Part 1 - Manage AWS infrastructure Easily with PromptOps: No IaC Needed

Traditional Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi etc have long been the go-to for managing public cloud infrastructure, but they come with a steep learning curve and persistent pain points. Mastering their syntax and quirks takes time that’s often in short supply when you’re racing to deploy resources or troubleshoot an outage. On top of that one has to upgrade these IaC tools and providers for various public clouds from time to time leading to maintenance overhead. Each tool demands familiarity with its specific ecosystem, meaning you’re memorizing provider-specific parameter names or wrestling with version compatibility issues. For teams juggling multiple cloud platforms, this translates to endless context-switching and documentation dives just to get the inputs right. And if you’re not a full-time DevOps engineer? The complexity can feel overwhelming, turning a simple VM setup into a daunting task.

What Is PromptOps?

PromptOps is all about simplicity. It’s a MechCloud feature that lets anyone manage cloud infrastructure without needing to master tools like Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi etc. You just type what you want in plain language (or close to it), and MechCloud’s agents (e.g. AWS AI Agent) will do the heavy lifting. No endless documentation dives. No cryptic syntax. Just results.

What’s more, PromptOps offers universal abstraction. That means you can use the same prompt style to provision resources across different cloud providers - AWS, GCP, Azure, DigitalOcean, you name it -without sweating the specific parameter names each platform demands. For service providers juggling multiple clients and platforms, this is a workload-saver.

MechCloud AWS or REST AI agents have been designed to communicate with the target public cloud / system (e.g. AWS, Cloudflare) without storing long term credentials (e.g. service accounts / api keys / tokens etc). So you need not to worry about this sensitive information leaking from our platform and resulting in an unexpected bill.

This post is first in a series of posts and focused on AWS Lightsail. We will cover other AWS services in separate posts.

A Real Example: Setting Up a Docker Host on AWS Lightsail

Few days back, I used the following prompt with the MechCloud AWS Agent to spin up a Docker host on AWS Lightsail -

import a lightsail key pair with following details -
name - key1
key - <public_key_content>
-----
create a lightsail vm with following details -
name(s) - instance1
zone - eu-west-1a
blueprint - ubuntu_24_04
bundle - nano_3_0
ssh key - key1
user data - "curl -fsSL https://lnkd.in/gRkyQ9uf | bash"
-----
replace firewall rules of 'instance1' lightsail vm with following -
22|tcp|@CURRENT_IP
443|tcp|@CURRENT_IP

Let’s break this down:

1. Key Pair: I imported an SSH key named key1 with my public key content.

2. VM Creation: I spun up a Lightsail VM called instance1 in the eu-west-1a zone, running Ubuntu 24.04 on a nano_3_0 bundle, linked to key1. The user data script auto-installs Docker via a curl command.

3. Firewall Rules: I updated the VM’s firewall to allow TCP traffic on ports 22 (SSH) and 443 (HTTPS) from my current IP.

In minutes, I had a fully functional Docker host - no IaC, no fuss. Want to see it in action? Check out our demo video.

Why This Matters

Here's the best part: I can adjust that same prompt and use it on DigitalOcean or another provider with similar details. Unlike traditional IaC tools, PromptOps doesn't make you remember each platform's specifics. It's easy to use, adaptable, and quick. For teams handling infrastructure on AWS, DigitalOcean, or elsewhere, this reduces mental effort and saves time spent on trial and error.

Need more examples? We’ve got a collection of sample prompts to get you started - everything from VM provisioning to network configs.

What Can You Do with the AWS Agent?

The MechCloud AWS Agent isn’t just for Docker hosts or limited to AWS Lightsail. You can use it to:

• Bootstrap Lightsail VMs as single-node Kubernetes clusters.

• Manage firewall rules, key pairs, and more.

• Handle any operation in our supported Lightsail list.

• Manage anything on AWS (vpc, subnet, vm etc). We will cover it in separate posts.

Whether you’re setting up a test environment or running production workloads, PromptOps makes it approachable - even if managing cloud infrastructure isn’t your day job.

Try It Out and Tell Us What You Think

Ready to simplify your AWS Lightsail management? Grab the MechCloud AWS Agent, play with some prompts, and see how it feels to skip the IaC learning curve. We’d love your feedback - drop us a note or share your experience in the comments below.

For a closer look, watch the demo or dive into the full Lightsail operations list. AWS infrastructure management just got a whole lot easier - let’s keep the conversation going!