DevOps Skills

• Author: Abdullah Khawer - LinkedIn

💡 Introduction

devops-skills is a curated collection of DevOps Skills that enhance your development using AI to work smarter.

Skills are reusable, step-by-step instruction files (SKILL.md) that can be used across almost every major AI agent product including Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode, Mistral AI, Cursor, and more.

Each skill builds a specialized AI assistant with targeted knowledge and abilities for your DevOps workflow, significantly cutting development time by eliminating repetitive manual tasks.

CLI-based skills (GitHub, GitLab, Jenkins, Grafana, Prometheus, Jira, Confluence, Slack, AWS, and more) let your AI agent interact with those platforms directly through their native CLI tools or HTTP APIs — no MCP server required, whether remote or local.

Once a skill is loaded into your AI agent, it is automatically invoked whenever your prompt contains relevant context that matches the skill's purpose — no explicit command needed.

📚 Official Documentation

• Agent Skills
• Claude Code Skills

🚀 Available Skills

Skill	Description	Category
Code Review	Analyze code changes between two local Git branches and perform a comprehensive code review	Development Tools
Commit Code	Analyze code changes, prepare conventional commit messages, and commit to a new branch	Development Tools
Create Dockerfile	Create optimized, secure, production-ready Dockerfiles based on user requirements and application context	Development Tools
Create Skill	Create a new SKILL.md file based on a guided conversation about a task or workflow	Development Tools
GitHub CLI	Perform GitHub operations using the gh CLI — issues, pull requests, pipelines, repositories, and PR code reviews	Development Tools
GitLab CLI	Perform GitLab operations using the glab CLI — issues, merge requests, pipelines, repositories, and MR code reviews	Development Tools
AWS CLI	Use the correct AWS CLI profile when running AWS commands based on the target environment	Infrastructure & DevOps
Create Terraform Helm Upgrade Plan	Create a detailed upgrade plan for a Helm release managed by Terraform, comparing chart versions including breaking changes	Infrastructure & DevOps
Maintenance Check AWS EKS	Check available upgrades across an AWS EKS cluster and output a decision file with Jira-formatted tickets	Infrastructure & DevOps
Jenkins CLI	Perform Jenkins operations using the jenkins-cli JAR — jobs, builds, nodes, and pipeline management	CI/CD
Grafana CLI	Perform Grafana operations using the Grafana HTTP API via curl — dashboards, datasources, alerts, and annotations	Monitoring & Observability
Prometheus CLI	Query Prometheus metrics using the HTTP API via curl — instant queries, range queries, metadata, and alerts	Monitoring & Observability
Jira and Confluence CLI	Perform Jira and Confluence operations using the Atlassian CLI (acli) — issues, sprints, boards, pages, and spaces	Project Management
Maintenance Create Ticket on Jira	Create or update a Jira ticket for a workload maintenance upgrade based on maintenance upgrade check files	Project Management
Slack CLI	Perform Slack operations using the Slack CLI and Slack Web API — messaging, channels, users, and app management	Collaboration

📖 How to Use Skills

Skills are placed in different directories depending on your AI agent:

Agent	Skill path
Claude Code	.claude/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md
GitHub Copilot	.github/skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md
Other agents	skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md

Setup

1. Copy the desired SKILL.md file from the /skills directory into the correct path for your AI agent (see table above)
2. If the skill contains <placeholder> values, replace them with your actual configuration
3. Invoke the skill by name in your AI agent conversation

Tips for Best Results

• Review each skill's Configuration section and update any placeholder values before use
• Be specific about your requirements when the skill asks for clarification
• Ensure you have the necessary CLI tools installed and authenticated (each skill lists prerequisites)

Note: For more details, refer to the chosen skill's SKILL.md file.

🛡️ Claude Code Guardrails

The .claude/ directory contains security guardrails for Claude Code that enforce safe, read-only behaviour by default and prevent destructive or irreversible actions.

File	Description
.claude/settings.json	Hardcoded deny and allow lists for Bash, Read, and Edit tools
.claude/rules/security.md	Non-negotiable safety rules loaded at every session start
.claude/rules/aws.md	AWS-specific rules: credential safety, allowed read-only operations, and blocked destructive/provisioning/IAM commands

What is blocked

settings.json hard-blocks the following via the deny list — Claude Code will never execute these regardless of instructions:

• AWS destructive operations: delete*, remove*, destroy*, terminate*, deregister*, purge*, s3 rm, s3 rb, cloudformation delete-stack
• AWS provisioning: ec2 run-instances, ec2 stop-instances, autoscaling mutations, ecs update-service
• AWS IAM mutations: iam create*, iam delete*, iam put*, iam attach*
• Kubernetes mutations: kubectl delete, apply, create, patch, scale, rollout, drain, cordon, exec, edit
• Terraform mutations: apply, destroy, import, state rm, taint
• Helm mutations: install, upgrade, delete, uninstall, rollback
• Dangerous git operations: force push, push to main/master, reset --hard, clean -f
• System-level danger: sudo, chmod 777, chown root, rm -rf on system paths, mkfs, dd, ssh, scp, pipe-to-shell (curl | bash, wget | sh)
• Credential file reads: ~/.aws/**, ~/.kube/**, ~/.ssh/**, .env, **/secrets/**, **/*credentials*

What is always allowed

The allow list pre-approves safe, read-only operations without requiring user confirmation:

• Git read operations: log, status, diff, branch, show, rev-parse, remote -v
• AWS read-only: describe*, list*, get*, s3 ls, sts get-caller-identity
• Kubernetes read-only: kubectl get, kubectl describe, kubectl logs
• Terraform safe operations: plan, validate, fmt
• Test runners: npm, npx, pnpm, go, mvn, gradle, pytest
• File operations: Read(./**), Edit(./**) within the project directory

Setup for Claude Code

1. Copy the .claude/ directory to the root of your project
2. Adjust the deny/allow lists in settings.json to match your project's needs
3. If you use hooks, add your hook scripts to .claude/hooks/ and register them in settings.json under the hooks key

🔍 Skills in Detail

Code Review

This skill helps you perform comprehensive code reviews by analyzing changes between Git branches and providing detailed feedback:

• Branch Comparison: Analyzes code differences using git diff between source and target branches
• Security Analysis: Checks for secrets exposure, SQL injection, XSS, and other vulnerabilities
• Performance Review: Identifies inefficient algorithms, memory leaks, and unnecessary computations
• Code Quality: Looks for code smells, duplicate code, complex functions, and dead code
• Best Practices: Verifies proper error handling, logging, and documentation standards
• Targeted Suggestions: Provides specific code snippets with improvements, file paths, and line numbers

Commit Code

This skill helps you automate your Git workflow by analyzing code changes and creating proper commits:

• Automatic Code Analysis: Analyzes all uncommitted changes to understand the scope and impact
• Conventional Commits: Determines the appropriate conventional commit type based on code changes
• Branch Management: Creates new branches following Git best practices
• Quality Checks: Optionally runs pre-commit hooks and Terraform formatting before committing
• Automated Workflow: Handles the complete Git workflow from branch creation to pushing changes

Create Dockerfile

This skill helps you create optimized, secure, and production-ready Dockerfiles:

• Context Analysis: Analyzes project files to understand dependencies and build requirements
• Best Practices: Follows Docker best practices including proper layer ordering and caching optimization
• Size Optimization: Creates minimal container images through multi-stage builds
• Security Focus: Implements security best practices including non-root users
• Technology Detection: Automatically detects your application stack from project files

Create Skill

This meta-skill helps you create new skills through a guided conversation:

• Interactive Creation: Walks you through a two-question conversation to define your skill requirements
• Agent-Aware: Asks which AI agent you are using and places the file in the correct directory (.claude/skills/, .github/skills/, or skills/)
• Template Generation: Automatically generates properly formatted SKILL.md files
• Best Practices: Ensures your skill follows established conventions and formatting

GitHub CLI

This skill helps you perform GitHub operations using the gh CLI:

• Full GitHub Operations: Issues, pull requests, pipelines, repositories, and project management
• PR Code Review: Fetches PR diffs and performs a full code review when given a PR URL or ID
• Paginated Results: Always fetches all pages to avoid missing items

GitLab CLI

This skill helps you perform GitLab operations using the glab CLI:

• Full GitLab Operations: Issues, merge requests, pipelines, repositories, and project management
• MR Code Review: Fetches MR diffs and performs a full code review when given an MR URL or ID
• Self-Hosted Support: Works with any self-hosted GitLab instance — configure your hostname once
• Paginated Results: Always fetches all pages to avoid missing items

AWS CLI

This skill ensures AWS CLI commands always use the correct profile:

• Profile Enforcement: Always passes --profile explicitly to avoid using the wrong account
• Environment Awareness: Distinguishes between production and staging/non-prod profiles
• Configurable: Update the profile map once with your AWS profile names

Create Terraform Helm Upgrade Plan

This skill helps you safely upgrade Helm releases managed by Terraform:

• Automatic Detection: Scans Terraform code to identify Helm release resources
• Version Comparison: Compares template files and default values between chart versions
• Breaking Change Analysis: Identifies potential breaking changes and compatibility issues
• Detailed Planning: Creates a comprehensive UPGRADE_PLAN.md with step-by-step instructions

Maintenance Check AWS EKS

This skill checks an AWS EKS cluster for available upgrades:

• Cluster Version: Compares current vs. latest available Kubernetes version
• Add-on Versions: Checks each installed EKS add-on against the latest compatible version
• Node Group AMIs: Identifies outdated AMI release versions per node group
• Structured Output: Writes findings to a Markdown file with a ready-to-use Jira ticket

Jenkins CLI

This skill helps you manage Jenkins instances via the jenkins-cli JAR:

• Job Management: List, create, update, copy, enable, and disable jobs
• Build Operations: Trigger, monitor, and replay pipeline builds
• Node & View Management: Manage agents, views, and configuration
• Multi-Instance Support: Configure multiple Jenkins environments (prod/staging)

Grafana CLI

This skill helps you query and manage Grafana resources via the HTTP API:

• Read-Only Queries: Dashboards, datasources, folders, alerts, and annotations
• Safe Mutations: Create/update dashboards, folders, and alert rules with user confirmation
• Token-Based Auth: Reads credentials from token files — never exposes them

Prometheus CLI

This skill queries Prometheus metrics via the HTTP API:

• Instant & Range Queries: Evaluate PromQL expressions at a point in time or over a range
• Metadata & Exploration: List labels, series, rules, and firing alerts
• Token-Based Auth: Reads credentials from token files — never exposes them

Jira and Confluence CLI

This skill helps you manage Jira and Confluence using the Atlassian CLI (acli):

• Jira Operations: Create, update, and search issues; manage sprints and boards
• Confluence Operations: Create and update pages; manage spaces
• Safe by Default: Never deletes issues or pages without explicit user instruction

Maintenance Create Ticket on Jira

This skill creates or updates Jira maintenance upgrade tickets:

• File-Driven: Reads from maintenance check output files under ./maintenance-checks/
• ADF Formatting: Converts Markdown descriptions to Atlassian Document Format automatically
• Create or Update: Detects existing open tickets and updates them instead of duplicating

Slack CLI

This skill performs Slack operations using two tools:

• App Management: Install, deploy, and manage Slack apps using the slack CLI
• Messaging & Channels: Post messages, list channels, read history, and look up users via the Slack Web API
• Safe Messaging: Always confirms channel and message text with the user before posting

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have a skill you'd like to share:

1. Fork this repository
2. Add your new skill under skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md
3. Update this README.md to include your contribution in the skills table
4. Submit a pull request

Skill Guidelines

• Use descriptive names and clear descriptions
• Include a Configuration section for any values the user must customize
• Never hardcode company-specific URLs, credentials, project keys, or team names — use <placeholder> values
• Add a Rules section covering safety constraints, error handling, and edge cases
• Keep the skill focused — one skill, one workflow
• Follow the established file naming convention: <skill-name>/SKILL.md

📝 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License - see the LICENSE file for details.

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Any contributions, improvements and suggestions will be highly appreciated. 😊