent loads when a task matches the skill, so the agent behaves like a specialist for that topic. This skill is named ansible and is described as an Ansible automation expert for playbooks, roles, inventories, and infrastructure management.

Once installed, the agent organises playbooks into roles, writes idempotent tasks that are safe to run repeatedly, uses Ansible Vault for secrets, and suggests safer rollout patterns such as batched (rolling) deployments. It also steers the agent away from raw shell commands when a dedicated module exists.

Install the Ansible skill with a ZIP download

Download the ZIP for the ansible skill from this page and unzip it. The skill is a single file, SKILL.md, so the folder you unzip should contain that file.

For a personal setup, place the skill folder in ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, place it in the project's .claude/skills/ folder so it applies only to that repository.

In the Claude apps you can instead upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills.

• Personal: ~/.claude/skills/ansible/
• Project only: .claude/skills/ansible/ inside your repository
• Claude apps: Settings → Capabilities → Skills, then upload the ZIP

Trigger the skill with natural requests

You do not need a special command. Ask for Ansible work in ordinary language that mentions playbooks, roles, inventories, variables or secrets, and the agent can apply the skill's guidance.

Be specific about the goal and the environment. Name the hosts or OS family, the service being configured and any constraints such as rolling updates. The skill covers inventory layout, Jinja2 templating, Vault and rollout patterns, so requests touching those areas get the most benefit.

• Refactor this monolithic playbook into roles with a clear directory layout.
• Write a role that installs and configures nginx, with a handler to restart it on config change.
• Set up group_vars and host_vars for staging and production inventories.
• Encrypt the database password for this playbook with Ansible Vault.
• Update the web tier in batches of 25% and stop if failures get too high.

Examples of what the agent produces

Given a request to deploy a web service, the agent should structure the play with hosts, become, vars, pre_tasks, roles and post_tasks in that order, scaffold roles with ansible-galaxy init, and name each task descriptively so dry-run output reads like a deployment plan.

For configuration changes, it should use notify with a handler so the service restarts only once at the end of the play. For rolling updates, it should set serial to 2 or a percentage such as "25%" together with max_fail_percentage.

• Handler notification: notify: restart nginx, with a handler that runs once at the end of the play.
• Rolling deployment: serial: 2 or serial: "25%", combined with max_fail_percentage.
• Secrets: ansible-vault encrypt_string for inline encrypted variables.

What you need before the code will run

The skill only shapes how the agent writes and reviews Ansible code. To actually run that code you need Ansible installed, including the ansible-galaxy and ansible-vault commands. ansible-lint or molecule are optional but recommended for testing.

The skill does not run scripts and does not use the network, according to its listing.

• Required: Ansible, with ansible-galaxy and ansible-vault available
• Optional: ansible-lint or molecule for testing
• The skill itself runs no scripts and makes no network calls

Safety notes before you run anything

The skill contains guidance only. The agent may still produce plausible but untested playbooks, so review every change and check it with ansible-lint or molecule before it touches production inventory. Do not run agent-written playbooks unattended against production.

Keep vault passwords out of the repository. The skill advises using a vault password file outside the repo or a secrets manager, and avoiding plaintext credentials in any committed file.

• Read the generated tasks and variables before applying them.
• Run ansible-lint or molecule first.
• Keep vault password files outside version control.
• Avoid gather_facts: true on every play when facts are not needed.

Tips for better results

Give the agent your existing structure. If you already use roles, group_vars or a particular inventory layout, say so, so the output follows your conventions rather than a generic one.

Ask for explanations as well as code when you are learning. The skill is useful for explaining why a pattern is idempotent or why a raw shell command is a pitfall.

• Keep roles no more than two levels deep, as the skill recommends.
• Ask for fact caching with ansible.cfg when working against large inventories.
• Use include_tasks with when: conditions on ansible_os_family for platform-specific tasks.