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Prune/rework AWS skills in favor of the official AWS Agent Toolkit MCP server #39
Description
Konductor ships a set of AWS-specific skills (aws-service-validator, find-aws-skills, dynamodb-design, dynamodb-validation, iam-policy-design, policy-validation, infra-validation, cost-estimation, architecture-diagram-generation, threat-modeling) that predate the official AWS Agent Toolkit and its AWS MCP server (aws-mcp.us-east-1.api.aws/mcp). Now that the toolkit exists and k-architect/k-developer can already reach it, several of these skills likely duplicate — or are now outclassed by — what the official server and its 114 bundled skills provide.
A pass through the current set, cross-checked against the live AWS MCP server, found:
dynamodb-design— the toolkit'samazon-dynamodbskill is deeper (axioms, cost calculator, live validation/benchmark scripts) and is itself served live viaretrieve_skill. Likely candidate to replace outright.dynamodb-validation— same toolkit skill covers review mode; our checker-style scoring contract isn't duplicated anywhere, so this may be worth slimming rather than removing.infra-validation— currently LLM-only (no cfn-lint/cfn-guard/cdk-nag). The toolkit'saws-cloudformationandaws-cdkskills prescribe exactly those tools. Worth reworking to run the deterministic tools first.find-aws-skills— thin wrapper oversearch_documentation/retrieve_skillthat the toolkit's own rules file already documents. Likely retireable, with its "verbose search phrase" guidance folded into agent prompts.iam-policy-design/policy-validation— different in kind from the toolkit'saws-iam(a short "common pitfalls" skill); ours covers design-level security architecture and compliance checklists the toolkit doesn't. Keep, but should absorb pitfalls the toolkit'saws-iamflags that ours currently misses (iam:PassRoleescalation, confused-deputy protection,aws:SourceArn/aws:SourceAccount).cost-estimation— callsget_pricing/analyze_cdk_project, which belong to a separate Pricing MCP server that no konductor agent currently declares. Needs its data-source dependency fixed regardless of toolkit overlap.aws-service-validator,architecture-diagram-generation,threat-modeling— no toolkit equivalent found; keep as-is (aside from the parameter-shape fix in Fix stale AWS MCP tool references in agents and skills #38).
None of the toolkit's 114 skills cover draw.io diagram generation, STRIDE threat modeling, or document fact-checking, so those three stay regardless of outcome here.
Proposed follow-up work
- Decide, per skill above, whether to replace, rework, slim down, or retire.
- Where keeping a skill, close the specific coverage gaps the toolkit's equivalent flags as common agent mistakes (e.g. IAM pitfalls above).
- Fix
cost-estimation's missing Pricing MCP server dependency. - Consider an opt-in
konductor install --with awsflag that configures the AWS MCP server entry (mcp-proxy-for-aws-cli) for agents that need it, since the public CLI currently declaresaws-mcpas a dependency onk-architect/k-developerbut never writes a server entry for it.
This is tracking/discussion for now — happy to split into separate issues per skill once there's agreement on direction. See #38 for a related, narrower fix (stale AWS MCP tool-name references in the affected skills/agents).
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