A look in to Amazon Q CLI

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Amazon Q Developer CLI

If you are tired of writing long AWS CLI commands, Amazon Q Developer CLI can save you a lot of time.

So what is it?

Amazon Q CLI is an AI-powered command line interface that helps developers and Devops engineers perform tasks on AWS backed by Claude LLM.

With Q CLI, you can query on the terminal in plain English, and the Q CLI will convert them into AWS CLI commands and execute them.

You can even find and fix errors, analyze logs, and deploy fixes without switching tools

Overall it can boost the productivity of Devops engineers working with AWS services.

Amazon Q CLI Workflow

Here is how it works.

1. When a user makes a query to AWS (like listing the S3 buckets) via the Q CLI, it passes your request to a Claude model.

2. Claude figures out the right AWS CLI command.

3. The Q CLI then selects the appropriate inbuilt tool (use_aws) to execute the commands from local to AWS.

4. The raw result comes back.

5. Now, Claude helps turn that into a clean, easy to read reply as terminal output.

Here is an example.

If you want to get started with Q CLI, refer our hands on blog.

Q CLI With MCP Servers

Even though Q CLI has many advantages, it still has some limitations.

For example, if I want to analyze how much I am using a specific AWS service and generate a cost report, Q CLI alone cannot do that.

It doesn’t have built-in logic to talk to Cost Explorer or AWS pricing APIs, and it cant create a report by itself.

However, we can extend Q CLI’s abilities by using the AWS Pricing MCP server.

This server has the logic needed to process pricing data and generate cost reports. For example things like get_pricing and generate_cost_report. That is how Q CLI can produce detailed cost analysis when paired with the Pricing MCP server

Amazon Q CLI Pricing

Amazon Q Developer gives you 50 agentic chat interactions per month at no cost.

However, AWS offers paid versions called pro tier of cost 19$/month for a user, which will support upto 1000 agentic requests per month.

Pro subscription comes with many advantages. Please refer the official documentation to know more.

Security Reminder

Even AI tools meant to help must be used with caution.

In July 2025, someone inserted a dangerous instruction into version 1.84 of the Amazon Q Developer VS Code extension that would have wiped local and cloud data.

Luckily, it couldn’t run because of a syntax error. AWS responded quickly, removing the bad version and releasing a safe update (1.85)

So always review changes or pull requests even for trusted tools and limit AI agent permissions. Never give full power by default.

🧱 DevOpsCube Bytes

Since AI is becoming part of every business, DevOps engineers are now expected to deploy and manage AI systems just like they do with websites and apps. .