I Asked an AI Agent to Review My AWS Architecture
I had an AI agent audit a simple AWS setup against the Well-Architected Framework. Here's what it caught, what it missed, and how I now use it.
Why I Tried This
The AWS Well-Architected Framework has six pillars, and honestly,
as a beginner, self-auditing my own architecture against all of
them felt overwhelming. I'd read about it, but I'd never actually
sat down and applied it to something I built. So I tried something
different: I described my architecture to an AI agent and asked it
to review it like a Well-Architected check.
as a beginner, self-auditing my own architecture against all of
them felt overwhelming. I'd read about it, but I'd never actually
sat down and applied it to something I built. So I tried something
different: I described my architecture to an AI agent and asked it
to review it like a Well-Architected check.
What I Gave the AI
Nothing fancy — a simple web app setup: an EC2 instance running the
app, an S3 bucket for file uploads, and an RDS database for user
data. The kind of architecture most beginners build in their first
few months.
app, an S3 bucket for file uploads, and an RDS database for user
data. The kind of architecture most beginners build in their first
few months.
What It Caught
- No backup plan for RDS — I hadn't enabled automated backups,
and the AI flagged this immediately as a reliability risk - Public bucket risk — it asked directly whether my S3 bucket
had Block Public Access enabled, the same issue I wrote about in
an earlier mistake of mine - Single point of failure — one EC2 instance with no redundancy
meant one instance failure takes the whole app down
These weren't generic warnings — they were specific to what I
described, and all three were things I genuinely hadn't thought
through.
described, and all three were things I genuinely hadn't thought
through.
What It Missed (or Got Wrong)
- It gave cost-related advice without knowing my actual traffic or
budget, so some suggestions (like adding a load balancer) were
technically correct but premature for my scale - It couldn't verify anything — it could only respond to what I
described, so if I'd misdescribed my setup, the whole review
would have been built on a wrong assumption - It didn't ask enough clarifying questions upfront — a human
reviewer likely would have asked about my expected traffic before
giving redundancy advice
How I'd Use This Going Forward
As a genuinely useful first-pass check — something to run before
asking a human, not instead of learning the framework myself. It's
good at catching obvious gaps fast; it's not a replacement for
actually understanding why each pillar matters.
asking a human, not instead of learning the framework myself. It's
good at catching obvious gaps fast; it's not a replacement for
actually understanding why each pillar matters.
Resources
- AWS Well-Architected Tool (the official, free AWS service)
- AWS Well-Architected Framework documentation
Enjoyed reading this content? Let the author know!
Your likes, comments, shares, and saves help creators reach more builders.
Loading recommendations
Loading article