# AI Agents
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents
Meet the five specialized CloudThinker agents and choose the right one for cost, security, database, and Kubernetes work
CloudThinker ships five specialized agents that analyze, report on, and act across your cloud environment. Each agent owns a domain, keeps persistent memory of your infrastructure, and coordinates with the others on cross-domain work.
## The agent roster
| Agent | Role | Best for |
| ---------------------------------- | ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [**Alex**](/guide/agents/alex) | Cloud Engineer | Cost analysis, infrastructure optimization, multi-cloud architecture, reserved capacity |
| [**Oliver**](/guide/agents/oliver) | Security Engineer | Compliance audits, vulnerability assessment, IAM reviews, threat detection |
| [**Tony**](/guide/agents/tony) | Database Engineer | Query optimization, performance tuning, index recommendations, capacity planning |
| [**Kai**](/guide/agents/kai) | Kubernetes Engineer | Cluster health, pod right-sizing, autoscaling, RBAC audits, troubleshooting |
| [**Anna**](/guide/agents/anna) | General Manager | Multi-agent coordination, cross-domain projects, executive reporting |
Want a different tone, restricted access, or a fully custom agent? See [Customize agents](/guide/agents/customize).
## Choose the right agent
| You need | Mention |
| ------------------------------------- | --------- |
| Cloud costs are too high | `@alex` |
| A security audit or compliance report | `@oliver` |
| A slow database diagnosed | `@tony` |
| Kubernetes cluster issues resolved | `@kai` |
| A problem that spans multiple domains | `@anna` |
| A starting point when you're not sure | `@anna` |
Anna dispatches work to the other agents, so she is the safe default for incident investigations and cross-domain projects.
## Talk to agents
Talk to agents in plain language. The full pattern is:
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool your request
```
* **`@agent`** — who does the work: `@alex` (cloud), `@oliver` (security), `@tony` (database), `@kai` (Kubernetes), `@anna` (coordination).
* **`#tool`** *(optional)* — the output you want: `#dashboard`, `#report`, `#recommend`, `#alert`, `#chart`, `#kb`.
* **Your request** — what you need, in your own words. Add any context inline.
See the [CloudThinker Language reference](/guide/language) for the full syntax.
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard build an EC2 cost dashboard for the last 30 days
@oliver #report audit security groups open to the internet on ports 22, 3306, and 5432
@anna #report run a quarterly infrastructure review across cost, security, and Kubernetes
```
## How agents work
1. **Read your prompt** — the agent parses your mention, the optional tool tag, and your instruction.
2. **Query your connections** — the agent reads the [connections](/guide/connections/overview) you've configured: AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes clusters, databases, and more.
3. **Correlate data across sources** — Alex cross-references CloudWatch utilization with Cost Explorer data; Tony reads execution plans alongside query frequency.
4. **Deliver the output you asked for** — a dashboard, report, prioritized recommendations, or an alert.
5. **Act within its autonomy mode** — in Manual mode the agent waits for your [approval](/guide/approval) before executing changes. Every action is logged with an audit trail.
## Autonomy
Each agent runs in one of two modes, configurable per agent:
| Mode | What happens |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Manual** | You approve each agent write action before it runs, according to your Tool Permissions. A tool set to **Always allow** still runs without pausing. |
| **Auto** | An AI classifier auto-approves agent write actions for this workspace. |
See [Auto Mode](/guide/auto-mode) for how Auto executions are scoped, guarded, and audited.
## Memory and context
Agents get more accurate over time because they retain what they learn about your environment:
| Memory type | What it retains |
| ----------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Episodic | Past analyses and decisions, such as resources you've exempted from recommendations |
| Working | Context within the current conversation thread |
| Semantic | Patterns learned about your infrastructure over time |
| File | Documents, runbooks, and [knowledge base](/guide/knowledge) entries |
## When agents activate
Agents become available as you add the relevant connections:
| Agent | Available when |
| ---------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Anna** | Always — no connections required |
| **Alex** | An AWS, Azure, or GCP connection is added |
| **Oliver** | An AWS, Azure, or GCP connection is added |
| **Tony** | A PostgreSQL, MySQL, or other database connection is added |
| **Kai** | A Kubernetes cluster connection is added |
## Next steps
Tune personality, attach connections, and build fully custom agents
The complete `@agent #tool instruction` syntax reference
Connect cloud providers, databases, and Kubernetes clusters
Understand how autonomous execution is scoped and audited
# Alex
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/alex
Analyze cloud costs, right-size resources, and optimize multi-cloud infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Alex is CloudThinker's cloud infrastructure expert, specializing in cost optimization, performance tuning, and multi-cloud architecture across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
***
## The problem Alex solves
Cloud infrastructure costs are opaque. AWS alone offers 200+ services, each with its own pricing model — compute, storage, data transfer, reserved capacity, spot, savings plans. Most teams only discover their cloud bill is too high when the invoice arrives. By then, months of waste have already compounded.
Manual cost management requires:
* Exporting cost data and building spreadsheets to find patterns
* Running `aws describe-instances` across every region to find idle resources
* Manually comparing reserved instance pricing against actual usage patterns
* Switching between AWS Cost Explorer, CloudWatch, and resource consoles to correlate cost with utilization
This takes days of engineering time each month — time that produces spreadsheets and slides, not actually fixed infrastructure.
***
## What other tools miss
| Tool | What It Does | What's Missing |
| ------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **AWS Cost Explorer** | Visualizes historical spend by service/account | No recommendations, no cross-cloud, no action capability |
| **CloudHealth / Apptio** | FinOps dashboards and governance reporting | Reporting-only, no AI analysis, expensive, requires dedicated FinOps team |
| **AWS Trusted Advisor** | Basic checks for idle resources and reserved capacity | Limited to \~50 checks, no conversational query, AWS-only |
| **Infracost** | Cost estimation for IaC changes | Pre-deployment only, no live infrastructure analysis |
| **Spot.io** | Automated spot/reserved capacity optimization | Compute-focused, no multi-cloud cost narrative |
Alex does what none of these do: it understands your specific usage pattern, explains *why* costs are what they are, and can implement the fix with your [approval](/guide/approval).
***
## How Alex works
1. **Connects to your cloud providers** via read-access credentials — AWS Cost Explorer, CloudWatch, EC2/RDS APIs, Azure Cost Management, GCP Billing
2. **Analyzes in context** — doesn't just pull metrics, but correlates utilization patterns with cost data and your infrastructure topology
3. **Forms recommendations** with specific dollar savings, effort level, risk rating, and implementation steps
4. **Acts on [approval](/guide/approval)** — can execute right-sizing, create reserved instance purchase recommendations, tag resources, or generate IaC diffs for review
5. **Learns your environment** — stores preferences in memory (e.g., which resources are exempt, preferred instance families, cost thresholds)
***
## Capabilities
| Domain | Capabilities |
| ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **[CostOps](/guide/cost-optimization/overview)** | Connection-scoped spend, forecasts, service costs, and verified savings findings |
| **Performance** | Auto-scaling, load balancing, network optimization, bottleneck identification |
| **Multi-Cloud** | Cross-provider comparison, migration planning, unified management |
| **Infrastructure** | Resource management, IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation), architecture design |
***
## Prompt patterns
### Cost analysis
```text theme={null}
# Spending overview
@alex analyze AWS spending trends over the last quarter
# Right-sizing
@alex identify EC2 instances with <20% CPU utilization over 30 days
# Reserved capacity
@alex compare reserved instances vs savings plans for our usage pattern
# Waste detection
@alex find unattached volumes, unused elastic IPs, and orphaned snapshots
```
### Performance optimization
```text theme={null}
# Auto-scaling review
@alex review Auto Scaling groups and recommend threshold adjustments
# Network analysis
@alex analyze network traffic patterns and load balancer configuration
# Bottleneck detection
@alex identify resource bottlenecks in the web tier
```
### Multi-cloud operations
```text theme={null}
# Cost comparison
@alex compare AWS vs Azure costs for our current workloads
# Migration planning
@alex create migration plan from on-premise to AWS with cost analysis
# Unified analysis
@alex analyze spending across AWS, Azure, and GCP with consolidation recommendations
```
### Infrastructure audit
```text theme={null}
# Comprehensive audit
@alex audit infrastructure for cost, performance, and security issues
# Governance check
@alex analyze resources against our cloud governance policies
# Architecture review
@alex review our microservices architecture for cost efficiency
```
***
## Tool usage
| Tool | Alex Use Case |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Cost trends, resource utilization, spending by service |
| `#report` | Quarterly cost analysis, migration assessments, architecture reviews |
| `#recommend` | Right-sizing, reserved capacity purchases, optimization actions |
| `#alert` | Budget thresholds, cost spikes, utilization anomalies |
| `#chart` | Spending trends, usage patterns, cost forecasts |
### Examples with tools
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard monthly cost trends by service and region
@alex #report cost optimization opportunities with projected savings
@alex #recommend instances for right-sizing with implementation steps
@alex #alert when daily spend exceeds $5,000
```
***
## Effective prompts
**Tip: Be specific**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@alex analyze EC2 instances in us-east-1
with <15% CPU over past 30 days
# Avoid
@alex check our servers
```
**Tip: Add context**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@alex recommend cost savings
excluding production-critical services
prioritizing quick wins
# Avoid
@alex save money
```
***
## Connection requirements
Alex requires cloud provider connections with cost and performance data access:
| Provider | Required Access |
| --------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| **AWS** | Cost Explorer, CloudWatch, EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda |
| **Azure** | Cost Management, Monitor, Compute, Storage |
| **GCP** | Billing, Monitoring, Compute Engine, Cloud SQL |
***
## Common workflows
### Monthly cost review
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Overview
@alex #dashboard monthly cost summary by service
# Step 2: Identify issues
@alex which services had the largest cost increase?
# Step 3: Deep dive
@alex analyze RDS spending by instance type and utilization
# Step 4: Action
@alex #recommend cost optimizations with ROI timeline
```
### Infrastructure optimization
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Discovery
@alex audit all resources for optimization opportunities
# Step 2: Analysis
@alex #report detailed analysis of underutilized resources
# Step 3: Implementation
@alex #recommend right-sizing actions with rollback plan
```
***
## Next steps
Explore the full cost optimization engine powered by Alex
Set up continuous cost guardrails so Alex monitors 24/7 autonomously
Master the `@alex #tool` prompt patterns for effective cost analysis
Coordinate Alex with other agents for cross-domain operations
# Anna
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/anna
Coordinate multi-agent operations, manage complex cloud projects, and produce executive reports with Anna.
Anna is CloudThinker's coordination expert, specializing in multi-agent orchestration, complex project management, executive reporting, and strategic operations that span multiple domains.
***
## The problem Anna solves
Complex cloud operations span multiple domains — a cloud migration involves infrastructure (AWS), security requirements (IAM, compliance), database strategy (migration, replication), and container orchestration (Kubernetes). But specialized agents and tools are siloed: Cost Explorer doesn't talk to Security Hub, which doesn't talk to your database monitoring, which doesn't talk to your Kubernetes tooling.
When a production incident or large project requires cross-domain coordination, the work falls on senior engineers who manually:
* Context-switch between dashboards and tools to gather data from each domain
* Synthesize findings into a coherent picture
* Write status reports, executive summaries, and board presentations
* Track dependencies and timelines across teams with different toolchains
This coordination overhead is why major initiatives (cloud migrations, security remediations, quarterly reviews) take weeks instead of days.
***
## What other tools miss
| Tool | What It Does | What's Missing |
| ------------------------------ | -------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Jira / Linear** | Project tracking and ticket management | Tracks tasks, but doesn't investigate, analyze, or synthesize findings |
| **ServiceNow** | ITSM workflows and incident management | Process-heavy, slow, no AI analysis across domains |
| **Confluence / Notion** | Documentation and knowledge management | Passive documentation, requires manual data input |
| **Spreadsheets + slide decks** | Manual coordination and reporting | Entirely manual, not connected to live infrastructure data |
| **Single-agent AI tools** | One AI per domain | Can't coordinate across cost + security + databases + K8s in a single workflow |
Anna is the only agent that can orchestrate a multi-domain operation, synthesize findings from [Alex](/guide/agents/alex), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony), and [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) simultaneously, and produce an executive-ready deliverable — all from a single prompt.
***
## How Anna works
1. **Receives a complex request** — a project, investigation, or reporting requirement that spans multiple domains
2. **Decomposes into parallel sub-tasks** — determines which agents need to contribute and what each should investigate
3. **Coordinates agent execution** — dispatches tasks to [Alex](/guide/agents/alex), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony), and [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) concurrently, with dependencies managed automatically
4. **Synthesizes findings** — collects results from all agents and constructs a coherent narrative that connects cross-domain insights
5. **Produces the deliverable** — executive summary, action plan, board presentation, or remediation roadmap — ready to share without manual editing
***
## Capabilities
| Domain | Capabilities |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Agent Coordination** | Orchestrating [Alex](/guide/agents/alex), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony), [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) for complex operations |
| **Project Management** | Multi-phase projects, dependencies, timelines, risk management |
| **Executive Reporting** | Strategic summaries, KPI dashboards, board-level presentations |
| **Complex Operations** | Cloud migrations, security transformations, infrastructure overhauls |
***
## When to use Anna
Use Anna when operations require:
* **Multiple agents** working on related aspects of a problem
* **Cross-domain expertise** (e.g., security + infrastructure + databases)
* **Executive-level visibility** or reporting
* **Project coordination** with dependencies and timelines
For single-domain tasks, use the specialized agent directly.
***
## Prompt patterns
### Multi-agent coordination
```text theme={null}
# Parallel investigation
@anna coordinate investigation of production outage:
- @alex: infrastructure and resource issues
- @tony: database performance and connections
- @kai: pod health and networking
# Project orchestration
@anna manage AWS to Azure migration:
- @alex: infrastructure planning and cost analysis
- @oliver: security requirements and compliance
- @tony: database migration strategy
- @kai: container workload transition
# Cross-functional analysis
@anna coordinate quarterly infrastructure review:
- @alex: cost and performance
- @oliver: security posture
- @tony: database health
- @kai: Kubernetes efficiency
```
### Complex operations
```text theme={null}
# Cloud migration
@anna orchestrate multi-cloud migration project with timeline and risk assessment
# Security transformation
@anna coordinate enterprise security remediation with @oliver leading
# Infrastructure modernization
@anna manage Kubernetes adoption across all environments
# Cost optimization initiative
@anna coordinate company-wide cost reduction targeting 30% savings
```
### Executive reporting
```text theme={null}
# Strategic summary
@anna #report quarterly infrastructure status for executive team
# Board presentation
@anna prepare board-level cloud transformation summary
# KPI dashboard
@anna #dashboard executive infrastructure KPIs
# ROI analysis
@anna analyze ROI of cloud optimization initiatives
```
### Strategic planning
```text theme={null}
# Technology roadmap
@anna create 12-month infrastructure modernization roadmap
# Capacity planning
@anna forecast infrastructure needs for 3x growth
# Risk assessment
@anna assess risks of current infrastructure with mitigation plan
# Investment analysis
@anna evaluate cloud investment options with cost-benefit analysis
```
***
## Tool usage
| Tool | Anna Use Case |
| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Executive KPIs, project status, multi-domain metrics |
| `#report` | Strategic summaries, quarterly reviews, board presentations |
| `#recommend` | Strategic initiatives, investment priorities, project sequencing |
| `#alert` | Project milestones, risk thresholds, critical findings |
| `#chart` | Trend analysis, comparative metrics, progress tracking |
Temporary subagents can read from the exact connections available to the agent that delegates the task when the provider exposes a bounded read profile. Other credentialed provider commands fail closed and require an explicit delegated write capability, which follows the same Auto Mode approval as a direct agent action.
### Examples with tools
```text theme={null}
@anna #dashboard executive infrastructure overview
@anna #report quarterly review with findings from all agents
@anna #recommend priority initiatives for next quarter
@anna #schedule monthly executive infrastructure summary
```
***
## Effective prompts
**Tip: Define agent roles**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@anna coordinate security audit:
@oliver leads assessment
@alex reviews infrastructure impact
@kai checks container security
# Avoid
@anna do a security check
```
**Tip: Specify deliverables**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@anna #report quarterly review:
- Executive summary
- Cost trends and savings
- Security posture
- Recommendations
# Avoid
@anna summarize things
```
***
## Connection requirements
Anna inherits access from all agents she coordinates:
| Agent | Inherited Access |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **Alex** | Cloud providers, cost data, infrastructure metrics |
| **Oliver** | Security services, compliance data, audit logs |
| **Tony** | Database connections, performance metrics |
| **Kai** | Kubernetes clusters, container metrics |
***
## Common workflows
### Incident coordination
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Parallel investigation
@anna coordinate investigation:
@alex check infrastructure and load balancers
@tony analyze database performance
@kai review pod health and networking
# Step 2: Synthesize findings
@anna summarize findings and identify root cause
# Step 3: Remediation plan
@anna #recommend remediation actions with owner assignment
# Step 4: Post-incident
@anna #report incident analysis with prevention measures
```
### Quarterly review
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Gather data
@anna compile infrastructure metrics from @alex @oliver @tony @kai
# Step 2: Analyze
@anna identify trends, risks, and opportunities
# Step 3: Report
@anna #report quarterly infrastructure review for executives
# Step 4: Plan
@anna #recommend priorities for next quarter
```
### Cloud migration
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Assessment
@anna coordinate migration assessment:
@alex: current state and target architecture
@oliver: security and compliance requirements
@tony: data migration strategy
@kai: container migration plan
# Step 2: Planning
@anna create phased migration plan with dependencies
# Step 3: Execution tracking
@anna #dashboard migration progress and risk status
# Step 4: Validation
@anna coordinate post-migration validation across all domains
```
***
## Next steps
Use Anna to coordinate cross-domain incident investigations
Generate executive reports and dashboards with Anna
Schedule Anna to run quarterly reviews automatically
Multi-agent coordination syntax and patterns
# Customize Agents
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/customize
Edit how default agents talk, choose what they can reach, and create your own agents
The five default agents work out of the box. Customization lets you change **how they talk** (tone, rules, language) and **what they can reach** (connections). When the defaults aren't enough, you can build your own agent.
Open [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) to start. The left panel groups agents into **Core Team** (the five defaults) and **Custom** (your own). Click any agent to open its settings dialog — two tabs (**Identity**, **Connections**). Personality (Instructions, Language, Learning mode) lives at the bottom of the **Identity** tab.
Customizing agents requires **workspace admin** permissions. Members can chat with agents but can't edit them.
***
## What you can change
| Field | Default agents (Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai, Anna) | Custom agents |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- |
| @mention | Locked | Set once on creation, can't change later |
| Name, Role, Goal | Locked | Editable |
| Instructions | Locked | Editable |
| Language, Learning mode | Editable | Editable |
| Connections | Attach / detach (Anna is read-only — inherits from the others) | Attach / detach |
| Active state | Auto — off when no connections (Anna is always on) | Manual |
Default agents come pre-optimized for specialized tasks (cloud, security, database, Kubernetes, and Anna for coordination). Their identity and instructions stay locked so the tuning isn't lost — you can still adjust **Language**, **Learning mode**, and **Connections** to fit your workflow. To change how an agent reasons about your environment, create a custom agent instead.
***
## Plan tiers
Editing default agents works on **every plan**. Only the number of custom agents changes.
| Plan | Custom agents |
| ---------- | ------------- |
| Free | 1 |
| Standard | 1 |
| Advanced | 3 |
| Pro | 5 |
| Team | 5 |
| Scale | 10 |
| Scale+ | 10 |
| Enterprise | Unlimited |
Hit the limit? Delete an unused agent or [upgrade your plan](/guide/billing/pricing).
***
## Create a custom agent
Need an agent for something the defaults don't cover — a billing analyst, an on-call summarizer, a documentation specialist? Build your own.
Click the **+** next to **Custom** on the [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) page, then pick how to create it. You can also reach agent settings from **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) under **Agent Configuration → Agents**.
Best when you know **what the agent should do** but don't want to fill every field yourself.
Describe what you want in one sentence — Anna takes it from there. She typically confirms:
* **Name and @mention** — suggests options based on your description.
* **Role and Goal** — drafts both for you to approve or tweak.
* **Model Tier** — recommends Light / Pro / Ultra based on task complexity.
* **Instructions** — generates a first draft you can refine.
* **Connections** — asks which to attach (cloud, database, K8s, MCP).
* **Learning mode** — Auto or Offer.
Example prompt: *"I need an agent that watches AWS spend and pings me when daily cost jumps more than 20%."*
You can edit any field afterward from the agent's settings dialog.
Best when you want full control over every field upfront. The dialog walks you through three steps. The header shows your custom-agent quota for the current plan (e.g. "1 of 10 custom agents used" on Scale).
* **Avatar** — click the tile to change it (defaults to your initials on a gradient).
* **Name** — e.g. "Cost Guardian".
* **@mention** — chat handle (e.g. `@cost-guardian`). Lowercase letters, numbers, dots, underscores, and hyphens, starting with a letter, up to 63 characters. Must be unique and can't reuse `@alex`, `@oliver`, `@tony`, `@kai`, `@anna`. **Set once — can't change later.**
* **Role** — short title (e.g. "FinOps Specialist").
* **Goal** — one sentence on what this agent does.
Click **Next**.
* **Model Tier** — pick **Light** (fast, lowest credit cost), **Pro** (balanced), or **Ultra** (max capability, highest credit cost). See [Pricing](/guide/billing/pricing) for current credit multipliers.
* **Instructions** — one textarea describing how the agent should behave: what to focus on, how to respond, what to avoid. Write as plain sentences — guidelines, constraints, tone, and response format all live here.
* **Language** — reply language.
* **Learning mode** — **Auto** saves new skills automatically; **Offer** asks before saving.
Click **Next**.
Optional. Use the **Builtin** and **MCP** tabs to pick which connections this agent can reach. You can attach more later from Agent Settings.
Click **Skip and Create** to finish.
The agent appears under **Custom** and is reachable via its @mention handle in chat.
***
## Edit a default agent
Change tone, rules, language, and more. The agent's identity (name, @mention, role, goal) stays the same — only how it speaks and behaves changes.
Go to [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) and click an agent in **Core Team**. The dialog opens on the **Identity** tab.
On the **Identity** tab, Name, Role, Goal, and Instructions are locked with a "Set by CloudThinker, can't be changed" hint; @mention shows "Set once, can't be changed later". Scroll down on the same tab to edit:
* **Language** — reply language.
* **Learning mode** — **Auto** saves new skills automatically; **Offer** asks before saving.
To give an agent your own house rules, hard limits, tone, or response format, create a custom agent — a default agent's Instructions field can't be changed.
Click **Save** in the bottom-right. Your changes apply on the next message.
***
## Attach connections
Connections are how an agent reaches your cloud, databases, Kubernetes, or MCP servers. Alex, Oliver, Tony, and Kai start with no connections — you decide what each can touch.
From the agent dialog, click **Connections**. The header shows the count (e.g. "3 connections").
Use the sub-tabs to switch between **Builtin** (cloud, database, Kubernetes) and **MCP**.
Click **Add** to attach, **Remove** to detach. Save to apply.
A default agent with **no connections is automatically off**. Attach at least one to turn it back on.
**Anna's connections are managed for you.** Anna coordinates the other agents and inherits their reach, so her Connections tab is read-only. Attach connections to Alex, Oliver, Tony, or Kai instead.
***
## Examples
| What you want | What to do |
| -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tony replies in Vietnamese | Set **Language** to Vietnamese on Tony's **Identity** tab. |
| An agent that only recommends, never changes | Create a custom agent with Instructions: *"Recommend only — never propose changes that need write access."* |
| Cost reported in EUR with weekly digests | Create a custom agent with Instructions: *"Report cost in EUR. Summarize spend weekly."* Attach a cloud connection. |
Instructions are editable on custom agents only. A default agent's Instructions are locked, so tone and rule changes go in a custom agent.
***
## Things to know
* Edits apply on the **next** message — in-flight chats finish under the old settings.
* Pick a custom agent's @mention carefully — it's set once and you'll be living with it.
***
## Next steps
Wire up cloud, database, Kubernetes, and MCP connections
Profiles for Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai, and Anna
Add domain knowledge to any agent
`@agent #tool` mention syntax
# Kai
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/kai
Manage Kubernetes clusters, optimize container workloads, and troubleshoot EKS, GKE, and AKS with Kai.
Kai is CloudThinker's container orchestration expert, specializing in Kubernetes cluster management, workload optimization, autoscaling, and operational troubleshooting across EKS, GKE, AKS, and self-managed clusters.
***
## The problem Kai solves
Kubernetes is powerful but deeply complex. Most teams provision resource requests and limits once (or copy them from a template), then never revisit them. Pods get OOMKilled because limits are too low; nodes are underutilized because requests are too high. Cluster autoscaler adds nodes instead of right-sizing workloads. RBAC configurations drift from least-privilege as service accounts accumulate permissions.
Operating Kubernetes well requires daily attention from someone with deep expertise:
* Monitoring pod resource utilization across hundreds of pods across multiple namespaces
* Diagnosing crash loops by reading logs, events, and checking resource constraints
* Tuning HPA thresholds, VPA recommendations, and Cluster Autoscaler behavior
* Auditing RBAC configurations and network policies for security gaps
Most teams have one or two Kubernetes engineers — and they're already overloaded managing infrastructure changes. Proactive optimization rarely happens.
***
## What other tools miss
| Tool | What It Does | What's Missing |
| ---------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **kubectl** | Direct cluster API access | Raw tool, requires deep expertise, no analysis or recommendations |
| **Lens / k9s** | Kubernetes dashboards and CLI | Visualization only, no AI analysis, no recommendations |
| **Kubecost** | Kubernetes cost allocation and reporting | Cost visibility only, no troubleshooting or optimization guidance |
| **Datadog / Prometheus + Grafana** | Kubernetes metrics and alerting | Monitoring only, still requires expert interpretation to act |
| **KEDA / VPA** | Autoscaling automation | Single-purpose tools, no holistic cluster analysis |
Kai combines what normally takes kubectl expertise, monitoring dashboards, cost tools, and security scanners — in a single conversational interface that explains issues and recommends specific fixes.
***
## How Kai works
1. **Connects to Kubernetes API** — reads pods, nodes, deployments, services, events, and RBAC configurations across all namespaces
2. **Pulls metrics** — correlates Kubernetes API state with metrics-server data (CPU/memory actual vs. requested)
3. **Identifies inefficiency patterns** — OOMKill history, pending pods, underutilized nodes, misconfigured autoscaling policies
4. **Generates specific recommendations** — exact resource request/limit values based on actual P95 utilization, HPA threshold adjustments, RBAC policy changes
5. **Troubleshoots with context** — when a pod fails, Kai reads logs, events, and resource state simultaneously to identify root cause instead of having you correlate them manually
***
## Capabilities
| Domain | Capabilities |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Cluster Management** | Health monitoring, node management, resource allocation, upgrades |
| **Workload Optimization** | Pod right-sizing, resource requests/limits, scheduling efficiency |
| **Autoscaling** | HPA/VPA/Cluster Autoscaler optimization, scaling policies |
| **Security** | RBAC auditing, network policies, pod security, secrets management |
| **Troubleshooting** | Crash loops, OOMKills, scheduling failures, networking issues |
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support Level |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **Amazon EKS** | Full support with AWS integration |
| **Google GKE** | Full support with GCP integration |
| **Azure AKS** | Full support with Azure integration |
| **Self-Managed** | Kubernetes 1.24+ with metrics-server |
***
## Prompt patterns
### Cluster health
```text theme={null}
# Health check
@kai check EKS cluster health and pod distribution
# Resource utilization
@kai analyze cluster resource utilization and identify bottlenecks
# Node analysis
@kai identify nodes with <30% CPU utilization for consolidation
# Multi-cluster view
@kai provide health summary across all Kubernetes clusters
```
### Workload optimization
```text theme={null}
# Pod right-sizing
@kai analyze pod resource requests/limits and recommend right-sizing
# Scheduling efficiency
@kai identify pods with resource requests far exceeding actual usage
# Cost optimization
@kai identify underutilized nodes and recommend consolidation strategy
# Namespace analysis
@kai analyze resource allocation across namespaces
```
### Autoscaling
```text theme={null}
# HPA review
@kai review Horizontal Pod Autoscaler policies and recommend improvements
# Scaling analysis
@kai analyze scaling patterns and recommend threshold adjustments
# VPA assessment
@kai evaluate whether Vertical Pod Autoscaler would benefit our workloads
# Cluster autoscaling
@kai review Cluster Autoscaler configuration for cost efficiency
```
### Troubleshooting
```text theme={null}
# Crash investigation
@kai investigate pod crash loops in payment namespace
# OOM analysis
@kai identify pods experiencing OOMKilled events and recommend fixes
# Scheduling issues
@kai analyze pending pods and identify scheduling constraints
# Network problems
@kai investigate network connectivity issues between services
```
### Security
```text theme={null}
# RBAC audit
@kai audit RBAC configuration against least-privilege principles
# Network policies
@kai analyze network policies and recommend security improvements
# Pod security
@kai identify pods running with excessive privileges
# Secrets audit
@kai audit secrets management and recommend rotation strategy
```
***
## Tool usage
| Tool | Kai Use Case |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Cluster health, node status, resource utilization, pod metrics |
| `#report` | Optimization analysis, security audits, capacity planning |
| `#recommend` | Right-sizing, scaling policies, consolidation actions |
| `#alert` | OOMKills, node pressure, pod failures, resource thresholds |
| `#chart` | Resource trends, scaling patterns, utilization over time |
### Examples with tools
```text theme={null}
@kai #dashboard EKS cluster health with node and pod metrics
@kai #report cluster optimization opportunities with implementation plan
@kai #recommend HPA policies for variable workloads
@kai #alert on pod OOMKilled events or node pressure conditions
```
***
## Effective prompts
**Tip: Include cluster context**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@kai analyze production EKS cluster
in us-west-2 for pod resource
optimization
# Avoid
@kai check our containers
```
**Tip: Define success metrics**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@kai improve cluster utilization
while maintaining <30s pod startup
and 99.9% availability
# Avoid
@kai make cluster better
```
***
## Connection requirements
Kai requires Kubernetes cluster access with monitoring capabilities:
| Component | Required Access |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------- |
| **Kubernetes API** | Read access to pods, nodes, deployments, services |
| **Metrics Server** | Resource metrics for pods and nodes |
| **Events** | Cluster events for troubleshooting |
| **Logs** | Container logs for debugging |
***
## Common workflows
### Cluster optimization
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Assess
@kai analyze cluster resource utilization
# Step 2: Identify waste
@kai identify pods with >50% overprovisioned resources
# Step 3: Plan
@kai #recommend right-sizing with zero-downtime approach
# Step 4: Monitor
@kai #dashboard track resource utilization after changes
```
### Incident response
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Identify
@kai identify unhealthy pods and failing deployments
# Step 2: Investigate
@kai analyze logs and events for root cause
# Step 3: Remediate
@kai #recommend immediate actions to restore service
# Step 4: Prevent
@kai #recommend changes to prevent recurrence
```
### Capacity planning
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Baseline
@kai analyze current resource consumption patterns
# Step 2: Project
@kai forecast resource needs for 2x growth
# Step 3: Plan
@kai #recommend node pool configuration for projected growth
# Step 4: Automate
@kai #recommend autoscaling policies for demand variations
```
***
## Next steps
Connect Kai to your EKS, GKE, AKS, or self-managed clusters
Visualize Kubernetes service dependencies for [RCA](/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis)
How Kai investigates Kubernetes incidents automatically
Coordinate Kai with [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) for cluster cost + performance optimization
# Oliver
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/oliver
Audit security posture, detect vulnerabilities, and generate compliance evidence across cloud environments.
Oliver is CloudThinker's security expert, specializing in compliance auditing, vulnerability assessment, threat detection, and identity management across cloud environments.
***
## The problem Oliver solves
Cloud security posture is invisible until it isn't. Security groups get opened to `0.0.0.0/0` during debugging and never closed. IAM roles accumulate permissions across months of tickets. S3 buckets get misconfigured. Compliance frameworks like SOC 2 and HIPAA require evidence collection that takes security teams weeks to assemble manually.
The result: most teams discover misconfigurations from breach notifications, failed audits, or penetration test reports — not proactive monitoring. And when a compliance audit arrives, engineers spend 2–4 weeks collecting screenshots and writing evidence docs instead of fixing actual security gaps.
***
## What other tools miss
| Tool | What It Does | What's Missing |
| --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **AWS Security Hub** | Aggregates findings from GuardDuty, Inspector, Config | No remediation guidance, no compliance narrative, no cross-cloud |
| **Wiz / Orca** | Cloud security posture management (CSPM) with risk visualization | Reporting-focused, requires dedicated security analyst to interpret, no AI-driven remediation |
| **Prowler / ScoutSuite** | Open-source security scanners | Manual runs, raw output, no prioritization or remediation guidance |
| **AWS Config** | Tracks resource configuration drift against rules | Rules-based, no AI analysis, no compliance framework mapping |
| **Lacework / Prisma Cloud** | Comprehensive CSPM + CWPP | Expensive, complex, still requires security expertise to act on findings |
Oliver goes further: it explains *why* a finding matters in your specific context, maps it to your compliance frameworks, and generates the exact remediation steps for your environment.
***
## How Oliver works
1. **Scans continuously** — reads IAM policies, security group rules, CloudTrail logs, GuardDuty findings, and resource configurations
2. **Prioritizes by context** — not just severity scores, but actual blast radius: is this finding on a production database or a dev sandbox?
3. **Maps to frameworks** — automatically maps findings to SOC 2 controls, HIPAA requirements, PCI-DSS clauses, or whatever you're being audited against
4. **Generates evidence** — produces compliance documentation with the exact format auditors need, including timestamps, configurations, and remediation proofs
5. **Tracks over time** — remembers past findings so you can show compliance trend improvement, not just point-in-time snapshots
***
## Capabilities
| Domain | Capabilities |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Compliance** | SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS auditing and evidence collection |
| **Vulnerability Assessment** | Security scanning, misconfiguration detection, risk prioritization |
| **Threat Detection** | Incident investigation, forensics, anomaly detection, security monitoring |
| **Identity & Access** | IAM policy review, privilege analysis, permission optimization, access audits |
***
## Prompt patterns
### Security audits
```text theme={null}
# Security group review
@oliver audit security groups for overly permissive rules
# Scoped audit
@oliver audit production security groups for public access on ports 22, 3389, 3306
# Multi-cloud audit
@oliver perform unified security audit across AWS, Azure, and GCP
# Configuration review
@oliver identify misconfigurations that could expose customer data
```
### Compliance assessment
```text theme={null}
# Framework-specific
@oliver perform SOC 2 Type II compliance assessment
# Multi-framework
@oliver evaluate infrastructure against SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR
# Evidence generation
@oliver #report HIPAA compliance audit with evidence documentation
# Gap analysis
@oliver identify compliance gaps in IAM, logging, and access control
```
### Vulnerability management
```text theme={null}
# Vulnerability scanning
@oliver scan infrastructure for security vulnerabilities with remediation timeline
# Priority assessment
@oliver identify critical and high-risk vulnerabilities requiring immediate action
# Public exposure
@oliver find all public-facing resources and assess exposure risk
```
### Access control
```text theme={null}
# IAM audit
@oliver audit IAM roles and policies for privilege escalation risks
# Permission review
@oliver identify over-privileged users and recommend least-privilege changes
# Access review
@oliver perform quarterly access review: unused accounts, stale permissions
# Certificate management
@oliver scan for expired or expiring SSL certificates
```
***
## Tool usage
| Tool | Oliver Use Case |
| ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Compliance status, security posture, finding trends |
| `#report` | Audit documentation, compliance evidence, incident analysis |
| `#recommend` | Remediation actions, security hardening, policy changes |
| `#alert` | Security group changes, policy violations, certificate expiration |
| `#chart` | Vulnerability trends, compliance scores, risk distribution |
### Examples with tools
```text theme={null}
@oliver #dashboard compliance status across all frameworks
@oliver #report SOC 2 assessment with gap analysis and remediation timeline
@oliver #recommend security hardening prioritized by risk and effort
@oliver #alert on security group changes allowing 0.0.0.0/0 access
```
***
## Effective prompts
**Tip: Define scope**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@oliver audit production security groups
for public access on database ports
(3306, 5432, 1433)
# Avoid
@oliver find security issues
```
**Tip: Specify framework**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@oliver assess infrastructure for
SOC 2 Type II compliance
with evidence documentation
# Avoid
@oliver help with compliance
```
***
## Connection requirements
Oliver requires cloud and security service access:
| Provider | Required Access |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| **AWS** | IAM, Security Hub, GuardDuty, CloudTrail, Config |
| **Azure** | Security Center, Azure AD, Policy, Monitor |
| **GCP** | Security Command Center, IAM, Cloud Audit Logs |
***
## Common workflows
### Security audit workflow
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Scan
@oliver scan infrastructure for security vulnerabilities
# Step 2: Prioritize
@oliver categorize findings by severity and exploitability
# Step 3: Remediate
@oliver #recommend remediation actions with implementation order
# Step 4: Verify
@oliver rescan to verify remediation effectiveness
```
### Compliance assessment workflow
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Assess
@oliver perform SOC 2 Type II compliance assessment
# Step 2: Document
@oliver #report findings with evidence for each control
# Step 3: Remediate
@oliver create remediation plan for gaps
# Step 4: Monitor
@oliver #schedule weekly compliance status check
```
### Incident investigation
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Scope
@oliver identify affected resources from security incident
# Step 2: Analyze
@oliver analyze CloudTrail logs for suspicious activity
# Step 3: Document
@oliver #report forensic analysis with timeline and root cause
# Step 4: Prevent
@oliver #recommend controls to prevent recurrence
```
***
## Next steps
Configure [SecOps](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers) Keepers for continuous 24/7 security guardrails
Run a Well-Architected assessment with the Security pillar
How Oliver assists with security incident investigations
Coordinate Oliver with other agents for enterprise-wide security reviews
# Tony
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/agents/tony
Optimize database queries, tune performance, and analyze data across SQL and NoSQL platforms with Tony.
Tony is CloudThinker's database expert, specializing in query optimization, performance tuning, backup strategies, and data analytics across SQL and NoSQL platforms.
***
## The problem Tony solves
Database performance degrades silently. A missing index on a growing table is invisible until P95 latency spikes and engineers wake up at 2 AM. Connection pool exhaustion looks like an application bug until someone checks the database. Slow queries consume 80% of database CPU while running hundreds of times per day — and nobody knows because there's no system connecting query analytics to infrastructure cost.
Diagnosing and fixing these problems normally requires:
* Querying `pg_stat_statements` or enabling MySQL slow query log
* Reading and interpreting execution plans (EXPLAIN ANALYZE output)
* Cross-referencing query patterns against current indexes
* Understanding PostgreSQL/MySQL configuration parameters and their tradeoffs
This is deep specialist work. Most teams don't have a dedicated DBA, so database performance issues either go unfixed or require expensive consultants.
***
## What other tools miss
| Tool | What It Does | What's Missing |
| ---------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **AWS Performance Insights** | Visualizes database load and query waits | AWS RDS only, requires SQL expertise to interpret, no recommendations |
| **pganalyze** | PostgreSQL query analytics and index recommendations | PostgreSQL-only, no conversational interface, still needs DBA interpretation |
| **Percona Monitoring (PMM)** | Open-source database monitoring | Complex setup, technical dashboards, no AI analysis |
| **Datadog APM** | Application + database trace correlation | Monitoring only, no fix recommendations, expensive at scale |
| **New Relic / AppDynamics** | Full-stack observability including databases | Visibility tool, not a decision-maker; findings still require expert interpretation |
Tony goes beyond monitoring: it reads execution plans, understands your schema context, and tells you exactly which index to create, which query to rewrite, and what configuration change to make — in plain language.
***
## How Tony works
1. **Connects to your databases** via read access — `pg_stat_statements`, MySQL Performance Schema, RDS Performance Insights, Aurora, MongoDB profiler
2. **Identifies slow queries** by analyzing execution times, call frequency, and resource consumption — finding the highest-impact targets automatically
3. **Reads execution plans** — interprets EXPLAIN ANALYZE output to understand table scans, index misses, and join inefficiencies
4. **Recommends with precision** — generates specific `CREATE INDEX` statements, query rewrites, and configuration changes with before/after impact estimates
5. **Understands tradeoffs** — considers write overhead of new indexes, memory implications of configuration changes, and downtime requirements for schema changes
***
## Capabilities
| Domain | Capabilities |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Query Optimization** | SQL analysis, execution plans, index recommendations, query rewriting |
| **Performance Tuning** | Connection pooling, configuration optimization, bottleneck identification |
| **Data Analytics** | Usage patterns, trend analysis, capacity planning, metrics visualization |
| **Operations** | Backup/recovery, replication, maintenance, disaster recovery planning |
***
## Supported platforms
| Category | Platforms |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| **Relational** | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle |
| **Cloud Managed** | AWS RDS, Aurora, Azure SQL, Cloud SQL |
| **NoSQL** | MongoDB, Redis, DynamoDB, DocumentDB |
| **Analytics** | Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake |
***
## Prompt patterns
### Query analysis
```text theme={null}
# Slow query investigation
@tony analyze slow queries on production PostgreSQL
# Specific performance target
@tony identify queries with execution time >2 seconds on orders database
# Execution plan analysis
@tony analyze execution plans for the 20 slowest queries
# Query patterns
@tony find queries that could benefit from caching
```
### Performance optimization
```text theme={null}
# Index recommendations
@tony analyze missing indexes that would improve performance by >10%
# Connection optimization
@tony review connection pooling configuration for high-load scenarios
# Configuration tuning
@tony optimize MySQL 8.0 configuration for high-throughput OLTP with 10k connections
# Resource analysis
@tony identify queries consuming >5% of total database CPU
```
### Database health
```text theme={null}
# Health check
@tony check database health and performance metrics
# Replication status
@tony assess replication lag and recommend optimization
# Storage analysis
@tony analyze database growth patterns and recommend archiving strategy
# Connection analysis
@tony analyze connection usage patterns and identify connection leaks
```
### Backup & recovery
```text theme={null}
# Backup verification
@tony verify backup status and recovery procedures for production databases
# DR planning
@tony create disaster recovery plan with RTO/RPO analysis
# Recovery testing
@tony recommend backup testing strategy for production databases
```
***
## Tool usage
| Tool | Tony Use Case |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Query latency (P50/P95/P99), connections, I/O, replication lag |
| `#report` | Performance analysis, optimization recommendations, capacity planning |
| `#recommend` | Index changes, configuration updates, query rewrites |
| `#alert` | Slow queries, connection pool exhaustion, replication lag |
| `#chart` | Query trends, resource utilization, growth patterns |
### Examples with tools
```text theme={null}
@tony #dashboard database performance metrics for production cluster
@tony #report query performance analysis with optimization plan
@tony #recommend index optimizations prioritized by impact
@tony #alert when P95 query latency exceeds 500ms
```
***
## Effective prompts
**Tip: Include metrics**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@tony analyze queries with
execution time >2 seconds
running >100 times daily
# Avoid
@tony make database faster
```
**Tip: Specify platform**
```text theme={null}
# Good
@tony optimize MySQL 8.0
for read-heavy workloads
with 10k concurrent connections
# Avoid
@tony check the database
```
***
## Connection requirements
Tony requires database connections with performance metrics access:
| Platform | Required Access |
| -------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| **PostgreSQL** | `pg_stat_statements`, query logs, performance schema |
| **MySQL** | Performance Schema, slow query log, status variables |
| **RDS/Aurora** | Enhanced Monitoring, Performance Insights |
| **MongoDB** | Profiler, `serverStatus`, operation logs |
***
## Common workflows
### Performance crisis response
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Identify
@tony identify top 10 slowest queries in last hour
# Step 2: Analyze
@tony analyze execution plans for problematic queries
# Step 3: Optimize
@tony #recommend index changes and query rewrites
# Step 4: Monitor
@tony #dashboard real-time query performance
```
### Proactive optimization
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Baseline
@tony #dashboard current performance metrics
# Step 2: Analyze
@tony identify optimization opportunities across all databases
# Step 3: Prioritize
@tony #recommend optimizations ranked by impact and effort
# Step 4: Automate
@tony #schedule weekly performance review
```
### Capacity planning
```text theme={null}
# Step 1: Analyze growth
@tony analyze database growth patterns over last 6 months
# Step 2: Forecast
@tony predict storage and compute needs for next year
# Step 3: Plan
@tony #recommend scaling strategy with cost analysis
```
***
## Next steps
Connect Tony to your PostgreSQL databases
Connect Tony to your MySQL databases
How Tony investigates database-related incidents automatically
Coordinate Tony with [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) for infrastructure + database cost optimization
# Approval
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/approval
Configure Manual-mode tool permissions so connection tools run, request inline approval, or remain unavailable
Tool Permissions control each connection tool. In Manual mode, a tool set to **Needs approval** pauses that one call for a person to decide, including a read tool.
## Prerequisites
* The connections edit permission to change Tool Permissions
* The workspace-settings edit permission to switch between Manual and Auto
## Why approval
* **You choose tool by tool.** Each connection tool can be **Always allow**, **Needs approval**, or **Never allow**.
* **Reads can be gated.** A read-only connection tool can use **Needs approval** in Manual mode.
* **The decision is local.** A required-approval decision pauses one inline tool call, not every action in the conversation.
* **The record stays visible.** The tool call and its outcome remain in the conversation.
## The three Approval tabs
| Tab | What it controls |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| **Approvers** | Who can approve a paused action |
| **Tool Permissions** | Each connection tool |
| **Command Permissions** | Each CLI command |
Approval opens on **Approvers**.
## Configure tool permissions
Open **Chat Settings** from the gear icon in the chat prompt box, immediately to the right of the **+** button, then select **Approval** under **Workflow**. You can also start from [Connections](https://app.cloudthinker.io/connectors?tab=builtin-connections).
Select the **Tool Permissions** tab.
Select the connection whose tools you want to control.
Choose a setting for each connection tool:
* **Always allow**
* **Needs approval**
* **Never allow**
## Tool permission behavior
| Tool permission | In Manual mode |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Always allow** | The tool can run without an inline approval call |
| **Needs approval** | The agent pauses for one inline approval call before that tool runs |
| **Never allow** | The tool is unavailable to the agent |
Set the control on the tool, not by tool type. A connection read tool can be set to **Needs approval** and pause in Manual mode.
## The approval call
When a Manual **Needs approval** call occurs, the agent pauses on that tool call. Review the operation, its reason, and the available details before you choose **Proceed** or **Cancel**.
Review the operation details before you choose **Proceed**. An inline approval applies only to the tool call that requested it.
## Manual, Auto, and Tool Permissions
The two workspace modes describe how agents run:
| Mode | What happens |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Manual** | You approve each agent write action before it runs, according to your Tool Permissions. A tool set to **Always allow** still runs without pausing. |
| **Auto** | An AI classifier auto-approves agent write actions for this workspace. |
Select **Manual** or **Auto** from **Agent settings** in the chat prompt box, or from the Auto Mode control at the top of the **Approval** page. The choice is workspace-scoped and takes effect immediately, with no confirmation step. Tool Permissions remain per-tool controls; in Manual mode, they decide whether each connection tool runs, pauses, or stays unavailable. Auto Mode is the active gate when selected and does not apply these per-tool settings.
Without the workspace-settings edit permission you see the current mode read-only, marked "Managed by workspace admins". While the workspace is in Manual, the mode rows are hidden from you entirely.
In Auto mode the per-tool segmented control is replaced by a read-only badge: **Classifier** for a write, **Allowed** for a read. Switch back to Manual to edit them.
When Auto Mode is selected, catalogued reads skip the classifier and catalogued writes receive an Auto Mode decision. See [Auto Mode](/guide/auto-mode) for the exact decision outcomes.
## Auto Mode decision outcomes
| Decision | What happens |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **allow** | The catalogued write runs and its decision is recorded |
| **require\_approval** | The agent pauses for one inline approval call on that tool call |
| **escalate** | The agent stops the escalated action and raises a high-severity alert. Only the same authenticated user can approve one exact unchanged retry from a later explicit message in the same conversation before the escalation expires. |
| **hard\_deny** | The tool never runs, and no chat approval can override the decision |
After an escalation, new writes latch to the escalated path for the rest of that turn. A repeated escalation also latches new writes for that turn.
If the classifier is unavailable or times out, the action falls back to **require\_approval** so a person still decides. The decision log marks it as degraded rather than a real classifier verdict.
## FAQ
Yes. In Manual mode, set that connection tool to **Needs approval**. The agent pauses on that read call before it runs.
Auto Mode is workspace-scoped. Select **Manual** or **Auto** from **Agent settings** in any chat for that workspace.
It is treated as a write, so the classifier decides rather than letting it through. For an MCP connection tool, its **Needs approval** setting is what marks it a write.
No. A hard deny never runs and chat cannot override it.
## Related
Review the classifier outcomes for catalogued write calls
Learn how agents work and collaborate
Set up cloud and service connections
# Artifacts
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/artifacts/overview
Create cloud analysis artifacts and download supported artifacts as PDFs
Artifacts are the dashboards, reports, comparisons, scorecards, diagrams, and explicitly saved generated files CloudThinker agents create from your connected cloud data. Generated files appear in the conversation first. Click **Save to artifacts** to add one to the **Files** gallery.
Describe the insight you need in plain language, and the agent builds a data-backed visual from your [connections](/guide/connections/overview). Charts are components of dashboards and reports, not standalone Artifact types.
## How it works
1. **Ask** — send a prompt using the [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) syntax: `@agent #tool instruction`.
2. **Gather** — the agent queries live data across your connections: Cost Explorer, CloudWatch, databases, and more.
3. **Generate** — the agent assembles an Artifact with charts, tables, and a written summary.
4. **Save, download, or rerun** — save generated files to Files, download supported Artifacts as PDFs from their PDF URLs, or schedule the prompt to run again.
A [scheduled task](/guide/automation/tasks) reruns its prompt in a new scheduled conversation. It may create a fresh Artifact; it does not refresh an existing Artifact in place.
AWS cost dashboard with spending trends and cost drivers
## What you can do
| Capability | Description | Learn more |
| -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| Build cost dashboards | Alex charts spending trends, service breakdowns, and available forecasts | [Spend and forecast](/guide/cost-optimization/analytics) |
| Correlate infrastructure signals | Anna combines health, performance, and cost data across clouds in one view | [Infrastructure analytics](/guide/infrastructure/analytics) |
| Report security posture | Oliver summarizes compliance status, open findings, and remediation progress | [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) |
| Visualize dependencies | Explore resource relationships and blast radius on a live map | [Topology](/guide/infrastructure/topology) |
| Schedule recurring reports | Rerun a prompt in a new scheduled conversation; a run may create a fresh Artifact | [Tasks](/guide/automation/tasks) |
| Start from inbound webhooks | An inbound webhook starts a conversation or DRE flow; it does not deliver Artifact events to external systems | [Webhooks](/guide/webhooks/overview) |
## Artifact types
| Artifact | Description |
| -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Dashboard | A multi-widget view of related metrics |
| Report | A narrative analysis with data, findings, and recommendations |
| Comparison | A view that contrasts items, time periods, or environments |
| Scorecard | An assessment against defined criteria |
| Diagram | A visual of relationships or flows |
| Saved generated file | A file shown in the conversation until you select **Save to artifacts**, which adds it to the **Files** gallery |
Charts are components of dashboards and reports. The `#chart` tag is not a standalone Artifact type.
## Example prompts
Start with a one-line request — agents pick sensible defaults for scope and time range:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard AWS spending by service for the last 30 days
@oliver #report quarterly security assessment across all accounts
@kai #dashboard cluster resource utilization
```
### Cost analysis dashboard
Add structure to the instruction when you need specific breakdowns:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard Generate a comprehensive AWS cost dashboard for [start_date] to [end_date].
Include:
- Monthly spending trends by service with month-over-month growth rates
- Top 10 cost drivers and their utilization patterns
- Reserved Instance vs On-Demand cost comparison
- Cost anomalies and optimization opportunities with estimated savings
Segment by: [cost allocation tags such as environment, team, or application]
```
### Cross-domain dashboard
Ask Anna to correlate data that lives in different systems:
```text theme={null}
@anna #dashboard Create an operational dashboard correlating database performance with infrastructure costs for [time_period].
Analyze:
- Aurora and DocumentDB query performance metrics
- Resource utilization and spending patterns
- Correlation between database load and compute and storage costs
Context: [recent changes, migrations, or specific concerns]
```
Database and infrastructure correlation dashboard
### Charts in dashboards and reports
Ask for a chart as part of a dashboard or report:
```text theme={null}
@tony #dashboard Create a dashboard for Aurora cluster [cluster-identifier] over the past [time_period].
- Include a query execution time chart with p50, p95, and p99 query latency
- Separate lines for read queries vs write queries
- Highlight queries exceeding [threshold] ms
```
Aurora query performance time-series chart
## Reusable templates
Save parameterized prompts as templates for recurring investigations, then fill in the `{variables}` on each run:
```text theme={null}
Template: database_performance_review
@tony #dashboard Create a performance dashboard for Aurora cluster {cluster_id} covering {time_period}.
Include:
- Slow query analysis (queries exceeding {latency_threshold} ms)
- Resource utilization trends (CPU, memory, IOPS)
- Replica lag monitoring
- Connection pool health
Compare against baseline: {comparison_period}
Alert on: queries exceeding p95 latency of {latency_threshold} ms
Template: cost_anomaly_investigation
@alex #report Investigate the cost anomaly for {service_name} on {date}.
- Compare costs to the 7-day and 30-day averages
- Break down by cost component (compute, storage, I/O, data transfer)
- Identify the specific resources driving the increase and quantify the impact
- Recommend immediate actions to mitigate ongoing cost increases
```
For example, run `database_performance_review` with `cluster_id=production-aurora-cluster`, `time_period="past 7 days"`, `comparison_period="previous 30 days"`, and `latency_threshold=200`.
Performance review dashboard template
## Related
Dive deeper into spend trends, forecasts, and cost attribution analysis
Correlate performance, cost, and reliability signals across connected clouds
Master the full @agent #tool syntax for building effective prompts
Rerun prompts in new scheduled conversations
# Auto Mode
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/auto-mode
Choose Manual or Auto for a workspace and understand the decision path for catalogued agent write calls
Auto Mode is a workspace-scoped setting for catalogued agent write calls. It evaluates those writes before they run; catalogued reads skip the classifier.
## Why Auto Mode
* **One workspace choice.** Select Manual or Auto once for the workspace, not separately for each chat.
* **Write decisions stay visible.** Each catalogued write receives a recorded outcome before it runs.
* **Reads keep their path.** Catalogued reads skip the Auto Mode classifier.
* **Manual remains available.** Switch back to Manual when you want Tool Permissions to control each connection tool directly.
## Choose Manual or Auto
Open any chat in the workspace you want to configure.
Open **Agent settings** from the pill on the right of the chat prompt box. This is a different control from **Chat Settings**, which is the gear icon beside the **+** button.
Under **Approval**, select **Manual** or **Auto**.
**Success state:** the selected mode appears in **Agent settings** and applies to every conversation in the workspace. The change takes effect immediately, with no confirmation step.
Select **Manual** or **Auto** from **Agent settings**; the separate control in this older capture is not the current switch.
## Catalogued reads and Tool Permissions
A catalogued read is a tool CloudThinker knows as read-only. In Auto mode, catalogued reads skip the classifier. In Manual mode, a connection tool configured as **Needs approval** can pause even when it is a read.
**Tool Permissions** are enforced in Manual mode. Open [Approval](/guide/approval), select **Tool Permissions**, then set each connection tool to **Always allow**, **Needs approval**, or **Never allow**. When Auto is selected, Auto Mode is the active gate for catalogued connection calls; the per-tool setting is not evaluated, and each row shows a read-only **Classifier** or **Allowed** badge instead of the segmented control.
A tool CloudThinker cannot classify is treated as a write, so the classifier decides rather than letting it through. For an MCP connection tool, its **Needs approval** setting is what marks it a write.
Tool Permissions control each connection tool separately.
## Decision outcomes
| Decision | What happens |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **allow** | The catalogued write runs and its decision is recorded |
| **require\_approval** | The agent pauses for one inline approval call on that tool call |
| **escalate** | The agent stops the escalated action and raises a high-severity alert. Only the same authenticated user can approve one exact unchanged retry from a later explicit message in the same conversation before the escalation expires. |
| **hard\_deny** | The tool never runs, and no chat approval can override the decision |
An escalation latches new writes to the escalated path for the rest of that turn. A repeated escalation also latches new writes for that turn.
If the classifier is unavailable or times out, the write falls back to **require\_approval** so a person still decides. The decision log marks it as degraded rather than a real classifier verdict.
## What you see in chat
An allowed catalogued write stays visible in the chat with its Auto Mode result.
The chat records the Auto Mode result beside the tool action.
## FAQ
It is workspace-scoped. Select **Manual** or **Auto** from **Agent settings** in any chat for that workspace.
Yes, in Manual mode. Set that connection tool to **Needs approval** in **Tool Permissions**.
Only the same authenticated user can approve one exact unchanged retry from a later explicit message in the same conversation before the escalation expires.
No. A hard-denied action never runs and chat cannot override it.
## Related
Configure per-tool permissions and inline approvals
What agents can produce — dashboards, reports, slides
How agents work and collaborate
Set up cloud and service connections
# Autonomous Operations
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/automation/autonomous-agents
Understand CloudThinker’s scheduled and continuous work, then choose Manual or Auto for your workspace
CloudThinker agents can run work without a live prompt through Keepers, scheduled tasks, and Pulse. Manual or Auto is a workspace setting, while Tool Permissions control individual connection tools.
## Why autonomous operations
* **Problems get caught early.** Keepers scan connected accounts continuously, so drift surfaces before a routine review.
* **Routine work runs itself.** Scheduled tasks run recurring checks or a future one-time task without someone remembering.
* **Noise becomes signal.** Pulse suppresses duplicate monitoring events and ranks the clusters that remain.
* **You set the boundary.** Tool Permissions and the workspace mode control how an agent can use a connection tool.
## Manual and Auto
CloudThinker has two workspace modes:
| Mode | What happens |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Manual** | You approve each agent write action before it runs, according to your Tool Permissions. A tool set to **Always allow** still runs without pausing. |
| **Auto** | An AI classifier auto-approves agent write actions for this workspace. |
In a chat, open **Agent settings** and select **Manual** or **Auto**. The selected mode applies to every conversation in that workspace.
Tool Permissions are separate per-tool controls. In Manual mode, any connection tool set to **Needs approval** can pause, including a read tool. In Auto mode, catalogued reads skip the classifier and catalogued writes receive an Auto Mode decision. See [Approval](/guide/approval) and [Auto Mode](/guide/auto-mode) for the decision paths.
Start a workspace in Manual. Move the workspace to Auto after you have reviewed the task and connection-tool patterns you expect agents to use.
## What runs autonomously
Three surfaces run work without a live prompt. Configure each one on its own page.
| Surface | What it does on its own | Learn more |
| -------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| **CloudKeepers** (shown as **Keepers** in the app) | Monitor connected accounts and clusters for cost, security, and performance drift, then raise findings and tracked recommendations | [Keepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers) |
| **Scheduled tasks** | Run a stored prompt on a recurring schedule or at one future time | [Tasks & Scheduling](/guide/automation/tasks) |
| **Pulse** | Ingest events from sources like CloudTrail, GuardDuty, and Datadog, suppresses noise, and surfaces ranked clusters that can escalate to [incidents](/guide/incident/overview) | [How Pulse Works](/guide/pulse/overview) |
Whichever surface starts the work, the workspace mode selects the gate. Manual mode uses Tool Permissions. Auto Mode uses its decision path to allow a call, request inline approval, escalate it, or deny it; [Auto Mode](/guide/auto-mode) describes those outcomes.
## Stay informed
Every autonomous run is logged in the workspace. [Notifications](/guide/notifications) deliver findings, errors, and approval requests to Slack, Teams, or email. Review activity regularly and adjust the workspace mode or Tool Permissions when the work changes.
## Related
Configure per-tool permissions for Manual-mode agent actions
Review classifier decisions for catalogued write calls
Run an agent prompt on a recurring or future one-time schedule
Enable autonomous monitors for cost, security, and performance drift
# Tasks & Scheduling
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/automation/tasks
Create recurring or future one-time agent tasks and manage each scheduled run in your workspace
Tasks run a stored agent prompt on one timing: a recurring schedule or a future one-time run. Create the task in **Scheduled**, then use **Run now** whenever you need an existing task to run immediately.
## Prerequisites
* Permission to schedule tasks in the workspace
* Connections are optional; add a [connection](/guide/connections/overview) only when the task needs that service
* `@agent` mentions are optional; use one only when you want to choose an agent in the prompt. See [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language)
Create tasks from **Scheduled**. The composer calendar control shown in older screens is not part of the current creation flow.
Open **Scheduled** and select **New scheduled task** instead of using the composer control.
## Create a scheduled task
Open **Scheduled** from the workspace navigation, from the **Scheduled** quick action in the Home sidebar, or from **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) under **Workflow → Scheduled**.
Select **New scheduled task** to open the task form.
Enter a title and prompt. Connections and agent mentions are optional; include them only when the task needs them.
```text theme={null}
@kai #alert Check error logs from the last 24 hours and alert on high or critical issues
```
Choose a frequency: **Daily**, **Weekly**, **Monthly**, **No Repeat** (a single future run), or **Custom** (a cron expression). Every task has exactly one timing; there is no unscheduled on-demand task type.
A recurring task can also take an optional **Expiration** date, after which it stops running.
Select **Schedule task**.
**Success state:** the task appears in **Scheduled** with its next run time.
## Timing examples
| Timing | Prompt |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Future one-time | `@anna #report Generate an executive infrastructure summary before the next planning meeting` |
| Daily | `@alex #report Analyze EC2 spending trends and flag anomalies over $100` |
| Every 6 hours | `@kai #alert Monitor Kubernetes pod health and alert on CrashLoopBackOff` |
| Weekly | `@oliver #report Run a security audit across all connected AWS accounts` |
| Monthly | `@anna #report Generate an executive infrastructure summary with cost, security, and performance highlights` |
Start with a recurring task that replaces work your team already does. Scope the prompt to the accounts, regions, and thresholds you need.
## Custom cron expressions
**Custom** takes a 5-field cron expression (`minute hour day month weekday`). The minute and hour fields accept a single value, `*`, or a step such as `*/15`; a list or range in those two fields is rejected with "This schedule format is not supported." Day, month, and weekday accept ranges and lists. `MON`–`SUN` names and `?` are converted for you.
```text theme={null}
*/15 * * * * Every 15 minutes
0 */6 * * * Every 6 hours
0 9 * * MON-FRI 09:00 on weekdays
```
## Times and time zones
You pick times in your local time zone, and CloudThinker stores them in UTC and displays each run back in your zone.
A recurring task keeps its local clock time and does not shift for daylight saving, so a run can land an hour off across a DST change.
## Manage tasks
Open **Scheduled** to manage the tasks in your workspace.
| Action | What it does |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| View | See the timing, next run, and status for each task |
| Run now | Run an existing task immediately after it has been created; this does not create a separate unscheduled task type |
| Pause | Temporarily disable a task without deleting its configuration. Past run history is kept |
| Edit | Update the prompt, timing, or agent assignment |
| Delete | Remove a task that is no longer needed |
| View history | Review past runs, including status, start and end time, duration, and any error message. Each run links to its conversation, where the full output lives |
## Task status
| Status | What it means |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Pending** | The task is scheduled and waiting for its next run |
| **Running** | The run is in progress |
| **Succeeded** | The last run finished successfully |
| **Failed** | The last run ended with an error |
| **Required Approval** | The run paused because an action needs a person to approve it. See [Approval](/guide/approval) |
Pair tasks with [notifications](/guide/notifications) so results reach the right people by email or Slack. Review run history periodically to tune prompts and timing.
## Next steps
Browse pre-built operations you can schedule as tasks
Go beyond schedules with continuous monitoring and operations
Configure where task results and failure alerts are delivered
Start agent work from an external system's event
# Capabilities
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/capabilities
Look up every tool tag agents accept and the output each one produces — dashboards, reports, recommendations, and alerts.
Tool tags tell an agent what kind of output to produce — a dashboard, a report, an alert, and more. Add the tag directly after the agent mention, then write your instruction.
## Syntax
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool instruction
```
| Part | What it does |
| ------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `@agent` | Routes the request to a specific agent: `@alex`, `@oliver`, `@tony`, `@kai`, or `@anna` |
| `#tool` | Sets the output format, placed immediately after the mention |
| `instruction` | Describes what you want, including scope and constraints |
For the full syntax, including combining tags, see [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language).
## Tool tags
| Tag | Output |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `#dashboard` | Interactive dashboard with real-time metrics, filterable views, fullscreen mode, and PDF export |
| `#report` | Analysis document with executive summary, detailed findings, and prioritized recommendations |
| `#recommend` | Actionable recommendations prioritized by impact, with effort estimates and implementation steps |
| `#alert` | Monitoring notification triggered on the condition you define |
| `#chart` | Standalone data visualization |
| `#kb` | Search results from your organization's knowledge base |
## Dashboards
`#dashboard` produces an interactive artifact with live metrics that you can filter, view fullscreen, and export to PDF. See [Artifacts](/guide/artifacts/overview) for how dashboards are stored, shared, and managed.
## Examples
Generate analysis documents with `#report`:
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report SOC 2 compliance assessment
@anna #report quarterly infrastructure review
```
Get prioritized actions with `#recommend`:
```text theme={null}
@tony #recommend index optimizations for the orders table
@alex #recommend cost savings opportunities prioritized by impact
```
Set up monitoring and visualizations with `#alert` and `#chart`:
```text theme={null}
@kai #alert when node CPU exceeds 80% for 5 minutes
@alex #chart spending by service over the last 6 months
```
Add detailed instructions to shape the output:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard AWS costs for the last 30 days
- Filter by production accounts only
- Show daily cost breakdown
- Include cost optimization recommendations
```
## Related
The complete `@agent #tool instruction` syntax reference and prompt patterns
Run pre-built operations that use these tool tags
Schedule outputs to run automatically — daily reports, weekly audits
See which outputs each agent specializes in
# Code Review Analytics
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/analytics
Use Code Review Analytics to track review coverage, recurring findings, trends, and repository reports.
Code Review Analytics shows review activity, recurring findings, and evidence-backed trends across your repositories.
Access it from **Code Review → Insights** in the navigation.
## Analytics tabs
The Analytics section has two tabs:
| Tab | What it shows |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Review Patterns** | Which finding domains affect confirmed Advanced-reviewed merge requests and which findings explain the result |
| **Reports** | Which repository-level review reports are ready |
Review Patterns opens by default. A saved link to a retired tab also opens Review Patterns.
## Review Patterns
Review Patterns is the coaching view. It uses literal merge-request outcomes and links each pattern to its finding evidence.
### Eligibility
Review Patterns includes only completed, non-draft, live Advanced Reviews with an exact persisted outcome. Fast Reviews, shadow decisions, incomplete reviews, pipeline findings, main-agent findings, unknown specialists, and bot authors do not affect a domain fraction.
Historical rows without an exact outcome stay excluded. The read path does not infer completion or finding ownership from timestamps or from the presence of findings.
### Reading the rates
The view covers four domains: Security, Performance, Correctness, and Patterns. Each domain shows the finding-free merge-request rate and its literal numerator and denominator.
A domain rate is:
```text theme={null}
finding-free merge requests / reviewed merge requests
```
One merge request contributes once to a selected period. If several eligible outcomes exist, the merge request uses the latest included completion for its author and period bucket, and the union of all included outcomes' linked findings affects the domain rates. Several findings in one domain still affect the merge request once. Resolved and unresolved findings count equally.
A developer with fewer than three eligible merge requests stays visible with **Not enough data** and the reviewed count. Their merge requests still contribute to the pooled team rate.
### Main coaching priority
The page headlines the domain with the highest pooled affected merge-request rate. An exact tie breaks on the Critical and High finding counts, and every domain still tied appears. Severity never weights a rate.
### Explore evidence
Select a developer-domain cell to see the developer and pooled team across the selected weekly or monthly buckets. The expanded view lists the associated findings with severity, resolution state, merge-request identity, and a review link.
A resolved finding remains historical coaching evidence.
## Periods and states
The weekly and monthly controls are the only analytics controls, and they apply to Review Patterns. The view keeps your selections while data loads or a request fails.
| View | Available periods |
| ------- | ---------------------------------------- |
| Weekly | This week, or the last 4, 8, or 12 weeks |
| Monthly | Last 3, 6, or 12 months |
The view handles thin periods explicitly:
* No confirmed Advanced Reviews: the page explains that the period has no eligible data.
* One or two eligible merge requests: the view shows counts without a percentage.
* No eligible merge requests in a trend bucket: the chart shows a gap labelled **No data**.
* A failed summary or detail request: the affected surface offers Retry without discarding the current period or selection.
## Related
Connect repositories and choose where CloudThinker reviews code
Encode team standards to reduce recurring findings
Learn how CloudThinker reviews merge requests and reports findings
# Auto-Resolve Conflicts
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/conflict-resolution
Detect merge conflicts on open merge requests and let CloudThinker resolve them through an automatic follow-up MR
When a merge request conflicts with its target branch, CloudThinker flags it — and, with **Auto-Resolve Conflicts** on, resolves it on a separate branch and opens a follow-up MR for you to review and merge.
***
## Detect conflicts
Detection is automatic and always on. When an open MR conflicts with its target branch, CloudThinker marks it with a **conflict badge** on the **Reviews** page. Once a follow-up MR exists, the same row links to it as **Resolution MR**.
Conflicting MRs are badged on the Reviews page and link to their Resolution MR
***
## Turn on auto-resolve
In **Code Review → Settings**, turn on **Auto-Resolve Conflicts**. The toggle applies to the whole workspace and controls only whether resolution runs — detection stays on either way.
Turn on Auto-Resolve Conflicts in Code Review → Settings
Auto-Resolve supports **GitLab**, **GitHub**, **Bitbucket**, and **AWS CodeCommit**. Azure DevOps is not supported.
***
## How resolution works
1. CloudThinker posts a **🔄 Conflict Resolution In Progress** comment and starts an isolated run.
2. It builds a resolution branch from your MR's source, then **merges** the target branch into it — never a rebase, so your history is preserved. Structural conflicts (rename, delete, add/add, binary) keep the MR side.
3. It opens a follow-up MR targeting your source branch, titled `fix: resolve merge conflicts for `, and updates the comment with the link.
4. You review and merge the follow-up. CloudThinker never merges for you — once it's merged, your original MR is mergeable again.
On GitLab, merge the follow-up MR **without squash**. Squashing drops the merge ancestry GitLab needs to see the original conflict as resolved.
Merge the follow-up MR to make your original MR mergeable
***
## Status comments
CloudThinker keeps one status comment on your MR and edits it in place:
| Comment | Meaning |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 🔄 **In Progress** | A run is creating or updating the follow-up MR. |
| ✅ **Complete** | The follow-up MR is ready — the comment links to it. |
| ✅ **Already Resolved** | The conflict cleared on its own (for example, you rebased). No follow-up needed. |
| ✅ **No Changes Needed** | Resolving produced no changes — your MR is usually already mergeable. |
| ⚠️ **Failed** | The run was interrupted. CloudThinker retries on the next push to the base branch. |
The status comment links to the follow-up MR when resolution completes
***
## Good to know
* **Your branch is never touched.** Resolution happens on a CloudThinker-owned `cloudthinker/` branch; your branch and its history stay as-is, and protected branches like `main` are never pushed to.
* **Your work is preserved.** The resolver verifies the resolved diff still contains your MR's change before it pushes, and you review the follow-up MR before merging.
* **It keeps up with the base.** If the base moves again, the same follow-up MR updates in place; if it was already merged, a new one is opened.
* **Not a mention command.** Auto-resolve is fully automatic. `@cloudthinker-ai autofix` is separate — it fixes review findings, not conflicts.
***
## Related
Connect your repositories for automated code review
Interact with CloudThinker directly from PR and MR comments
# Convention Rules
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/convention-rules
Guide the AI reviewer with your team's coding conventions, both the convention files already in your repository and rules CloudThinker learns automatically from past reviews.
Convention Rules keep CloudThinker's Code Review aligned with how your team actually writes code. It works in two ways:
* **The reviewer follows your existing conventions.** It loads the convention files already in your repository on demand, so it reviews against the same standards your coding assistants already use.
* **The reviewer learns from past reviews.** The issues your team keeps running into, and keeps fixing, become reusable rules that the reviewer applies to future PRs on its own.
***
## How it works
* **Your existing convention files.** Point the reviewer at the coding-assistant convention files your team already maintains, such as `CLAUDE.md`, `.claude/rules/`, `AGENTS.md`, or `.cursorrules`. The reviewer loads them on demand during each review, so there's nothing to author.
* **Rules learned from past reviews.** On a schedule you choose, CloudThinker looks at the review findings your team has already resolved on a repository, turns the recurring ones into named rules, and applies those rules in later reviews. You review the results from the **Conventions** page.
The two work independently or together.
***
## Use your existing convention files
In **Code Review → Settings**, find the repository and select the **Convention Rules** icon under **Actions**.
Open Convention Rules from the repository's actions
Choose the coding assistant tool your team uses in the Convention Rules dialog:
Select the coding assistant whose convention files the reviewer should follow
Select **Save**. The AI reviewer automatically finds and reads the matching convention files during each review.
Just select your convention rules tool. The AI reviewer finds and reads the convention files in your repository for you, so there's no need to specify exact file paths.
### Supported tools
| Tool | Convention file paths |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------ |
| Cursor | `.cursor/rules/`, `.cursorrules` |
| Claude Code | `CLAUDE.md`, `AGENTS.md`, `.claude/rules/` |
| GitHub Copilot | `.github/copilot-instructions.md` |
| Windsurf | `.windsurf/rules/`, `.windsurfrules` |
| Cline | `.clinerules/`, `.clinerules` |
| Roo Code | `.roo/rules/`, `.roorules` |
| Aider | `CONVENTIONS.md` |
| Zed | `.rules` |
| Trae | `.trae/rules/` |
| Augment Code | `.augment/rules/` |
| Amazon Q | `.amazonq/rules/` |
| JetBrains AI | `.junie/AGENTS.md`, `AGENTS.md` |
| OpenAI Codex | `AGENTS.md` |
| Gemini Code Assist | `GEMINI.md` |
| Continue | `.continuerules`, `.continue/rules/` |
| Kiro | `.kiro/steering/` |
| Custom | Specify your platform |
### Custom convention paths
You can add **Custom Convention Paths** to point the reviewer at additional convention files or directories in your repository. This is useful when your team keeps convention files in non-standard locations or uses more than one tool.
Click **+ Add path** in the Convention Rules dialog to specify relative paths to additional convention files or directories.
***
## Rules learned from past reviews
CloudThinker learns your team's coding conventions from each repository's default branch and applies them in future reviews. As your team resolves review findings, the recurring ones become named rules. New rules show up on the **Conventions** page after the next scheduled run, so the reviewer keeps catching the issues your team cares about without anyone writing rules by hand.
Until the first run finishes, the **Conventions** page is empty. Rules appear on their own after the next scheduled run for the repository, once it has enough resolved review findings to learn from.
### Set the update schedule
Rule updates run per repository on a cadence you choose. In **Code Review → Settings**, use the **Convention Rules** column to pick how often CloudThinker refreshes a repository's rules:
Choose how often CloudThinker updates learned rules for a repository
| Option | Behavior |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| **Off** | Don't update rules for this repository |
| **Weekly** | Refresh rules once a week, on Saturday |
| **Monthly** | Refresh rules once a month, on the first Saturday |
Weekly runs happen every Saturday, in either the 00:00 UTC or the 12:00 UTC hour — after the work week, so updated rules are in place before Monday's reviews. CloudThinker assigns your repository one of those two times and keeps it, so runs land at the same time every week. Monthly runs use the same time on the first Saturday of the month. The **Convention Rules** column shows the next scheduled run.
The first run does not wait for the weekend. When you turn the schedule on for a repository, the first run starts soon after, so the first week can contain two runs: that first one, then the repository's regular Saturday run. The second run only covers findings resolved since the first.
If a run is missed — during maintenance, for example — CloudThinker picks it up on the next check that week.
Select **Run now** to refresh a repository's rules immediately.
The schedule becomes available once Code Review is enabled for the repository and the repository has finished cloning. If the control is unavailable, confirm that the repository is ready and that you have permission to change its Convention Rules schedule.
### Review learned rules
Open **Conventions** under **Code Review** to review learned rules. Rules are generated automatically; from this page, you can read them, filter the list, and turn individual rules on or off.
Review learned rules and control which ones are active
| Column | What it shows |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Rule** | The rule's name and a short identifier (slug) |
| **Category** | The type of convention, such as security, performance, or correctness |
| **Repository** | The repository the rule came from |
| **Cited** | How many past review findings referenced this rule |
| **Created** | When CloudThinker created the rule |
| **Active** | A switch to turn an individual rule on or off |
Keep an eye on the **Cited** count. It shows which conventions your team runs into most, so you can tell at a glance what matters and decide which rules to keep, fix at the source, or turn off.
Filters at the top of the table help you find rules:
* **Search** by slug or title.
* **Repository** to focus on one or more repositories.
* **Status** to show only **Active** or **Disabled** rules.
Turn off any rule you don't want the reviewer to apply, and turn it back on later at any time.
### Read a rule
Click a row to open the complete rule. The detail view shows the rule's category, identifier, citation count, description, guidance, and examples. You can also change its active status from this view.
Open a learned rule to read its full guidance
***
## Permissions
Viewing rules and changing their schedule or active status use separate workspace permissions. Without view access, the **Conventions** page asks you to contact your workspace admin. With view-only access, you can read rules, but the schedule and **Active** controls are disabled. Ask a workspace admin for access to change the schedule or turn rules on and off.
***
## FAQ
No. The two work independently, so you can use either or both. Convention files are read right away; learned rules build up from your reviews over time.
Rules show up after the first scheduled run for a repository. Make sure Code Review is enabled, the repository has finished cloning, and the Convention Rules schedule is set to Weekly or Monthly rather than Off. A new repository also needs enough resolved review findings before the first rules appear.
The schedule turns on once Code Review is enabled, the repository has finished cloning, and you have permission to change its Convention Rules schedule.
Yes. Turn the rule off in the **Active** column. It stops applying to reviews right away, and you can turn it back on at any time.
***
## Related
Connect your repositories for automated code review
Pull issue-tracker context into reviews automatically
# Extensions
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/extensions
Enrich code reviews with context from issue trackers
Extensions connect your issue trackers to CloudThinker's code review agent. When the agent detects issue references in your MR/PR description or branch name, it automatically fetches the linked ticket details and uses them as context during the review — validating that the code change fulfills the requirements.
***
## Available extensions
### Jira / Confluence
Brings Jira ticket details and Confluence specs directly into code reviews so the agent understands the business requirement behind every change.
**How it works:** When the review agent detects a Jira or Confluence link in your MR/PR description, it automatically fetches the ticket details — summary, acceptance criteria, and linked pages — and uses that context to validate whether the code change fulfills the requirement.
**Triggers:**
| Pattern | Example |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| Jira URL in description | `https://myorg.atlassian.net/browse/OPS-1234` |
| Confluence page URL in description | `https://myorg.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/.../pages/...` |
| Ticket key in description or branch name | `OPS-1234` |
**Requires:** [Atlassian connection](/guide/connections/atlassian)
***
### GitHub Issues
Pulls GitHub issue context into code reviews so the agent can verify that pull requests address the linked issue requirements.
**How it works:** When the review agent finds issue references in your PR description or branch name, it fetches the issue details — title, body, labels, and comments — and reviews the code changes against those requirements.
**Triggers:**
| Pattern | Example |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| Issue keywords in PR description | `Closes #123`, `Fixes #456`, `Resolves #789` |
| Issue reference in description | `#123` |
Only shown when your code review is configured with GitHub as the provider.
***
### GitLab Issues
Pulls GitLab issue context into code reviews so the agent can verify that merge requests address the linked issue requirements.
**How it works:** When the review agent finds issue references in your MR description or branch name, it fetches the issue details — title, description, labels, and comments — and reviews the code changes against those requirements.
**Triggers:**
| Pattern | Example |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| Issue keywords in MR description | `Closes #123`, `Fixes #456`, `Resolves #789` |
| Issue reference in description | `#123` |
Only shown when your code review is configured with GitLab as the provider.
***
## Setup
Navigate to **Workspace Settings** > **Connections** and connect the relevant service ([Atlassian](/guide/connections/atlassian), GitHub, or GitLab)
Go to **Code Review** > **Extensions** to verify the connection status shows "Connected"
Add issue links or ticket keys to your MR/PR description. The review agent detects them automatically — no additional configuration needed.
***
## How the agent uses issue context
When the code review agent detects an issue reference, it:
1. **Fetches** the ticket or issue details (title, description, acceptance criteria, labels, comments)
2. **Validates** whether the code changes fulfill the stated requirements
3. **Flags** missing or incomplete implementations based on acceptance criteria
4. **References** the ticket context in review findings so you can see the connection between requirements and code
This is fully automatic — no commands or configuration beyond the initial connection setup.
***
## Tips
* **Include links in your MR/PR description** — the agent scans the description and branch name for references. The more context you provide, the better the review.
* **Acceptance criteria matter** — well-structured Jira tickets with clear acceptance criteria give the agent the strongest signal for validating code changes.
* **Multiple references are supported** — link as many tickets or issues as relevant. The agent fetches all of them.
***
## Related
Configure code review for your repositories
Customize what CloudThinker checks in your code
# Mention Commands
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/mention-commands
Interact with CloudThinker directly from MR/PR comments
Mention `@cloudthinker-ai` in any merge request or pull request comment to trigger commands — autofix findings, ask questions about the review, or get help.
Mention commands are currently available on **GitLab** and **GitHub** only. Bitbucket and Azure DevOps support is coming soon.
***
## Commands
| Command | What it does |
| ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `@cloudthinker-ai help` | Shows available commands as a comment |
| `@cloudthinker-ai autofix` | Fixes unresolved findings and pushes the result to the original source branch |
| `@cloudthinker-ai autofix stacked pr` | Fixes findings on a session branch, then opens a follow-up MR/PR |
| `@cloudthinker-ai ` | Ask a free-form question about the code review |
***
## How autofix works
Post `@cloudthinker-ai autofix` (or `@cloudthinker-ai autofix stacked pr`) as a comment on the MR/PR
CloudThinker picks up all unresolved findings from the review
An agent implements fixes for each finding, following your codebase conventions
CloudThinker commits and pushes the changes automatically. Direct autofix uses the original source branch; stacked autofix uses its session branch and opens a follow-up MR/PR.
### Direct vs. stacked PR
* **`@cloudthinker-ai autofix`** — Commits and pushes directly to the original MR/PR source branch. Findings are marked resolved after fixing.
* **`@cloudthinker-ai autofix stacked pr`** — Creates and pushes a session branch, then opens a follow-up MR/PR targeting the original source branch. Findings stay open for your review.
***
## Free-form questions
Ask anything about the code review by mentioning `@cloudthinker-ai` followed by your question:
```text theme={null}
@cloudthinker-ai why was this function flagged as a security risk?
@cloudthinker-ai can you explain the performance impact of this change?
@cloudthinker-ai what's the best way to refactor this?
```
### Thread-aware context
* **Reply in a finding's thread** — The agent sees only that specific finding's details (severity, file, line, suggested fix), giving you a focused answer.
* **Top-level comment** — The agent sees all unresolved findings from the review, giving you a broader perspective.
***
## Supported providers
| Provider | Mention Trigger | Thread Support | Status |
| ------------ | -------------------------------- | ---------------------- | ----------- |
| GitLab | `@cloudthinker-ai` in MR note | Discussion threads | Available |
| GitHub | `@cloudthinker-ai` in PR comment | Review comment replies | Available |
| Bitbucket | — | — | Coming soon |
| Azure DevOps | — | — | Coming soon |
***
## Tips
* **One autofix at a time** — Only one autofix can run per MR/PR. Wait for the current one to finish before starting another.
* **Reuse conversation context** — Free-form replies in the same thread reuse the conversation context, so follow-up questions build on previous answers.
* **Autofix pushes automatically** — Autofix does not pause for human approval before pushing changes.
***
## Related
Connect your repositories for automated code review
Customize what CloudThinker checks in your code
# AI Code Review
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/overview
Catch bugs, security vulnerabilities, and quality issues on every pull request with context-aware AI reviews
CloudThinker reviews every pull request on your connected GitHub or GitLab repositories with full context of what the change is trying to do, not just individual lines. Findings appear as in-line comments with severity ratings and remediation guidance.
Rules-based scanners match syntax patterns; CloudThinker reads intent. It knows when code touches infrastructure — IAM policies, S3 permissions, database queries — and flags cloud-specific risks alongside logic bugs and vulnerabilities. Security and quality run in a single pass, so reviewers see one set of findings in the tools they already use.
## How it works
1. **Detect** — a developer opens a pull request on a connected repository. CloudThinker picks it up automatically.
2. **Gather context** — [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) reads the full diff, any Jira ticket linked in the PR description or branch name, and relevant Confluence documentation.
3. **Analyze** — the review runs in parallel across security, quality, and cloud-infrastructure dimensions.
4. **Post findings** — in-line comments land on the PR with exact line references, severity ratings, and remediation guidance.
5. **Track** — when a linked ticket provides acceptance criteria, the review records a ticket-compliance verdict. When you push a fix, the next review verifies it, and every finding feeds [Analytics](/guide/code-review/analytics).
Legacy Code Review example showing a Jira ticket linked to a finding
## What you can do
| Capability | Description | Learn more |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Bug detection | Catch logic errors, null-pointer exceptions, off-by-one errors, and edge cases before merge | [Setup](/guide/code-review/setup) |
| Security analysis | Flag SQL injection, XSS, SSRF, hardcoded secrets, and cloud-specific IAM risks | [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) |
| Convention enforcement | Apply the convention files already in your repository to every review | [Convention rules](/guide/code-review/convention-rules) |
| PR commands | Mention `@cloudthinker-ai` in a PR comment to re-review or ask questions | [Mention commands](/guide/code-review/mention-commands) |
| Conflict resolution | Detect merge conflicts on open PRs and open a follow-up MR that resolves them automatically | [Auto-Resolve Conflicts](/guide/code-review/conflict-resolution) |
| Issue-tracker context | Pull Jira requirements and Confluence standards into reviews; record compliance against linked ticket requirements | [Extensions](/guide/code-review/extensions) |
| Team analytics | Track which finding domains affect reviewed merge requests, with links to the finding evidence | [Analytics](/guide/code-review/analytics) |
## Get started
Connect your GitHub or GitLab repositories in under 5 minutes
Interact with CloudThinker directly from PR and MR comments
Keep reviews aligned with your team's convention files and rules learned from past reviews
See which finding domains affect your reviewed merge requests
# Code Review Setup
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/code-review/setup
Connect your GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps repositories for automated AI-powered code reviews
Connect a Git provider once and every new pull request in your selected repositories gets an AI review automatically. New to Code Review? Read the [overview](/guide/code-review/overview) first.
## Prerequisites
* A GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps account with repository access
* Permission to install apps or create access tokens for your organization
* A CloudThinker workspace
## Connect a repository
Go to **Code Review** from the navigation menu.
Click **Get Started with Code Review** to open the setup wizard.
Select **GitHub**, **GitLab**, **Bitbucket**, or **Azure DevOps** as your Git provider.
Click **Install GitHub App** to begin the GitHub App installation.
GitHub redirects you to select an organization and grant repository access. After you authorize, the wizard resumes automatically. Webhooks are registered by the GitHub App — no manual webhook configuration is needed.
Installing CloudThinker to a GitHub organization requires **Organization Owner** permissions. If you are not an owner, ask an owner to install the app.
Click **Connect to GitLab** to authenticate via OAuth. This is the simplest option for GitLab.com users.
After connecting, [configure a webhook manually](#configure-webhooks).
Use a **Project Access Token** or **Group Access Token** for self-hosted GitLab instances or if you prefer manual token management. Comments then appear from a bot user, tokens stay scoped to specific projects or groups, and access is easy to revoke. CloudThinker supports self-hosted GitLab **version 12.0 and above**.
**Connection details:**
1. **GitLab URL**: Enter `https://gitlab.com` for GitLab.com, or your self-hosted instance URL (e.g., `https://gitlab.example.com`)
2. **Token Type**: Select **Project Access Token** (single project) or **Group Access Token** (all projects in a group)
3. **Access Token**: Paste your generated token
1) Go to your project → **Settings** → **Access Tokens**
2) Click **Add new token**
3) Set role to `Developer` or higher
4) Select scope: `api`
5) Set an expiration date (recommended)
6) Copy the generated token
1. Go to your group → **Settings** → **Access Tokens**
2. Click **Add new token**
3. Set role to `Developer` or higher
4. Select scope: `api`
5. Set an expiration date (recommended)
6. Copy the generated token
The token must have **Developer** role or higher to post code review comments. Guest and Reporter roles cannot comment on merge requests.
After connecting, [configure a webhook manually](#configure-webhooks).
Click **Connect to Bitbucket** to authenticate via OAuth. Bitbucket redirects you to authorize workspace access.
Webhooks are registered automatically — no manual webhook configuration is needed.
Connect using a Bitbucket access token. Choose the token type that matches your access level:
| Token Type | Scope | Plan Required |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------- | ------------- |
| **Workspace Access Token** | All repositories in a workspace | Premium |
| **Project Access Token** | All repositories in a project | Premium |
| **Repository Access Token** | Single repository only | Free |
**Connection details:**
1. **Token Type**: Select the token scope from the dropdown
2. **Bitbucket Workspace**: Enter your workspace slug (from the URL: `bitbucket.org//repo`)
3. **Repository Slug** (Repository tokens only): Enter the repository slug
4. **Access Token**: Paste your generated token
Click **Validate Token** first to verify access, then click **Connect** to complete.
**Required token permissions:**
* Account: Read
* Repositories: Read, Write
* Pull requests: Read, Write
* Webhooks: Read and write
* Pipelines: Read, Write
1. Go to **Workspace** → **Settings** → **Access tokens**
2. Click **Create workspace access token**
3. Enable the required permissions listed above
4. Set an expiration date (recommended)
5. Copy the generated token
1. Go to **Project** → **Project settings** → **Access tokens**
2. Click **Create project access token**
3. Enable the required permissions listed above
4. Set an expiration date (recommended)
5. Copy the generated token
1. Go to **Repository** → **Repository settings** → **Access tokens**
2. Click **Create Repository Access Token**
3. Enable the required permissions listed above
4. Set an expiration date (recommended)
5. Copy the generated token
Webhooks are registered automatically — no manual webhook configuration is needed.
Azure DevOps uses a **Personal Access Token (PAT)** for authentication.
**Connection details:**
1. **Organization URL**: Enter your Azure DevOps organization URL (e.g., `https://dev.azure.com/your-org` or `https://your-org.visualstudio.com`)
2. **Project**: Enter the project name containing your repositories
3. **Personal Access Token**: Paste your generated PAT
Click **Validate PAT** first to verify access, then click **Connect** to complete.
**Required PAT scopes:**
* `Build` — Read
* `Code` — Read & Write
* `Pull Request Threads` — Read & Write
1. Go to **Azure DevOps** → **User Settings** (top-right) → **Personal Access Tokens**
2. Click **New Token**
3. Set the organization and expiration date
4. Select the scopes listed above
5. Click **Create** and copy the generated token
PATs expire on the date you set during creation. Rotate your PAT before it expires to avoid disrupting reviews.
After connecting, [configure webhooks manually](#configure-webhooks).
Select the repositories you want to enable for code review and click **Complete** to finish setup.
After setup, open Code Review settings to adjust the workspace-wide [review mode](#review-modes) and [Pipeline Analysis](#pipeline-monitoring), then configure auto-review and [filters](#filter-configuration) per repository.
**Success state:** Your repositories appear in the Code Review dashboard — CloudThinker is now monitoring their pull requests and merge requests.
## Configure webhooks
GitHub and Bitbucket register webhooks automatically — no action is needed. GitLab and Azure DevOps require manual webhook configuration:
After connecting your GitLab account, configure a webhook in your GitLab project or group:
1. Go to your project/group → **Settings** → **Webhooks**
2. Paste the webhook URL shown in the setup wizard
3. Enter the secret token provided
4. Enable these triggers:
* **Merge request events**
* **Comments**
* **Pipeline events**
5. Click **Add webhook**
After connecting your Azure DevOps project, create **4 separate service hooks** in Azure DevOps:
1. Go to **Project Settings** → **Service hooks**
2. Click **Create subscription** and select **Web Hooks**
3. Create one hook for each of these events:
* **Pull request created**
* **Pull request updated**
* **Pull request commented on**
* **Build completed**
4. For each hook, paste the webhook URL shown in the setup wizard
5. Use **Basic authentication** with the secret token as the password (leave username empty)
## Create a pull request
Navigate to your connected repository on GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps.
Create a new pull request with your code changes. CloudThinker detects the PR, analyzes the diff, and posts a summary comment plus inline comments — typically within 1–2 minutes, no manual trigger needed.
Findings cover bug detection (logic errors, null references, race conditions), security vulnerabilities (injection risks, hardcoded secrets), code quality (naming, complexity, duplication), and performance (inefficient queries, N+1 patterns).
## Review the findings
View the review status for all your pull requests in the CloudThinker dashboard.
Open your pull request to see the AI-generated summary and inline code comments. Each comment includes a severity level (Critical, High, Medium, Low), an explanation of the issue, and a suggested fix.
Reply to `@cloudthinker-ai` on the PR to ask questions, request a re-review, or skip a review — see [mention commands](/guide/code-review/mention-commands).
## Review modes
Configure the workspace-wide review mode in Code Review settings. It applies to every connected repository:
| Mode | Description |
| ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Fast** | Quick analysis, lower cost. Ideal for small PRs and rapid feedback. |
| **Auto** | Chooses Fast or Advanced based on change complexity and risk. |
| **Advanced** | Deep analysis split across specialist agents for security, performance, correctness, and patterns. Best for critical repositories. |
## Pipeline monitoring
CloudThinker monitors your CI/CD pipelines for failures. When a pipeline fails, CloudThinker:
1. Detects the failed pipeline run
2. Fetches and analyzes the failed job logs
3. Posts findings and suggested fixes directly on the PR
Pipeline Analysis is a workspace-wide setting and is **off by default**. Turn it on to analyze failed pipeline runs. For Azure DevOps, CloudThinker monitors `build.complete` events alongside pull request events (`git.pullrequest.created`, `git.pullrequest.updated`).
## Filter configuration
Control which PRs and MRs CloudThinker reviews using per-repository filters:
* **Label filters**: Include or exclude PRs with specific labels
* **Author filters**: Include or exclude specific authors (useful for excluding bot authors)
* **Branch filters**: Include or exclude branches matching specific patterns (filters by target branch — the branch being merged into)
**Exclude** filters are checked first. **Include** filters must all pass. PRs that match an exclude filter are marked as **FILTERED** and skipped entirely.
## Incremental reviews
When you push new commits to an open PR, CloudThinker performs an **incremental review** — only the new changes are analyzed, not the entire PR. This keeps reviews fast and focused on what actually changed.
## Next steps
Interact with the review bot from PR comments — re-review, ask questions, or skip a review
See which finding domains affect your reviewed merge requests
Teach reviews your team's coding conventions using files already in your repository
Configure where code review findings are delivered
# Agent Configuration
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/configuration
Scope each agent's connections and custom instructions from the Agent Settings dialog
Configure what each agent can reach and how it behaves from [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) in the CloudThinker console. Click an agent to open the **Agent Settings** dialog.
## Prerequisites
* Workspace admin permissions — [members](/guide/workspace-users) can chat with agents but can't edit them
* At least one [connection](/guide/connections/overview) in your workspace
## Settings tabs
The **Agent Settings** dialog has two tabs:
| Tab | What it controls |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Identity** | Name, role, goal, model tier, and — at the bottom — instructions, language, and learning mode |
| **Connections** | Which connections the agent can access |
Every agent has the same set of builtin tools. There is no per-agent builtin-tool toggle, so scope an agent by choosing its **Connections**.
## Enable or disable an agent
Go to [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) in the CloudThinker console.
Use the **Enable/Disable** toggle to activate or deactivate the agent.
Disable an agent to limit your workspace to specific domains, reduce noise during focused work, or restrict access during maintenance.
## Assign connections
Go to [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) and click the agent.
Select **Connections** in the Agent Settings dialog. Connections are grouped into **Builtin** and **MCP** sub-tabs.
Choose which connections this agent can use, then save. An agent accepts up to 64 connections.
Assign each agent only the connections its role requires. [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) doesn't need production IAM access to tune databases.
| Agent | Recommended connections |
| ------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------- |
| [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) | All cloud provider accounts |
| [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) | Cloud accounts + security monitoring services |
| [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) | Database connections + monitoring tools |
| [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) | Kubernetes clusters + observability platforms |
| [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) | All connections (for coordination) |
## Set custom instructions
Instructions sit at the bottom of the **Identity** tab, not in a tab of their own.
A default agent's Instructions field is locked and shows "Set by CloudThinker, can't be changed". To write your own instructions, [create a custom agent](/guide/agents/customize).
Go to [Agents](https://app.cloudthinker.io/agents) and click an agent under **Custom**.
On the **Identity** tab, scroll to **Instructions**.
Cover three areas: role context (expertise for your environment), scope limits (what the agent should and shouldn't access), and operational guidelines (procedures and escalation paths). The field accepts up to 4,000 characters.
Example:
```text theme={null}
You are the Cloud Engineer for Acme Corp.
Environment:
- Primary cloud: AWS (us-east-1, us-west-2)
- Secondary cloud: GCP (for ML workloads)
- Cost target: Reduce by 20% this quarter
Guidelines:
- Always check with @oliver before recommending security group changes
- Prioritize production stability over cost savings
- Flag any resource costing >$1000/month for review
```
## Next steps
Edit identity, language, and learning mode, or build your own agent
Configure tool approval workflows
# AWS
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/aws
Connect AWS to CloudThinker for cost analysis, security auditing, and infrastructure management via IAM role or access keys
Connect your AWS accounts to enable CloudThinker agents to analyze costs, audit security, optimize resources, and manage infrastructure at scale.
AWS authenticates with an **IAM role (AssumeRole)** or **IAM user access keys**; role-based authentication is strongly recommended because it uses short-lived credentials via AWS STS and avoids storing long-term secrets.
***
## Prerequisites
* An AWS account with IAM administrator access.
* Permission to create IAM roles or IAM users in the target account.
* Access to [AWS CloudShell](https://console.aws.amazon.com/) or the [IAM console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/) for setup.
Role-based authentication (AssumeRole) is strongly preferred. Use access keys only when AssumeRole is not feasible in your environment.
***
## Setup
### IAM role with AssumeRole
This method creates an IAM role that CloudThinker assumes to access your resources. Benefits:
* No long-term credentials shared or stored
* Uses AWS STS for temporary, auto-rotated credentials
* External ID protects against confused deputy attacks
* Easy to audit and revoke access
#### Quick setup via CloudShell
Log in to [AWS Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/) and open **CloudShell** from the top nav.
In CloudThinker's connection dialog, click **Copy Script** and paste into CloudShell. The script:
* Validates `CloudThinkerAccessRole` doesn't exist
* Creates the IAM role with read-only permissions
* Attaches the trust policy with your External ID
Copy the Role ARN from the output:
```
arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole
```
Paste the Role ARN into CloudThinker, select your region, and click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the role and shows a **Connected** status.
#### Expected output
```
Starting CloudThinker IAM Role setup...
✅ Role does not exist, proceeding...
✅ Role created successfully
✅ Policy attached successfully
==========================================
✅ Setup Complete!
==========================================
Copy this Role ARN:
arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole
```
#### Manual role creation
If you prefer manual setup:
**Trust policy:**
```json theme={null}
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::CLOUDTHINKER_ACCOUNT_ID:root"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
"Condition": {
"StringEquals": {
"sts:ExternalId": "YOUR_EXTERNAL_ID"
}
}
}
]
}
```
**Permission policy:**
```json theme={null}
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"ec2:Describe*",
"rds:Describe*",
"s3:GetBucket*",
"s3:List*",
"cloudwatch:GetMetric*",
"cloudwatch:List*",
"ce:GetCost*",
"ce:GetReservation*",
"iam:GetRole",
"iam:ListRoles"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}
```
### IAM user with access keys
Use this method only when AssumeRole is not feasible in your environment.
AWS recommends IAM roles over long-term access keys. Rotate keys regularly if using this method.
Go to [IAM Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/) → **Users → Create user** and name it `cloudthinker-readonly`.
Choose **Attach policies directly** and add:
* `ReadOnlyAccess` (comprehensive), or
* Specific policies like `AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess`, `AmazonS3ReadOnlyAccess`
Select the user → **Security credentials → Create access key**. Choose **Third-party service** as the use case.
Copy and securely store the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. Enter them in **Connections → AWS** and click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status.
### Multi-account setup
For organizations with multiple AWS accounts:
Deploy the IAM role using CloudFormation StackSets across all target accounts.
Connect the management account for organization-wide visibility.
Add account connections individually in CloudThinker.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Role ARN** | ARN of the IAM role CloudThinker assumes (role-based method) | `arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole` |
| **External ID** | Secret ID in the trust policy, provided by CloudThinker | — |
| **Region** | Primary AWS region for this connection | `us-east-1` |
| **Access Key ID** | IAM user key ID (access-keys method only) | — |
| **Secret Access Key** | IAM user secret key (access-keys method only) | — |
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read-only analysis)
```
ec2:Describe*
rds:Describe*
s3:GetBucket*, s3:List*
cloudwatch:GetMetric*, cloudwatch:List*
ce:GetCost*, ce:GetReservation*
iam:GetRole, iam:ListRoles
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```
# All minimum permissions, plus:
elasticloadbalancing:Describe*
autoscaling:Describe*
lambda:List*, lambda:GetFunction*
ecs:Describe*, ecs:List*
eks:Describe*, eks:List*
securityhub:Get*, securityhub:List*
guardduty:Get*, guardduty:List*
config:Describe*, config:Get*
cloudtrail:Describe*, cloudtrail:Get*
```
Start with minimum permissions and expand as needed. Enable Cost Explorer in the AWS Console before connecting — it can take up to 24 hours to activate on new accounts.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can analyze and optimize your AWS resources.
| Agent | AWS capabilities |
| ---------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **[Alex](/guide/agents/alex)** | Cost analysis, EC2 right-sizing, Reserved Instance recommendations, resource optimization |
| **[Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver)** | Security Hub findings, IAM audits, compliance checks, vulnerability assessment |
| **[Tony](/guide/agents/tony)** | RDS performance analysis, Aurora optimization, DynamoDB tuning |
| **[Kai](/guide/agents/kai)** | EKS cluster management, Fargate optimization, container analysis |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run an AWS account check and list the connected account ID and active regions
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex analyze EC2 costs over the last 30 days and #recommend right-sizing opportunities
@oliver audit IAM roles and flag any with excessive permissions or missing MFA requirements
@kai check EKS cluster health across all connected regions and #report any failing pods
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the IAM role has the required permissions. Check that the trust policy includes CloudThinker's account ID, confirm the External ID matches exactly, and ensure the role ARN is correct.
Enable Cost Explorer in the AWS Console (takes up to 24 hours to activate). Verify `ce:GetCost*` permissions are granted and check that billing preferences allow programmatic access.
Verify CloudWatch metrics are being collected. Check that the region selection includes all relevant regions and confirm services are running and generating data.
Check network connectivity to AWS APIs. Verify no VPC endpoints are blocking access and try connecting from a different region.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Use IAM roles** — prefer AssumeRole over long-term access keys; IAM roles use short-lived STS credentials that auto-rotate and require no secret storage.
- **Enable CloudTrail** — audit all API calls made through the CloudThinker connection to maintain a complete activity log.
***
## Related
AWS-focused cloud optimization agent
Use your own AWS Bedrock credentials for unlimited LLM usage
# Azure
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/azure
Connect Microsoft Azure to CloudThinker for multi-cloud operations, cost analysis, and compliance monitoring
Connect your Azure subscription to enable CloudThinker agents to analyze costs, audit compliance, and manage infrastructure across Microsoft Azure.
Azure authenticates with a **service principal** (app registration + client secret + tenant ID); the principal's role assignments determine what each agent can read.
***
## Prerequisites
* An Azure subscription with Owner or User Access Administrator access.
* Permission to create app registrations in Microsoft Entra ID.
* Multi-factor authentication registered on your account. Security defaults block app registration without it.
Reader plus Cost Management Reader covers every read-only agent. Add write-level roles only if you want agents to change Azure resources.
***
## Setup
```bash theme={null}
az login
az account set --subscription
```
```bash theme={null}
az ad sp create-for-rbac --name cloudthinker \
--role Reader \
--scopes /subscriptions/
```
Copy the output. The `password` is shown once.
```json theme={null}
{
"appId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000",
"displayName": "cloudthinker",
"password": "the-client-secret",
"tenant": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"
}
```
```bash theme={null}
az role assignment create --assignee \
--role "Cost Management Reader" \
--scope /subscriptions/
```
Navigate to **Connections → Azure** and enter `appId` as **APP\_ID**, `password` as **CLIENT\_SECRET**, and `tenant` as **TENANT\_ID**. Select **AZURE\_DEFAULT\_REGION**, then click **Connect**.
**Success state:** the connection shows a **Connected** status.
Go to [Azure Portal](https://portal.azure.com/) → **Microsoft Entra ID → App registrations → New registration**. Name it `cloudthinker`, keep the default account type, and click **Register**.
On the app overview, copy the **Application (client) ID** and the **Directory (tenant) ID**.
Go to **Certificates & secrets → New client secret**. Set an expiration of 12 months and click **Add**. Copy the secret **Value** immediately.
Go to **Subscriptions → your subscription → Access control (IAM) → Add role assignment**. Assign **Reader** to the app registration, then repeat for **Cost Management Reader**.
Navigate to **Connections → Azure** and enter the client ID as **APP\_ID**, the secret value as **CLIENT\_SECRET**, and the directory ID as **TENANT\_ID**. Select **AZURE\_DEFAULT\_REGION**, then click **Connect**.
**Success state:** the connection shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the client secret immediately after creation. Azure never shows it again. Run `az ad sp credential reset --id ` to issue a new one.
### Microsoft Customer Agreement billing
Pay-as-you-go subscriptions bought online use a Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA). Cost Management answers an MCA subscription with `Given subscription doesn't have valid WebDirect/AIRS offer type`, so CostOps reads spend at the billing profile instead.
Grant the service principal access to that scope: go to **Cost Management + Billing → your billing account → Billing profiles → your profile → Access control (IAM) → Add**, and assign **Billing profile reader** to the app registration. Subscription role assignments do not cover billing scopes.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------- |
| **APP\_ID** | Application (client) ID of the app registration | `00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000` |
| **CLIENT\_SECRET** | Secret value from Certificates & secrets | — |
| **TENANT\_ID** | Directory (tenant) ID of your Microsoft Entra ID | `00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000` |
| **AZURE\_DEFAULT\_REGION** | Default region for Azure CLI calls | `East US` |
The subscription is not a connection field. CloudThinker discovers every subscription the service principal can read.
***
## Required permissions
| Role | Scope | Grants |
| -------------------------- | ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Reader** | Subscription | Resource inventory, security audits, performance analysis |
| **Cost Management Reader** | Subscription | CostOps spend, forecast, and cost recommendations |
| **Billing profile reader** | MCA billing profile | CostOps on a Microsoft Customer Agreement subscription |
| **Contributor** | Subscription | Optional. Approval-gated write actions on resources |
Reader alone returns no cost data. Reader grants `*/read`, and a Cost Management query is a POST action that `*/read` does not match.
Assign Contributor only when you want agents to change resources. Every write call still waits for your approval in chat.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can analyze and optimize your Azure resources.
| Agent | Azure capabilities |
| ---------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **[Alex](/guide/agents/alex)** | Cost analysis, VM right-sizing, Reserved Instance recommendations, resource optimization |
| **[Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver)** | Security Center findings, Microsoft Entra ID audits, compliance checks, policy violations |
| **[Tony](/guide/agents/tony)** | SQL Database performance, Cosmos DB optimization, PostgreSQL tuning |
| **[Kai](/guide/agents/kai)** | AKS cluster management, container optimization, workload analysis |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run an Azure account check and list the connected subscriptions and resource groups
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex analyze Azure VM costs over the last 30 days and #recommend right-sizing opportunities
@oliver audit Azure Security Center findings and flag high-severity policy violations
@kai check AKS cluster health and #report any failing pods or resource pressure
```
***
## Troubleshooting
`az login` or the portal returns `AADSTS530035: Access has been blocked by security defaults`. Security defaults require multi-factor authentication before you can register an app. Register a method at [aka.ms/mfasetup](https://aka.ms/mfasetup) and sign in again. The `--use-device-code` and `--allow-no-subscriptions` flags do not bypass this.
Verify APP\_ID, CLIENT\_SECRET, and TENANT\_ID. Check that the secret has not expired and that the app registration lives in the tenant you entered. Confirm no conditional access policy blocks service principal sign-in.
Run `az ad sp credential reset --id `, or go to **Microsoft Entra ID → App registrations → your app → Certificates & secrets** and create a new secret. Update CLIENT\_SECRET in the connection.
CostOps reports **Azure Cost Management is not readable**. Assign **Cost Management Reader** on the subscription. If the subscription uses a Microsoft Customer Agreement, also assign **Billing profile reader** on the billing profile. Role assignments take a few minutes to propagate.
A new subscription throttles Cost Management heavily, and the query answers `429 Too many requests`. Nothing is misconfigured. Wait a few minutes and reload CostOps.
Verify the **Reader** role is assigned on every subscription you expect to see. Resources in a subscription the service principal cannot read never appear.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Set secret expiration** — always set an expiration on client secrets, and rotate before expiry.
- **Scope the roles** — assign Reader and Cost Management Reader on the subscriptions CloudThinker needs, not at management group level by default.
***
## Related
Connect Amazon Web Services
Security-focused agent for Azure compliance
# Backstage
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/backstage
Connect Backstage to CloudThinker for software catalog inventory, service ownership and dependency context, catalog metadata gaps, and approval-gated location registration
Connect your Backstage instance to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) read the Software Catalog: which services exist, who owns them, what they depend on, where their code and documentation live, and which entries are missing the metadata your teams rely on.
Backstage authenticates with a **static external access token** that you add to your Backstage configuration. Reading the catalog is the whole connection. The one change an agent can make is to a catalog location you name, and it asks you before every one.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Backstage instance** reachable from CloudThinker over **HTTPS**.
* Access to the **Backstage configuration file** where you can add a static external access token.
* Optional, for updating a registered location: **Backstage 1.50 or later**. That release is the first to carry the catalog's location-update endpoint. Reading, registering, and removing locations work on earlier releases.
Create a token dedicated to CloudThinker rather than reusing one you handed to another system. Each entry carries its own restrictions, so a dedicated token keeps the scope visible and lets you revoke it without disturbing anything else.
***
## Setup
The token can be any string without whitespace, but it should be long enough that it cannot be guessed. Backstage suggests generating one on the command line:
```shell theme={null}
node -p 'require("crypto").randomBytes(24).toString("base64")'
```
Store the result in a secret manager or an environment variable. Do not paste it into the configuration file directly.
Add an entry of type `static` under `backend.auth.externalAccess` in your Backstage app configuration. The `subject` identifies the caller in Backstage's own logs, so name it after CloudThinker:
```yaml theme={null}
backend:
auth:
externalAccess:
- type: static
options:
token: ${CLOUDTHINKER_TOKEN}
subject: cloudthinker
accessRestrictions:
- plugin: catalog
```
The `accessRestrictions` block is what keeps the token narrow. `plugin: catalog` means a request to any other Backstage plugin is rejected. Leave it out and, in Backstage's words, "the access method has unlimited access to all functionality of all plugins".
See [Backstage's service-to-service authentication guide](https://backstage.io/docs/auth/service-to-service-auth) for the full option set.
Backstage reads external access tokens from configuration at startup. Restart it so the new entry takes effect.
Navigate to **Connections → Backstage** and enter:
* **Backstage URL**: the Backstage backend root, such as `https://backstage.example.com`
* **Service token**: the token you generated
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads a single catalog entity to verify the token, and the status turns **Connected**.
Enter the **Backstage root only**, such as `https://backstage.example.com`. Do not append `/api/catalog`, any other path, a query string, a fragment, or a username and password. CloudThinker adds the catalog path itself and rejects a URL that carries anything else.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| **Backstage URL** | The Backstage backend root, with no path, query, fragment, or credentials | `https://backstage.example.com` |
| **Service token** | The static external access token you added to your Backstage configuration | — |
The Backstage URL must use `https`. The token is sent with every request, so plain `http` is rejected.
***
## Required permissions
Restrict the token to the catalog plugin and nothing else:
| Restriction | Effect |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **`plugin: catalog`** | The token reaches the Software Catalog and is rejected everywhere else. This is the restriction to set. |
| **No restrictions** | The token reaches every plugin in your Backstage instance. Avoid this. |
That single line covers everything an agent reads. Registering, updating, or removing a catalog location additionally needs the token to be allowed to create, update, and delete locations — see [Write access](#write-access).
Backstage also offers `permission` and `permissionAttribute` restrictions for narrowing a token further, for example to read-only actions. Both apply only where permission checks are enabled in the first place. The permissions framework is off until you turn it on in your Backstage configuration, so on a default instance neither setting restricts anything. Do not rely on `permissionAttribute` as your read-only guarantee. The `plugin` restriction is always enforced.
If you only want agents to read, give the token no location write access at all. There is then no Backstage change an agent can make, whatever it is asked to do.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can read what your catalog knows about your services.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Catalog inventory** | List the entities in the catalog with their kind, namespace, owner, type, and lifecycle |
| **Catalog shape** | Summarize the catalog by kind, type, and owner so you can see how it is distributed |
| **Service context** | For one named entity: its owner, lifecycle, system, domain, source repository, documentation, the APIs it provides or consumes, and its relations |
| **Metadata gaps** | Count the returned entities that have no owner, no lifecycle, no source-repository link, or no documentation link |
| **Location lookup** | Read one registered catalog location by its ID |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex summarize what is in our Backstage catalog: how many entities, which kinds, and who owns them
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report which components in Backstage have no owner set
@alex #report show the owner, system, and dependencies of the payments-api component in Backstage
@alex #recommend which Backstage entries are missing a documentation link and which to fix first
```
Answers are bounded so a broad question cannot pull the whole catalog: a lookup returns up to **15** entities across **3** pages by default, and never more than **50** entities across **5** pages. Agents say "returned 15" rather than "15 exist", because a full page is not proof that you have seen everything. Name the component, system, or domain you care about to get an exact answer.
A metadata gap is a gap in the catalog, not in the service. An entity with no owner recorded means nobody filled that field in, not that the real service is unowned. Agents report it that way, and so should any report you build on it.
***
## Write access
Agents cannot create, edit, or delete catalog entities. Entities come from the locations your catalog ingests, so the only change this connection can make is to a **location**: register a new one, point an existing one somewhere else, or remove one.
Every one of those asks you first. The agent states the action, the location ID or target URL, and the **URL prefix it treats as yours**, then waits. Your rejection ends it — the agent does not look for another route.
Two rules bound what an approval can do:
* The target must be an **`https`** URL **under the prefix you approved**. A target outside it is refused before any request is made.
* Updating or removing a location first reads that location and checks its **current** target is under the same prefix. A location pointing somewhere else is refused, so an approval for one prefix cannot reach a location that belongs to another team.
Removing a location removes the entities it produced from your catalog. Read the target in the prompt before you approve, and approve only a location you recognize as yours.
Skip this entirely by giving the token no location write access. See [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
***
## Troubleshooting
CloudThinker reports one message for every connection failure, so check the likely causes in order:
* The **URL** points somewhere other than the Backstage backend root, or something in front of it redirects the request elsewhere. CloudThinker never follows a redirect, because that would hand your token to a server you did not name.
* The **token** is not in `backend.auth.externalAccess`, was mistyped, or Backstage has not been restarted since you added it.
* The token's **`accessRestrictions`** do not include `plugin: catalog`, so Backstage rejects the request.
* Backstage is **unreachable** from CloudThinker, or its certificate is not trusted.
The service token is empty, or it carries a line break. Re-copy it as a single line with no surrounding quotes.
The address is not a plain host root. Remove any path such as `/api/catalog`, any query string, any fragment, and any embedded username and password, then reconnect with the root only.
The address is plain `http`, which would send the token in clear text. Serve Backstage over HTTPS and reconnect.
The answer came from a bounded page of results, or the token cannot see the rest. Narrow the question to the component, system, or domain you care about rather than asking for everything.
That is correct, and no permission changes it. Entities are produced by the locations your catalog ingests, so edit them at their source. An agent can register, repoint, or remove a location for you, with your approval.
The location-update endpoint arrived in Backstage 1.50. On an earlier release, remove the location and register the new target instead.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Restrict the token to the catalog** — one `plugin: catalog` line is the difference between a catalog reader and a token that reaches every plugin you run.
- **Do not lean on permission restrictions you have not enabled** — `permission` and `permissionAttribute` do nothing until the permissions framework is switched on in Backstage.
- **Read-only is a choice you make in Backstage** — withhold location write access and there is no Backstage change an agent can make.
- **Approve by target, not by habit** — a location approval names a URL prefix; read it, because removing a location removes the entities it produced.
- **Rotate by replacing the entry** — a static token does not expire on its own. Replace it in your Backstage configuration and update the connection on your own schedule.
***
## Related
Cloud infrastructure and cost analysis
How CloudThinker gates tools that change state
# Apache Cassandra
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/cassandra
Connect Apache Cassandra to CloudThinker for keyspace inventory, schema audits, ring health, row reads, and approval-gated changes
Connect your Cassandra ring to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) inventory keyspaces and tables, audit replication and TTL settings, check driver-visible node health, and read rows by primary key. CloudThinker authenticates with a login role over the CQL native transport, and every change stops for your approval on the tool call.
## Prerequisites
* A Cassandra cluster reachable from CloudThinker on its CQL native transport port, `9042` by default.
* Permission to create a login role, or a role someone created for you.
* Two or three node addresses from the same datacenter. The driver discovers the rest of the ring from them.
This connection speaks CQL only. `nodetool` runs over JMX on a different port, so repair status, compaction backlog, and disk usage stay outside what an agent can read here.
## Setup
Connect as an existing superuser and create a dedicated role:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE ROLE cloudthinker WITH LOGIN = true AND PASSWORD = 'your-secure-password';
```
Do not reuse the default `cassandra` superuser.
Reading `system` and `system_schema` needs no grant, so keyspace inventory, schema audits, and ring health work as soon as the role can log in. Add row reads on only the keyspaces the agent should reach:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker;
```
Skip this step for a read-only connection. Grant it per keyspace when you want the agent to propose changes:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT MODIFY ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker; -- single-row insert, update, delete
GRANT ALTER ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker; -- table TTL, gc_grace, secondary indexes
```
Allow inbound `9042` from CloudThinker to the contact points you plan to enter. Amazon Keyspaces uses `9142` with TLS required.
Go to **Connections → Cassandra** and enter:
* **Contact points**: comma-separated hostnames or IPs, no port, for example `10.0.1.10,10.0.1.11`
* **Native transport port**: `9042` for most clusters, `9142` for Amazon Keyspaces
* **Role name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Password**: the password you set above
* **Local datacenter**: optional; set it to keep reads inside one datacenter on a multi-DC ring
* **Use TLS**: leave on `Yes` unless your cluster has `client_encryption_options` disabled
* **Verify the TLS certificate**: leave on `Yes`; turn it off only for a self-signed or internal-CA certificate
Click **Connect**. The connection shows a **Connected** status once CloudThinker reaches the ring.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **Contact points** | One or more node addresses, comma-separated, hostname or IP only | — |
| **Native transport port** | The CQL port, not the JMX port | `9042` |
| **Role name** | A dedicated login role, for example `cloudthinker` | — |
| **Password** | The password set on that role | — |
| **Local datacenter** | Pins reads to one datacenter; blank uses the datacenter that answers | Blank |
| **Use TLS** | Encrypts the session, including the role password | `Yes` |
| **Verify the TLS certificate** | Proves which server answered; hidden when TLS is off | `Yes` |
A stock `cassandra.yaml` ships with client-to-node encryption disabled. Setting **Use TLS** to `No` matches that default and puts the role name and password on the wire in the clear, readable by anything between CloudThinker and your contact point.
## Required permissions
### Minimum
No grant at all. A role that can log in reads `system` and `system_schema`, which covers keyspace inventory, replication factor, TTL, compaction, indexes, primary-key shape, and driver-visible node state.
### Row reads
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker;
```
### Changes
```sql theme={null}
GRANT MODIFY ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker;
GRANT ALTER ON KEYSPACE your_keyspace TO cloudthinker;
```
Grant on the specific keyspaces the agent should reach, never `ON ALL KEYSPACES`. The grant is the durable boundary: approval decides whether CloudThinker asks for a change, the grant decides whether Cassandra allows one.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Keyspace and table inventory** | List keyspaces and tables with their replication strategy and key shape |
| **Schema audit** | Report replication factor, `default_time_to_live`, `gc_grace_seconds`, compaction settings, and secondary indexes |
| **Ring health** | Report datacenters, racks, releases, and schema agreement as the driver sees them |
| **Row reads** | Read one partition by its key, or scan across partitions when you ask for it by name |
| **Approved changes** | Change one row, a table's TTL or `gc_grace_seconds`, or a secondary index |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list the Cassandra keyspaces and the tables in each one
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report audit replication factor and TTL for the events keyspace
@tony #report show the row in ct_demo.sessions where session_id = 'abc-123'
@tony #recommend which tables in the events keyspace have no automatic expiry configured
```
## Approved changes
Changes are not arbitrary CQL. The connection carries a fixed set of operations, and everything outside it is refused rather than approved.
| Operation | Scope |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `insert`, `update`, `delete` | Exactly one row. The target must name every primary key column, so a partition-wide or range delete cannot be expressed. |
| Table settings | `default_time_to_live` and `gc_grace_seconds` only. |
| Secondary indexes | Create or drop one index. |
Four things to know before you approve one:
* **Every change reports what it measured.** The agent shows the value it read before the change, the outcome, and the exact command that reverses it. Running that reversal is a second change and needs its own approval.
* **`TRUNCATE`, `DROP TABLE`, `DROP KEYSPACE`, `ALTER KEYSPACE`, `GRANT`, and `ALTER ROLE` are absent.** They are refusals, not approvals waiting to be granted. Ask the agent and it names the operation and what an operator would run instead.
* **A table setting change cannot be made conditional.** Cassandra has no conditional `ALTER TABLE`, so the agent reads the current value, changes it, then re-reads it and reports whether its own value survived. A writer inside that gap is overwritten without detection, and the output says so.
* **Nothing rolls back.** Cassandra has no transaction. A delete writes a tombstone, so the row reads as absent at once and the space returns only after `gc_grace_seconds` and compaction. A new TTL applies to rows written after the change, never to rows already stored.
A second Cassandra connection in the same workspace turns both read-only. A change names the connection type rather than one instance, so an approval meant for staging could reach production. Keep one Cassandra connection per workspace while you need changes.
## Troubleshooting
* Check that **Contact points** carry no port and no scheme. The port belongs in its own field.
* Confirm **Native transport port** is the CQL port. `7199` is JMX and `7000` is internode; neither answers here.
* Confirm the role exists and can log in: `LIST ROLES;`
* A role created without `WITH LOGIN = true` authenticates nowhere. Recreate it or `ALTER ROLE cloudthinker WITH LOGIN = true;`
Not necessarily an error. Keyspace and table metadata come from `system_schema` and need no grant, so an empty table list means the keyspace holds no tables. An empty **row** read means the role lacks `SELECT` on that keyspace, or the partition genuinely holds nothing.
* Amazon Keyspaces requires TLS on port `9142`. Set both together.
* For a self-signed or internal-CA certificate, keep **Use TLS** on `Yes` and set **Verify the TLS certificate** to `No`. The session stays encrypted; it no longer proves which server answered.
Cassandra returns a timeout both before and after a write commits, so the outcome is genuinely unknown and nothing is retried automatically. Ask the agent to re-read the row or setting, then decide from what that read reports. Never re-run the change to find out whether it applied.
A new secondary index answers queries only after its build finishes on every node. Give the build time, then ask again.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **TLS carries the password** — this connection sends the role name and password over the same socket as the query. Keep **Use TLS** on for anything outside a private network.
- **Least-privilege role** — a login role with no grant already answers inventory, schema, and health questions. Add `SELECT`, `MODIFY`, and `ALTER` per keyspace only when you need them, and never on the default `cassandra` superuser.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
How CloudThinker asks before a change
# ClickHouse
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/clickhouse
Connect ClickHouse to CloudThinker for schema inspection, analytical query investigation, and optional write access
Connect your ClickHouse cluster to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) explore schemas, inspect table health, and answer questions with analytical SQL. A new connection is read-only: CloudThinker sends every query with ClickHouse's `readonly` setting enabled. Turn **Write access** on when you want the agent to change data, and **Allow DROP and TRUNCATE** separately when you want it to remove objects.
## Prerequisites
* A ClickHouse server reachable from CloudThinker over its **HTTP interface** (`8443` with TLS, `8123` without). ClickHouse Cloud, a self-hosted cluster, a cluster run by an operator on Kubernetes, and managed ClickHouse from another provider all work — that one port is all CloudThinker needs.
* Admin access to create a dedicated user.
* The native TCP port (`9000`) is not used and does not need to be exposed.
## Setup
Connect as an admin and create the CloudThinker user:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER cloudthinker IDENTIFIED BY 'your-secure-password';
```
Grant `SELECT` on the databases the agent should see, plus `SHOW`:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON your_database.* TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SHOW DATABASES, SHOW TABLES, SHOW COLUMNS ON *.* TO cloudthinker;
```
The connection defaults to read-only, but a settings profile makes the restriction hold at the server, independent of any client:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE SETTINGS PROFILE cloudthinker_readonly SETTINGS readonly = 1 READONLY;
ALTER USER cloudthinker SETTINGS PROFILE cloudthinker_readonly;
```
Skip this step if you plan to turn **Write access** on. The profile uses `READONLY`, so the user cannot lift it, and CloudThinker's switch cannot override it either.
Table sizes, part counts, and column metadata come from `system`:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON system.tables TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SELECT ON system.columns TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SELECT ON system.parts TO cloudthinker;
```
Open the HTTP interface to CloudThinker:
* ClickHouse Cloud: add CloudThinker to the service **IP access list**, under the service's **Settings → Security**.
* Self-hosted: allow inbound `8443` (or `8123`) from CloudThinker in your firewall or security group.
Go to **Connections → ClickHouse** and enter:
* **Host**: hostname only, with no scheme and no port, for example `abc123.ap-southeast-1.aws.clickhouse.cloud`
* **Port**: `8443` with TLS, `8123` without
* **Username**: `cloudthinker`
* **Password**: the password you set above
* **Use TLS**: `Yes` for ClickHouse Cloud and any public endpoint
* **Verify the TLS certificate**: leave on `Yes`; turn it off only for a self-signed or internal-CA certificate
* **Default database**: optional; leave blank to use the server default
* **Write access**: leave on `Read-only` unless the agent needs to change data
* **Allow DROP and TRUNCATE**: appears only once write access is on; leave `Blocked` unless you want the agent to remove objects
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker runs a single `SELECT version()` as that user to check the credentials, and the **Connected** message names the ClickHouse version it reached, the username it used, and the default database when you set one. Anything else comes back as a specific reason — see [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting).
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------- |
| **Host** | Hostname or IP, no scheme and no port | — |
| **Port** | HTTP interface port | `8443` |
| **Username** | Dedicated user, for example `cloudthinker` | — |
| **Password** | User password | — |
| **Use TLS** | HTTPS instead of plain HTTP | `Yes` |
| **Verify the TLS certificate** | Turn off only for a self-signed or internal-CA certificate; hidden when TLS is off | `Yes` |
| **Default database** | Database used when a query does not qualify a table | Server default |
| **Write access** | Whether the agent may change data | `Read-only` |
| **Allow DROP and TRUNCATE** | Whether the agent may remove objects; hidden while read-only | `Blocked` |
`8443` and TLS is the ClickHouse Cloud pair. A self-hosted server with TLS turned off answers on `8123`; set **Use TLS** to `No` and the port to `8123` together, because a mismatch fails at connect time.
## Required permissions
### Minimum
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON your_database.* TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SHOW DATABASES, SHOW TABLES, SHOW COLUMNS ON *.* TO cloudthinker;
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```sql theme={null}
-- All of the above, plus:
GRANT SELECT ON system.tables TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SELECT ON system.columns TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SELECT ON system.parts TO cloudthinker;
GRANT SELECT ON system.query_log TO cloudthinker;
```
`system.query_log` is what turns "this dashboard is slow" into a ranked list of the queries responsible.
### Write access (only if you enable it)
```sql theme={null}
GRANT INSERT, ALTER, CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW ON your_database.* TO cloudthinker;
-- Only if the agent should remove objects:
GRANT DROP TABLE, TRUNCATE ON your_database.* TO cloudthinker;
```
Grant these on the specific databases the agent should change, never on `*.*`. A grant the user does not hold is the boundary the **Write access** switch cannot cross.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Schema discovery** | List databases and tables with engine, sorting key, row count, and column types |
| **Analytical queries** | Run SQL, including aggregates, joins, and window functions |
| **Table health** | Inspect part counts, compressed and uncompressed size, and index granularity |
| **Query investigation** | Rank slow or expensive queries from `system.query_log` |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list the ClickHouse databases and the tables in each one
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report which ClickHouse tables grew the most in the last week
@tony #report show per-service p95 latency from the events table
@tony #recommend suggest a better sorting key for our largest MergeTree table
```
## Write access
The connection ships read-only, and two switches open it up one step at a time.
| Write access | Allow DROP and TRUNCATE | What the agent can do |
| --------------------- | ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `Read-only` (default) | hidden | `SELECT` only. Everything else is refused by ClickHouse with error `164 READONLY`. |
| `Full access` | `Blocked` (default) | `INSERT`, `ALTER`, `CREATE`, and materialized views. A `DROP TABLE` or `TRUNCATE` is refused, so the table survives. |
| `Full access` | `Allowed` | Everything above, plus dropping and truncating tables and databases. |
Three things to weigh before turning write access on:
* **`Blocked` protects the table, not the rows.** It rejects the `DROP TABLE` and `TRUNCATE` statements. It does not reject `ALTER TABLE ... DELETE`, `DROP PARTITION`, or `DROP COLUMN`, each of which removes data while leaving the table in place. Treat `Full access` as "the agent can destroy data", regardless of the second switch.
* **ClickHouse has no transactions.** An `ALTER TABLE ... DELETE` is an asynchronous mutation and a `DROP` is immediate. Neither can be rolled back, so recovery means restoring from a backup.
* **Grants are the stronger control.** These switches only decide whether CloudThinker sends `readonly=1`; they never grant a privilege the ClickHouse user does not already have. Give the CloudThinker user write privileges on exactly the databases you want reachable, and the switch cannot exceed that.
To turn write access on for an existing connection, open **Connections → ClickHouse → Edit**, change **Write access**, and reconnect.
An agent with write access acts without a per-query confirmation prompt. Point it at an analytics or staging cluster before you point it at the one your dashboards read from.
## Troubleshooting
ClickHouse answered and refused the credentials.
* Confirm the user exists: `SHOW USERS;`
* Retype the password rather than pasting it. A pasted value that carries a line break is rejected before CloudThinker even contacts the server.
* ClickHouse Cloud disables password auth for some SSO-provisioned users. Create a dedicated database user instead of reusing a console login.
The name in **Default database** is not a database ClickHouse found. Database names are case-sensitive, so check the spelling, or leave the field blank to use the server default.
Something answered, but it was not the ClickHouse HTTP interface.
* Confirm **Port** and **Use TLS** agree: `8443` with TLS, `8123` without.
* The native TCP port `9000` is not the HTTP interface. Pointing the connection at it fails.
Nothing answered at that host and port.
* Check that **Host** carries no `https://` prefix and no `:port` suffix. Both belong in their own fields.
* ClickHouse Cloud: add CloudThinker to the service IP access list.
* Self-hosted: confirm `` includes the interface you exposed, and that the firewall allows `8443` or `8123`.
* A TLS mismatch reads the same way — **Use TLS** on against a plain HTTP port, or off against an HTTPS-only one.
The address was reachable but no reply arrived before the check gave up. On ClickHouse Cloud this is usually automatic idling: a service that has been inactive suspends, and connections to it time out until it restarts. Wake the service, then connect again.
The server answered with a 5xx status, so it is running but not serving queries. Check the cluster's own health, then connect again.
The connection is read-only, which is the default. If the agent should be able to write, set **Write access** to `Full access` and reconnect.
If it still fails after that, the restriction is server-side: check whether the user carries a `readonly` settings profile (`SHOW CREATE USER cloudthinker;`) and whether it holds the write grants the query needs.
`DROP` and `TRUNCATE` sit behind their own switch. Set **Allow DROP and TRUNCATE** to `Allowed`. It appears only once **Write access** is `Full access`.
* The user needs `SHOW TABLES` and `SELECT` on the database, not only on individual tables.
* Grant `SELECT ON system.tables` so metadata queries return rows.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **TLS on public endpoints** — keep **Use TLS** on for ClickHouse Cloud and any endpoint outside a private network.
- **Dedicated user** — never reuse an admin account; a separate user keeps the audit trail readable.
- **Grants over switches** — the privileges on the ClickHouse user are the durable boundary. The **Write access** switch decides whether CloudThinker asks for a write; the grant decides whether ClickHouse allows one.
- **Server-side read-only** — for a connection that must never write, add the settings profile in step 3. `READONLY` makes it un-liftable from the client side.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Similar setup for PostgreSQL databases
# Cloudflare
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/cloudflare
Connect Cloudflare to CloudThinker for DNS management, CDN optimization, and security configuration
Connect your Cloudflare account to enable CloudThinker agents to access documentation, analyze DNS traffic, and query analytics data.
Cloudflare authenticates with an **API token** scoped to specific permissions. Select only the services you need — each service requires its own set of token permissions.
***
## Prerequisites
* A Cloudflare account with API access.
* Your **Account ID** (found in the Cloudflare dashboard right sidebar).
* An **API token** with permissions for your selected services.
You can combine permissions for multiple services into a single token. Limit the token to only the zones and permissions CloudThinker needs.
***
## Setup
Log in to [Cloudflare Dashboard](https://dash.cloudflare.com/) → select any domain → copy your **Account ID** from the right sidebar under the API section.
Go to **My Profile → API Tokens → Create Token** and select **Create Custom Token**. Add permissions for the services you want to enable (see [Required permissions](#required-permissions) below). Copy the token immediately — Cloudflare will not display it again.
Navigate to **Connections → Cloudflare** and enter:
* **API Token**: the token you created
* **Account ID**: your Cloudflare account ID
* **Enabled Services**: select the services you want to use
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Cloudflare connection dialog with API token, Account ID, and service selection
Copy your API token immediately after creation. Cloudflare will not display it again, and you'll need to create a new token if lost.
### Create an API token
Go to [Cloudflare Dashboard](https://dash.cloudflare.com/) → **My Profile** (top right) → **API Tokens**.
Click **Create Token** → **Create Custom Token** (at the bottom).
Add permissions for your selected services:
**For DNS Analytics:**
* Account → Account Settings → Read
* Zone → Zone → Read
* Zone → Analytics → Read
* Zone → DNS → Read
**For GraphQL Analytics:**
* Account → Account Analytics → Read
* Zone → Zone Analytics → Read
Under **Zone Resources**, select **Include → All zones** (or specific zones).
Click **Continue to summary → Create Token** and copy the token value immediately.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **CLOUDFLARE\_API\_TOKEN** | API token created in your Cloudflare profile | — |
| **CLOUDFLARE\_ACCOUNT\_ID** | Your Cloudflare account ID from the dashboard | — |
| **ENABLED\_SERVICES** | Services to enable (Documentation, DNS Analytics, GraphQL Analytics) | — |
***
## Required permissions
### Documentation
No special permissions required. This service provides access to Cloudflare's public documentation.
### DNS Analytics
| Permission | Access level |
| ---------------- | ------------ |
| Zone | Read |
| Analytics | Read |
| DNS | Read |
| Account Settings | Read |
### GraphQL Analytics
| Permission | Access level |
| ----------------- | ------------ |
| Account Analytics | Read |
| Zone Analytics | Read |
Combine permissions for multiple services into a single token. When possible, restrict the token to specific zones rather than all zones.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can interact with the services you enabled.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Documentation** | Search and reference Cloudflare's official documentation during troubleshooting |
| **DNS Analytics** | Query DNS traffic patterns, identify anomalies, and analyze query volumes |
| **GraphQL Analytics** | Run advanced analytics queries for custom traffic and security reports |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the Cloudflare connection and list accessible zones and enabled services
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver search Cloudflare documentation for WAF best practices and #recommend rule configuration changes
@alex pull DNS analytics for the last 24 hours and #report on query volume and top error types
@alex run a GraphQL analytics query for zone traffic over the last 7 days and #chart the results
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify your API token is correct and hasn't been revoked. Check that the token has the required permissions for your selected services and that the Account ID matches the account the token was created for.
Verify the token has Analytics read permissions. Analytics data may take up to 24 hours to appear for new zones. Check that the zones have traffic generating data.
Ensure all four permissions are granted: Zone, Analytics, DNS, and Account Settings. Verify the token has access to the specific zones you're querying and that DNS is proxied through Cloudflare (orange cloud enabled).
Verify Account Analytics and Zone Analytics permissions are granted. Check the query syntax against Cloudflare's GraphQL schema and ensure you're querying within the allowed time range.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Zone restrictions** — limit the API token to specific zones rather than "All zones" when possible to reduce blast radius.
- **IP restrictions** — add IP allowlist restrictions to the token if your CloudThinker IP range is stable.
***
## Related
Learn about MCP-based integrations
Connect your AWS infrastructure
# CockroachDB
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/cockroachdb
Connect CockroachDB for bounded SQL analysis and approval-gated row changes with separate read and write credentials
Connect CockroachDB to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) inspect schemas, query bounded data, and review SQL activity. Separate read and write connection strings keep row changes approval-gated.
## Prerequisites
* A CockroachDB SQL endpoint reachable from CloudThinker.
* Administrator access to create two dedicated SQL users.
* Two password-based connection strings using `sslmode=require`, `verify-ca`, or `verify-full`. Use `verify-full` when possible.
## Setup
Connect to the target database as an administrator, then create one user for reads and one for approved writes:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER cloudthinker_read WITH PASSWORD '';
CREATE USER cloudthinker_write WITH PASSWORD '';
```
Store both passwords securely.
Run these grants in each schema CloudThinker should reach. This example uses `public`:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_read;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_read;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_write;
GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_write;
```
Reapply the grants for new tables, or configure default privileges for the role that creates them.
Grant the read user `VIEWACTIVITY` only when Tony should inspect statements from other sessions:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SYSTEM VIEWACTIVITY TO cloudthinker_read;
```
Without it, schema and data reads still work.
In the [CockroachDB Cloud console](https://cockroachlabs.cloud/), copy the general connection string. Use the same cluster and database with both users:
```text theme={null}
postgresql://cloudthinker_read:PASSWORD@HOST:26257/appdb?sslmode=verify-full
postgresql://cloudthinker_write:PASSWORD@HOST:26257/appdb?sslmode=verify-full
```
URL-encode special characters in each password. Remove local certificate paths that CloudThinker cannot access.
Go to **Connections → CockroachDB** and enter:
* **Connection string**: the `cloudthinker_read` URL
* **Write connection string**: the distinct `cloudthinker_write` URL
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows **Connected** after verification.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Required |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------- |
| **Connection string** | Encrypted PostgreSQL URL for a user limited to `SELECT` and optional `VIEWACTIVITY` | Yes |
| **Write connection string** | Different encrypted PostgreSQL URL for a user limited to `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE` | Yes |
The connection rejects `sslmode=disable`, `allow`, and `prefer`. It also rejects identical read and write URLs.
## Required permissions
| Purpose | Minimum CockroachDB privileges |
| -------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| Database and table discovery | `USAGE` on the schema and `SELECT` on the intended tables |
| Bounded row reads and query plans | `SELECT` on the intended tables |
| Current statements from other sessions | `VIEWACTIVITY` system privilege on the read user |
| Approved row inserts | `INSERT` on the intended tables for the write user |
| Approved row updates | `UPDATE` on the intended tables for the write user |
| Approved row deletes | `DELETE` on the intended tables for the write user |
Neither user needs `admin`, DDL privileges, or unsafe internals. Grant table privileges only where the workspace should operate.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Schema discovery** | List databases and tables, then read columns, indexes, and constraints |
| **Bounded data reads** | Run one read-only `SELECT` with an explicit server-side limit |
| **Query planning** | Run estimated `EXPLAIN` without executing the statement |
| **SQL metadata** | Run bounded `SHOW` statements for indexes and other supported metadata |
| **Cluster inspection** | Report the server build and current statements available to the read user |
| **Row changes** | Insert, update, or delete rows through the write credential after approval |
Queries stop after 30 seconds and return at most 1,000 rows. `EXPLAIN ANALYZE` is unavailable because it executes the statement.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list my CockroachDB databases and the tables in the application database
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report show the schema and indexes for public.orders
@tony #report explain the plan for the bounded order lookup without executing it
@tony #recommend identify running statements that need a closer query-plan review
```
## Write access
CloudThinker exposes only row inserts, updates, and deletes. Each call pauses for approval and uses the write connection string only for that call.
* An `UPDATE` or `DELETE` without a `WHERE` clause is refused.
* The retained tools cannot create, alter, drop, or truncate databases, tables, or indexes.
* Mutation receipts report the action, table, and affected-row count.
* Approval for one mutation does not approve another mutation.
## Troubleshooting
Use `sslmode=require`, `verify-ca`, or `verify-full`. The connection refuses `disable`, `allow`, and `prefer` because they permit an unencrypted or downgraded database socket.
Confirm the username, URL-encoded password, host, port, and database. Copy the CockroachDB Cloud connection string again after a password reset.
Grant schema `USAGE` and the required table privilege. New tables need grants or configured default privileges.
Confirm that the write URL differs from the read URL, the write user holds the exact table privilege, and you approved this specific call. Add a `WHERE` clause to every update or delete.
This is an expected CockroachDB v26 boundary. The connection reports the gap instead of inferring a node count, cluster ID, or user list.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Separate credential lanes** — keep `SELECT` on the read user and row-mutation privileges on the write user. Never grant both sets to one connection string.
- **Verified TLS** — prefer `sslmode=verify-full` and a hostname that matches the server certificate.
## Related
Connect another PostgreSQL-compatible database with a dedicated user
Control how agent write tools request approval
# DigitalOcean
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/digitalocean
Connect DigitalOcean to CloudThinker for Droplet and app inventory, database and Kubernetes drilldowns, exposure review, and billing context
Connect your DigitalOcean account to enable CloudThinker agents to inventory Droplets, apps, databases, Kubernetes clusters, and volumes, review firewalls and load balancers for exposure, check uptime and alert policies, and answer questions about your balance and invoices.
DigitalOcean authenticates with a **personal access token**. The connection is read-only apart from creating and deleting an empty VPC, and the agent confirms each of those with you before it runs.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **DigitalOcean account** with access to the resources you want to investigate.
* A **personal access token** with read access to those resources, including `account:read`.
* Permission to create tokens for the team that owns them.
Issue a read-only token unless you want the agent to manage VPCs. The token's scope is the durable boundary — CloudThinker cannot exceed what the token allows.
***
## Setup
Go to [**Applications & API → Tokens**](https://cloud.digitalocean.com/account/api/tokens) in the DigitalOcean Control Panel and click **Generate New Token** under **Personal access tokens**:
* **Token name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Expiration**: choose a lifetime and plan to rotate
* **Scopes**: pick **Read Only** for the full read surface, or **Custom Scopes** to narrow it
Copy the token immediately — DigitalOcean shows the secret only once.
Navigate to **Connections → DigitalOcean** and enter:
* **API token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads your account to verify the token, then shows a **Connected** status with your account state and resource limits.
Copy the personal access token immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new token if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **DIGITALOCEAN\_API\_TOKEN** | Personal access token with read access to the resources CloudThinker should inspect | — |
***
## Required permissions
**Read Only** is the simplest choice: it grants `api:read`, which covers every read the connection makes and keeps covering new endpoints as DigitalOcean adds them. To narrow further, use **Custom Scopes** and pick from:
| Scope | Covers |
| ----------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `account:read` | Account status and limits — **required**, CloudThinker reads the account to verify the token at connect time |
| `billing:read` | Balance, billing history, and invoices |
| `droplet:read` | Droplet inventory and drilldown |
| `app:read` | App Platform inventory and deployment status |
| `database:read` | Managed database clusters |
| `kubernetes:read` | Clusters and node pools |
| `vpc:read` `firewall:read` `load_balancer:read` | Networking inventory and exposure review |
| `monitoring:read` `uptime:read` | Alert policies and uptime checks |
| `block_storage:read` | Block volumes |
Add `vpc:create` and `vpc:delete` only if you want the agent to manage VPCs. Without them the token cannot write at all, whatever else is configured.
Scopes cannot be edited after a token is created — narrowing or widening access means generating a new token and reconnecting. Set an expiration and rotate on the same schedule as your other credentials.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your DigitalOcean account and infrastructure.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account & billing** | Account status and limits, current balance, billing history, and invoice summaries |
| **Compute** | Droplet inventory and single-Droplet drilldown |
| **Apps** | App Platform inventory, per-app detail, and active deployment status |
| **Databases** | Managed database cluster inventory and drilldown — engine, version, region, size, nodes, status |
| **Kubernetes** | Cluster inventory, cluster detail, and node pools |
| **Networking** | VPCs, firewalls, load balancers, and region availability |
| **Monitoring** | Alert policies, uptime checks, and uptime check state |
| **Storage** | Block volume inventory |
| **VPC lifecycle** | Create and delete an **empty** VPC — **requires approval** |
Creating and deleting a VPC each need their own confirmation: approving a create is not approval for a delete, and a rejection is final. Some read operations also ask for approval — DigitalOcean marks several database, Kubernetes, firewall, load balancer, and VPC reads as potentially destructive, and CloudThinker honors that label rather than overriding it.
Agents report what a bounded page returned plus whether more exists, never a total — a "10 Droplets" answer means ten were read, not that you own ten. Ask for a wider window when you need the full picture. Kubernetes credentials and database connection strings are never retrievable through this connection.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the DigitalOcean connection and summarize my account status and resources
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex inventory my DigitalOcean Droplets, apps, and databases and #report as a table
@alex review my DigitalOcean firewalls and load balancers for exposed services and #recommend fixes
@alex show my DigitalOcean balance and recent invoices and #report where spend is going
```
***
## Troubleshooting
DigitalOcean rejected the token with a 401. Generate a fresh token in the DigitalOcean control panel and reconnect.
The token is valid but lacks the account scope CloudThinker verifies at connect time. Reissue it with `account:read` included, then reconnect.
The token's scopes don't cover those resource types, or they belong to another team. Reissue the token from the owning team with read access to the resource types you want, and reconnect.
The ID is stale or belongs to another team. Ask the agent to list the resources again and work from the IDs it returns.
DigitalOcean answered 429. Wait and retry, and scope requests to one resource type or a smaller window so the agent makes fewer calls per run.
DigitalOcean did not answer in time, or its API is temporarily down. Retry the connection; if it persists, check DigitalOcean's status page before reissuing the token.
VPC creates and deletes need explicit approval in the same turn. Approve the action when prompted — a rejected call is final and the agent will not retry it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Read-only by default** — issue a token without write scope unless you want VPC management; the token, not a setting, is what makes writes impossible.
- **Set token expiration** — choose an expiration when creating the token and plan to rotate it; DigitalOcean tokens do not auto-rotate.
***
## Related
Connect a cluster directly for workload-level operations
How approval-gated actions work
# Elasticsearch
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/elasticsearch
Connect Elasticsearch to CloudThinker for log analysis, index management, and search performance optimization
Connect your Elasticsearch clusters to enable CloudThinker agents to search logs, analyze observability data, and investigate incidents.
Elasticsearch authenticates with an **API key** scoped to specific indices and cluster permissions.
***
## Prerequisites
* An **Elasticsearch** (7.x, 8.x), **OpenSearch** (1.x, 2.x), **AWS OpenSearch Service**, or **Elastic Cloud** cluster reachable from CloudThinker.
* Admin access to Kibana (**Stack Management → Security → API Keys**) or the Elasticsearch API to create an API key.
* The cluster endpoint URL.
***
## Setup
Navigate to your Kibana instance and sign in with admin access.
Go to **Stack Management → Security → API Keys**.
Click **Create API key** and enter:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker-readonly`
Add role descriptors for read-only access (see [Required permissions](#required-permissions) for the full JSON). At minimum, grant `monitor` on the cluster and `read` + `view_index_metadata` on the index patterns you need.
Click **Create API key** and immediately copy the encoded key — Elasticsearch will not show it again.
Copy your Elasticsearch endpoint:
* Self-hosted: `https://elasticsearch.your-domain.com:9200`
* Elastic Cloud: found in deployment settings
* AWS OpenSearch: domain endpoint from the AWS console
Navigate to **Connections → Elasticsearch** and enter:
* **Cluster URL**: your Elasticsearch endpoint
* **API Key**: the encoded key you copied
* **Index patterns**: patterns to access (e.g., `logs-*`)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API key immediately after creation. Elasticsearch will not show it again, and you'll need to create a new key if lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| **ES\_URL** | Elasticsearch cluster URL | `https://your-cluster.es.region.cloud.es.io:9243` |
| **ES\_API\_KEY** | Base64-encoded API key | `VnVhQk...` |
Common index patterns to configure:
| Pattern | Use case |
| -------------- | ---------------------------- |
| `logs-*` | Application logs |
| `filebeat-*` | Filebeat-collected logs |
| `metricbeat-*` | Infrastructure metrics |
| `apm-*` | Application performance data |
| `kubernetes-*` | Kubernetes cluster logs |
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum
```json theme={null}
{
"cluster": ["monitor"],
"indices": [
{
"names": ["logs-*", "metrics-*"],
"privileges": ["read"]
}
]
}
```
### Recommended
```json theme={null}
{
"cluster": ["monitor", "read_ilm"],
"indices": [
{
"names": ["*"],
"privileges": ["read", "view_index_metadata"]
}
]
}
```
Grant only `read` privileges on the index patterns CloudThinker needs. Never grant `write` or cluster-admin permissions to the CloudThinker API key.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| **Log search** | Search application and infrastructure logs |
| **Error analysis** | Find error patterns and anomalies |
| **Incident investigation** | Correlate events across services |
| **Metrics query** | Query stored metrics data |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@oliver search Elasticsearch for application errors in the last hour
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver search logs for authentication failures in the last 24 hours
@alex find error patterns in application logs for the api-gateway service
@kai search for pod crash events in Kubernetes logs
```
***
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the cluster URL is correct and accessible from CloudThinker.
* Check that firewall rules allow CloudThinker's egress IPs.
* For AWS OpenSearch, enable public access or configure a VPC endpoint.
* Confirm Elasticsearch is running and accepting requests.
* Verify the API key is correct and has not expired.
* Confirm the key has the required index and cluster permissions.
* For AWS OpenSearch, verify the IAM role or access policy is correctly configured.
* Navigate to **Stack Management → Security → API Keys**.
* Create a new key with the same permissions.
* Update the key in CloudThinker connection settings.
* Verify index patterns match existing indices in the cluster.
* Check the API key has `read` permission on those indices.
* Ensure the indices contain data in the requested time range.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **API key rotation** — rotate API keys every 90 days; set an expiration date when creating the key
- **Limited indices** — restrict the key to the index patterns CloudThinker actually needs rather than granting access to `*`
***
## Related
Security log analysis
Visualize Elasticsearch data
# Firebase
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/firebase
Connect Firebase to CloudThinker for project and app inventory, SDK config lookup, and Firestore/Storage security-rule audits
Connect your Firebase project to enable CloudThinker agents to inventory projects and apps, read SDK configuration, audit Firestore, Storage, and Realtime Database security rules, review deploy state, search Firebase documentation, and run approval-gated controls like creating apps or deploying.
Firebase authenticates with a **Google Cloud service-account key** (a JSON file). The service account's **IAM roles** determine what the agent can reach — grant read-only Firebase roles for audits and broader roles only if you need writes or deploys.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Firebase project** you want CloudThinker to inspect.
* A **service-account key (JSON)** for that project.
* Permission to create service-account keys and assign IAM roles in the project's Google Cloud.
The service-account JSON is a full credential. Scope its IAM roles to least privilege — a viewer-level Firebase role is enough for inventory and rule audits.
***
## Setup
In the [Firebase Console](https://console.firebase.google.com), pick your project, then click the **Settings** (gear) icon in the sidebar to open **Project settings**. Open the **Service accounts** tab in the top bar, click **Generate new private key**, and confirm with **Generate key** to download the JSON key file.
In **Google Cloud Console → IAM**, give the service account only the roles CloudThinker needs — a **Viewer** / **Firebase Viewer** role for read-only audits, or a Firebase admin role if you want approval-gated writes and deploys.
Navigate to **Connections → Firebase** and add the credential:
* **Service Account Key (JSON)**: drag the downloaded `.json` key file onto the upload area — or click it to browse and pick the file
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads the key, sets the active project from it, and shows a **Connected** status.
Treat the downloaded JSON like a password. Store it in a secret manager and delete the local copy after uploading it to CloudThinker.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **GOOGLE\_SERVICE\_ACCOUNT\_KEY** | Full Google Cloud service-account key JSON. CloudThinker reads its `project_id` to set the active Firebase project automatically. | `{ "type": "service_account", "project_id": "my-app", ... }` |
CloudThinker resolves the active project from the key's `project_id`, so no separate project ID or config file is required.
***
## Required permissions
Read operations (project, app, SDK config, and security-rule inspection) work with a **viewer-level** Firebase/GCP role. Control operations — creating projects or apps, initializing features, switching the active project, and deploying — additionally require a role that permits them **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: grant a read-only Firebase role for audits and reserve write-capable roles for when you actually need them. Keep control operations approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Firebase project, apps, and rules.
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Projects & Apps** | List accessible projects, inspect the active project, and list iOS, Android, and Web apps |
| **SDK Configuration** | Read a platform or app's Firebase SDK config |
| **Security Rules** | Read Firestore, Storage, and Realtime Database rules to audit access |
| **Deploy State** | Review deployment status |
| **Firebase Docs** | Search official Firebase and Google developer documentation |
| **Project & App Controls** | Create projects, apps, and Android SHA keys, initialize features, switch the active project, and deploy — **requires approval** |
Create, initialize, deploy, and project-switch actions are approval-gated. CloudThinker requests confirmation before running them; read-only operations run without approval.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex show my Firebase environment and list the projects I can access
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex review the current Firestore and Storage security rules, flag any that allow unauthenticated writes, and #recommend tighter definitions
@alex list all Firebase projects and the apps registered in the active project and #report as a table
@alex show the Firebase SDK config for my web app
```
If multiple projects are accessible and none is active, name the project in your prompt so the agent scopes to the right one.
***
## Troubleshooting
The service-account JSON is invalid, incomplete, or was pasted with missing characters. Generate a fresh private key in Firebase Console and reconnect.
CloudThinker sets the active project from the key's `project_id`. If the key has no `project_id` or several projects are accessible, the agent lists them and asks which to use — name the project to continue.
The service account lacks the Firebase/GCP IAM role for that product. Grant the appropriate role in Google Cloud IAM and reconnect.
Create, initialize, and deploy require both an IAM role that permits the action and explicit approval in CloudThinker. Approve the action when prompted, and confirm the service account's roles allow it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Approval for controls** — keep create, initialize, and deploy actions approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
- **Protect the key** — the service-account JSON is a full credential; never commit it to source control or share it in plain text.
***
## Related
Connect Google Cloud Platform
How approval-gated actions work
# Flespi
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/flespi
Connect Flespi IoT telematics to CloudThinker for GPS device management, fleet telemetry, and IoT data analysis
Connect your Flespi account to enable CloudThinker agents to manage GPS devices, monitor telemetry, inspect channels and streams, and operate fleet infrastructure through the Flespi MCP server.
Flespi authenticates with an **API token** (Standard or ACL type) generated in the Flespi panel.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| **Flespi Free** | 1,000 AI credits/month |
| **Flespi Commercial** | 1,000 AI credits/month + paid overage |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Flespi account** at [flespi.io](https://flespi.io/#/).
* Access to the Flespi panel to create and manage API tokens.
* For production workloads, an ACL token with permissions scoped to the modules CloudThinker needs.
***
## Setup
CloudThinker connects to Flespi via their official MCP server using a Flespi API token.
Sign up at [flespi.io](https://flespi.io/#/) if you don't have an account.
In the flespi panel, navigate to **Tokens** in the left menu and click the **"+"** button:
* **Name**: `CloudThinker Agent`
* **Type**: Standard (development) or ACL (production)
* **TTL**: Set expiration — e.g., `7776000` (90 days). Flespi requires all tokens to have a TTL or expiration date.
Copy the 64-byte token immediately.
Navigate to **Connections → Flespi** and enter the token you just generated.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token and shows a **Connected** status.
Flespi uses `FlespiToken` — not `Bearer` — as the authorization prefix. CloudThinker handles this automatically, but keep it in mind if debugging API calls manually.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------- | --------------------------- | ------------- |
| **Flespi Token** | Flespi API token (64 bytes) | `7Bf3...xK9z` |
***
## Required permissions
### Token types
| Type | Access level | When to use |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| **Standard** | Full CRUD on all Telematics entities (devices, channels, streams, plugins, geofences, calculators) | Development and testing |
| **ACL** | Granular — deny-all by default, grant per module/method/item | **Production recommended** |
| **Master** | Full admin including platform APIs | **Never use with AI agents** |
### Token expiration
Flespi **requires** all tokens to expire. Set at least one:
* **`ttl`** — seconds of inactivity before expiration (resets on each API call)
* **`expire`** — Unix timestamp for hard expiration
For long-running integrations, use `ttl` (e.g., 7776000 = 90 days). The timer resets on every API call, so active tokens won't expire unexpectedly.
### Recommended ACL permissions (production)
**Read-only (minimum):**
| Module | Methods | Purpose |
| ---------------- | ------- | ---------------------------------------- |
| `gw/devices` | GET | Device list, status, telemetry, messages |
| `gw/channels` | GET | Channel list, configuration, status |
| `gw/streams` | GET | Stream list, health, delivery stats |
| `gw/calculators` | GET | Calculator configurations |
| `ai` | POST | Required for MCP tool calls |
**Read-write (if write operations needed):**
| Module | Methods | Purpose |
| ------------- | ---------------------- | ---------------------- |
| `gw/devices` | GET, POST, PUT | Create/update devices |
| `gw/channels` | GET, POST, PUT | Create/update channels |
| `gw/streams` | GET, POST, PUT, DELETE | Full stream management |
ACL tokens deny everything by default. Only explicitly granted permissions are allowed. A token with POST on `gw/devices` will **not** have GET unless also granted.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Device management** | List devices, view status, read telemetry and message history |
| **Channel monitoring** | Inspect channel configuration, status, and connected protocols |
| **Stream health** | Monitor stream delivery stats and health |
| **Fleet telemetry** | Query GPS positions, speed, fuel, and sensor data across devices |
| **Geofences** | View and manage geofence zones and triggers |
| **Calculators** | Inspect calculator configurations for trip detection, fuel consumption, etc. |
### Available MCP tools
**Free tools (0 credits):**
| Tool | Description |
| -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| `search-api-methods` | Discover flespi REST API methods by natural language query |
| `get-api-schema` | Retrieve full Swagger schema for a specific API method |
| `flespi-api-read` | Execute a read-only GET request to the flespi REST API |
| `flespi-api-write` | Execute a write operation (POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE) |
**Paid tools:**
| Tool | Credits | Description |
| ----------------------------- | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `search-flespi-documentation` | 5 | Search flespi platform documentation |
| `search-device-documentation` | 10 | Search device/protocol manufacturer docs |
| `generate-flespi-expression` | 2 | Generate flespi expressions for selectors, calculators |
| `generate-pvm-code` | 10 | Generate PVM (Protocol Virtual Machine) code |
| `consult-flespi-account` | 30 | Delegate complex analysis to flespi AI expert with account read access |
### AI credits
| Plan | Free credits/month | Overage |
| ---------- | ------------------ | ----------------------------- |
| Free | 1,000 | Blocked until next month |
| Commercial | 1,000 | €1 per 100 additional credits |
Monitor usage via the **AI tile** in the flespi panel, the `GET /ai/logs` API, or MQTT topic `flespi/log/ai/#`.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all Flespi devices and report their last known positions
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex check stream health and identify any delivery failures
@alex query telemetry for device 12345 over the last 24 hours
@alex list geofences and check which devices are inside zone "warehouse-01"
```
***
## Troubleshooting
* Token may have expired — check TTL and expiration settings in the flespi panel.
* Create a new token and update the connection in CloudThinker.
* Expired tokens are **automatically deleted** by flespi.
* Your ACL token lacks the required module + HTTP method combination.
* Update the token ACL to grant the needed permission.
* Remember: ACL is deny-all by default — each permission must be explicitly granted.
* Monthly AI credits are exhausted.
* Free plan: wait for next month. Commercial plan: check overage settings.
* Monitor credit usage via `GET /ai/logs` or event code `1710`.
* flespi calculates combined API + MQTT + traffic usage per minute.
* Reduce request frequency or batch operations.
* The highest-usage token gets blocked first; other tokens continue working.
* IP whitelist is configured on the token but your server IP is not included.
* Update the token's IP whitelist in flespi panel: **Token settings → IPs whitelist**.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated token** — create a separate token for CloudThinker; never share it across integrations or use a Master token
- **ACL for production** — use ACL tokens with only the minimum required permissions; ACL tokens are deny-all by default
***
## Related
Custom MCP integrations
Container orchestration for IoT workloads
# Fly.io
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/flyio
Connect Fly.io to CloudThinker for read-only app, machine, volume, and region inventory across an organization
Connect your Fly.io organization to enable CloudThinker agents to inventory apps, check machine run state and placement, and audit volume provisioning during an incident or a capacity review.
Fly.io authenticates with a **read-only organization token**. The connection is read-only end to end: CloudThinker exposes no Fly.io action that changes your infrastructure, and Fly itself refuses to mutate anything with this token.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Fly.io organization** containing the apps you want to inspect.
* The **flyctl** CLI installed and signed in as a member of that organization.
* A **read-only organization token** created from it.
A read-only token reads a single organization. If your apps span several organizations, create one token per organization and add one connection for each.
***
## Setup
Run this in your terminal:
```bash theme={null}
fly tokens create readonly --name cloudthinker --expiry 720h
```
`720h` is 30 days. Pass `--expiry` deliberately: Fly.io tokens are valid for **20 years** by default, and Fly's own guidance is to use a shorter lifetime when practical.
If you belong to more than one organization, name the one you want with `--org `.
Copy the token the command prints.
Navigate to **Connections → Fly.io** and enter:
* **Access token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token against Fly.io and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the token when the command prints it. If you lose it, revoke that token and create a new one rather than trying to recover the value.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------- |
| **FLY\_ACCESS\_TOKEN** | Read-only Fly.io organization token for the organization CloudThinker should inspect | — |
CloudThinker resolves the organization from the token, so there is no organization slug or region to configure.
***
## Required permissions
The token type *is* the permission model. `fly tokens create readonly` produces a token limited to reading a single organization and its resources — it cannot deploy, scale, restart, or destroy anything, and no additional scoping is needed or available.
Do not substitute `fly tokens create org` or a personal auth token. Both grant write access to your organization. The connection does not need it, and a read-only token is the barrier that makes an accidental change impossible at the provider rather than merely disallowed in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: keep the read-only token type, set a short `--expiry`, and revoke the token when the work it was created for is finished.
***
## What this connection cannot reach
This connection reads the Fly.io control plane and nothing else. It cannot:
* **Change anything** — no deploys, scaling, machine start/stop/restart, volume changes, secrets, or app creation and destruction. When a fix needs a write, the agent reports the `fly` command for you to run yourself.
* **Read logs or metrics** — there is no log tail and no application telemetry here.
* **Read secrets or configuration** — app secrets and environment values are never fetched.
* **Measure disk usage** — volume size is provisioned capacity, never used capacity. Nothing reads a filesystem.
* **Report cost** — Fly bills provisioned volume capacity, but the rate is not readable through this connection, so agents report GB and never a dollar figure.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Fly.io organization, apps, machines, volumes, and regions.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Organizations** | List the organizations the token can read, by slug and name |
| **Apps** | List apps with their status, owning organization, and whether they are deployed |
| **Machines** | Per app, list machine ID, name, state, region, and last update, with a count of each state, how many are not started, and how many regions are in use |
| **Volumes** | Per app, list volume ID, name, size, region, state, attachment, and encryption, with unattached volume and GB totals and total provisioned GB |
| **Regions** | Count the regions available for placement, excluding deprecated ones |
There are no approval-gated actions on this connection, because there are no actions. Every capability above is a read.
### How to read the results
App `status` and machine `state` are Fly.io control-plane records, not application health checks. Three consequences are worth knowing before you act on a report:
* A `started` machine is not proof that your app works. This connection does not check whether your app responds.
* A `stopped` machine is not a fault. Fly stops machines that have autostop configured.
* An unattached volume is still costing you. Fly charges for a volume whether or not a Machine is attached, and a volume becomes unattached only when its Machine is **destroyed**, not when it is stopped.
An app with no machines has never been deployed. A pending or not-deployed app is a reserved name, not a failure.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the Fly.io connection and list my organizations and apps
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Fly.io apps with their status and deployment state and #report as a table
@alex is my Fly.io app healthy — show the machine states and regions and #recommend what to check next
@alex audit Fly.io volumes for my app and #report unattached volumes and total provisioned GB
@alex which regions are my Fly.io machines running in, and how many regions could I place in
```
Lists are capped by default and say how many rows they hid. Ask for a wider view when you need one.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is missing, invalid, or expired. Reissue it with `fly tokens create readonly` and update the connection.
The app name is wrong, or it belongs to an organization this token cannot read. Ask the agent to list your apps first and use a name from that list.
The read-only token does not cover that resource. Confirm the token was created for the organization that owns the app, and that its expiry has not passed.
A call was refused or unavailable, so the agent reports the gap instead of a number. This is not the same as a count of zero — treat that section as unknown rather than empty.
Expected. This connection is read-only by design. Ask the agent for the exact `fly` command and run it yourself.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Read-only at the provider** — the token type Fly.io issues here cannot make changes, so the guarantee holds even if something asks it to.
- **Set a short expiry** — Fly.io defaults tokens to 20 years. Always pass `--expiry`, and treat the default as a mistake rather than a convenience.
- **Revoke when finished** — `fly tokens revoke ` invalidates it. The Fly.io dashboard also lists organization tokens: choose the organization from the dropdown, then click **Tokens**.
- **One organization per token** — a read-only token reads one organization, which keeps the blast radius of a leaked token to that organization alone.
***
## Related
Similar setup for another application hosting platform
Another read-only inventory and health connection
# Google Cloud
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/gcp
Connect Google Cloud to CloudThinker for resource management, cost optimization, and security monitoring via service account
Connect your GCP projects to enable CloudThinker agents to analyze costs, optimize resources, audit security, and manage infrastructure across Google Cloud services.
GCP authenticates with a **service-account key** (a JSON file); the service account's IAM roles determine what each agent can reach.
***
## Prerequisites
* A GCP project with IAM administrator access.
* Permission to create service accounts and assign IAM roles in the project.
* The [Google Cloud Console](https://console.cloud.google.com/) accessible in your browser.
A viewer-level service account is sufficient for cost analysis, security audits, and resource inspection. Widen the roles only if you need write capabilities.
***
## Setup
In the [Google Cloud Console](https://console.cloud.google.com/), select your project and navigate to **IAM & Admin → Service accounts**. Click **Create Service Account** and enter:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker-readonly`
* **Description**: Read-only access for CloudThinker monitoring
Grant the required viewer roles:
* `Viewer` (basic read access)
* `Monitoring Viewer` (for monitoring data)
* `Security Reviewer` (for security analysis)
Click on the created service account from the list, go to **Keys** tab → **Add key** → **Create new key**, select **JSON** format, and click **Create**. Download the key file and store it securely.
Navigate to **Connections → GCP** and upload the JSON key file (or paste its contents). Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Store the JSON key file securely. Never commit it to version control or share it publicly.
### Multi-project setup
For organizations with multiple GCP projects:
Grant the service account roles at the organization or folder level so it can reach all target projects.
Add **Billing Account Viewer** for cross-project cost analysis.
CloudThinker automatically discovers accessible projects after connecting.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Service Account Key (JSON)** | Full GCP service-account key JSON, uploaded or pasted into the connection dialog | `{"type": "service_account", "project_id": "your-project-id", ...}` |
The key file contains the following structure:
```json theme={null}
{
"type": "service_account",
"project_id": "your-project-id",
"private_key_id": "key-id",
"private_key": "-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----\n...\n-----END PRIVATE KEY-----\n",
"client_email": "cloudthinker-readonly@your-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com",
"client_id": "123456789012345678901",
"auth_uri": "https://accounts.google.com/o/oauth2/auth",
"token_uri": "https://oauth2.googleapis.com/token"
}
```
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read-only analysis)
```
roles/viewer # Basic read access
roles/monitoring.viewer # Cloud Monitoring access
roles/logging.viewer # Cloud Logging access
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```
# All of the above, plus:
roles/compute.viewer # Compute Engine details
roles/container.viewer # GKE cluster access
roles/cloudsql.viewer # Cloud SQL access
roles/bigquery.dataViewer # BigQuery analysis
roles/billing.viewer # Billing and cost data
roles/securitycenter.viewer # Security Command Center
```
Start with the minimum roles and add more only as needed. A viewer role at the project level is sufficient for cost analysis and most security audits.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can analyze and optimize your GCP resources.
| Agent | GCP capabilities |
| ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **[Alex](/guide/agents/alex)** | Cost analysis, VM right-sizing, committed use recommendations, resource optimization |
| **[Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver)** | Security Command Center findings, IAM audits, compliance checks |
| **[Tony](/guide/agents/tony)** | Cloud SQL performance, BigQuery optimization, Spanner tuning |
| **[Kai](/guide/agents/kai)** | GKE cluster management, workload optimization, Autopilot analysis |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run a GCP account check and list connected projects and active services
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex analyze Compute Engine costs over the last 30 days and #recommend right-sizing opportunities
@oliver audit GCP IAM bindings and flag any over-permissioned service accounts
@kai inspect GKE cluster health and #report any pod failures or resource pressure
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the service account has the required roles. Check project-level IAM bindings, ensure APIs are enabled (Compute, Monitoring, etc.), and confirm the JSON key is valid and not expired.
Verify the JSON file is complete and properly formatted. Check that the private key hasn't been truncated and that no extra whitespace or characters were added. Try regenerating the key from GCP Console.
Verify **Billing Account Viewer** role is assigned. Enable the Cloud Billing API and check that billing export to BigQuery is configured.
Ensure **Kubernetes Engine Viewer** role is assigned. Verify the cluster is in an accessible project and check if the cluster uses Workload Identity.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Project scope** — limit the service account's IAM roles to only the GCP projects CloudThinker needs to access.
- **Key storage** — store the service-account JSON in a secret manager and delete local copies after uploading to CloudThinker.
***
## Related
Connect Amazon Web Services
Kubernetes-focused agent for GKE
# Grafana
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/grafana
Connect Grafana to CloudThinker for dashboard integration, metric analysis, and unified observability
Connect your Grafana instance to enable CloudThinker agents to access dashboards, query metrics, and reference visualizations during analysis.
Grafana authenticates with a **service account token** scoped to the Viewer role.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ---------------------- | ------------ |
| **Grafana OSS** | 9.x, 10.x |
| **Grafana Enterprise** | All versions |
| **Grafana Cloud** | All tiers |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Grafana instance** (OSS, Enterprise, or Cloud) reachable from CloudThinker.
* Admin access to create a service account under **Administration → Users and access → Service Accounts**.
* The Grafana instance URL.
***
## Setup
Navigate to your Grafana instance and sign in with admin access.
Go to **Administration → Users and access → Service Accounts**.
Click **Add service account** and enter:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker-readonly`
* **Role**: Select **Viewer**
Click **Create** to create the service account.
On the new service account page:
1. Click **Add service account token**
2. Enter a token name (e.g., `cloudthinker-token`)
3. Optionally set an expiration date
4. Click **Generate token**
5. **Immediately copy the token** — it won't be shown again
Navigate to **Connections → Grafana** and enter:
* **Grafana URL**: your instance URL (e.g., `https://grafana.your-domain.com`)
* **Service Account Token**: the token you just copied
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the service account token immediately after generation. Grafana will not show it again, and you'll need to create a new token if lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| **GRAFANA\_URL** | Your Grafana instance URL | `https://your-instance.grafana.net` |
| **GRAFANA\_SERVICE\_ACCOUNT\_TOKEN** | The generated service account token | `glsa_xxxxx...` |
***
## Required permissions
| Role | What it grants |
| ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Viewer** | View dashboards, query data sources, view annotations, access folder contents |
| **Editor** | Viewer permissions, plus create annotations and save dashboard snapshots |
Assign the **Viewer** role for read-only investigation. Only use Editor if you need annotation creation or dashboard snapshots.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| **Dashboard access** | Reference existing dashboards in analysis |
| **Metric queries** | Query data sources through Grafana |
| **Annotation reading** | Access dashboard annotations for context |
| **Alert status** | Check Grafana alerting rules status |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check Grafana for active alert rules and summarize any that are firing
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex check the AWS cost dashboard for anomalies
@kai reference the Kubernetes cluster dashboard for pod health
@tony query database metrics from the Grafana data source
```
### Supported data sources
CloudThinker can query through Grafana's configured data sources:
| Data source | Query support |
| ------------- | ------------------ |
| Prometheus | PromQL queries |
| InfluxDB | InfluxQL / Flux |
| Elasticsearch | Lucene / KQL |
| CloudWatch | CloudWatch metrics |
| Loki | LogQL queries |
***
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the Grafana URL is accessible from CloudThinker.
* Check the SSL certificate is valid.
* Ensure no proxy is blocking the connection.
* Confirm Grafana is running and reachable.
* Verify the service account token is correct.
* Check the token has not expired.
* Ensure the service account is active.
* Confirm no IP restrictions are set on the account.
* Navigate to **Administration → Service Accounts**.
* Select the CloudThinker service account.
* Generate a new token.
* Update the token in CloudThinker connection settings.
* Verify the service account has the Viewer role.
* Check folder permissions include the service account.
* Ensure the dashboards are not in restricted folders.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Viewer role only** — never grant Editor or Admin roles to the CloudThinker service account
- **Token expiration** — set an expiration date and rotate the service account token every 90 days
***
## Related
Connect log data source
Connect CloudWatch metrics
# GreenNode
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/greennode
Connect GreenNode to inspect IAM, VKS, vLB, vMonitor, and vServer resources and run approved VKS or vServer changes
Connect GreenNode to inspect IAM, VKS, vLB, vMonitor, and vServer resources. CloudThinker can update VKS metadata or start, stop, and reboot a vServer after you approve the change.
## Prerequisites
* A GreenNode client ID and client secret from a service account.
* The GreenNode region containing the resources you want to read: **HCM-3** or **HAN**.
* A project ID for vLB or vServer reads.
* A portal user ID for vServer and block-volume reads or actions.
VKS reads work with **Client ID**, **Client secret**, and **Default region**. vServer and block-volume reads require both **Portal User ID** and **Project ID**. GreenNode does not auto-detect a project.
## Setup
Open [GreenNode IAM → Service accounts](https://iam.console.greennode.ai/service-accounts), then:
1. Click **Create a Service account**.
2. Enter a name, such as `cloudthinker`.
3. In the scope picker, search for `vserver` and select the vServer scopes you need.
4. Click **Create Service account** in the upper-right corner.
5. Copy the generated **Client ID** and **Client secret**.
Open the [GreenNode dashboard](https://dashboard.console.greennode.ai/). In the upper-right corner, click your avatar, then hover over the **Currently signed in as** card.
The card shows two values:
* **Account email:** `alice@gmail.com`
* **Account ID:** `123456`
Copy the numeric **Account ID** into CloudThinker's **Portal User ID** field. Do not use the account email.
In the GreenNode dashboard, open **vServer**, then open **Limit**. Copy **User Project ID** for the project you want CloudThinker to access.
In CloudThinker, open **Connections**, choose **GreenNode**, and enter the values in the order below. Click **Connect** and wait for the connection to show **Connected**.
## Connection details
| Field | Required | Description |
| ------------------ | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Client ID** | Yes | Service-account client ID. |
| **Client secret** | Yes | Secret for the client ID. |
| **Portal User ID** | Optional | Required with Project ID for vServer and block-volume reads or actions. Use a positive numeric value. |
| **Default region** | Yes | Select **HCM-3** or **HAN**. |
| **Project ID** | Optional | Required for vLB reads. vServer and block-volume operations also require Portal User ID. |
The connection does not auto-detect a project. Enter **Project ID** for vLB reads, and enter both IDs for vServer and block-volume operations.
## Required permissions
Use a service account with access to the GreenNode resources you want CloudThinker to inspect or manage. The available provider documentation does not specify the exact roles or scopes for each resource type.
Use credentials limited to the resources this connection needs. CloudThinker asks for approval before every provider change.
## Agent capabilities
| Capability | Required fields |
| ------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **VKS cluster reads** | Client ID, Client secret, and Default region |
| **IAM and vMonitor reads** | Client ID, Client secret, and Default region |
| **vLB reads** | Client ID, Client secret, Default region, and Project ID |
| **vServer and block-volume reads** | Client ID, Client secret, Portal User ID, Default region, and Project ID |
| **Approved VKS metadata changes** | Client ID, Client secret, and Default region |
| **Approved vServer start, stop, or reboot** | Client ID, Client secret, Portal User ID, Default region, and Project ID |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list the resources available through my GreenNode connection
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list the resources available through my GreenNode connection
@alex #report list resources in my configured GreenNode project
@alex #report stop the GreenNode server I just identified, and ask me before changing it
```
## Troubleshooting
Enter both **Client ID** and **Client secret**, then reconnect.
Choose **HCM-3** or **HAN** for **Default region**, then reconnect.
Enter **Project ID**, then reconnect.
Enter both **Portal User ID** and **Project ID**, then reconnect.
Confirm that **Project ID** identifies the project you want to inspect. GreenNode does not auto-detect a project.
Use a positive numeric value for **Portal User ID**.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
## Related
See all available provider connections.
Connect a Kubernetes cluster directly for workload-level operations.
# Heroku
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/heroku
Connect Heroku to CloudThinker for app and dyno inventory, log triage, add-on and pipeline review, and approval-gated platform controls
Connect your Heroku account to enable CloudThinker agents to inventory apps and dynos, read app logs, review add-ons and their plans, and inspect teams, private spaces, and pipeline stages — plus approval-gated changes like restarting dynos, toggling maintenance mode, scaling, and promoting a pipeline stage.
Heroku authenticates with an **API token**. The token carries the same access as the Heroku user who created it, so that user's team and app membership is what defines the agent's reach. No OAuth flow is required.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Heroku account** with access to the apps, teams, and pipelines you want to investigate.
* An **API token** created from that account.
* The Heroku CLI installed, if you use the recommended token path.
There is no way to scope a Heroku token to a subset of apps. Least privilege comes from the account you create the token with, not from the token itself — see [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
***
## Setup
Run this in the Heroku CLI, signed in as the account CloudThinker should use:
```bash theme={null}
heroku authorizations:create -d cloudthinker
```
Copy the value printed as `Token`. It begins with `HRKU-`.
The token is created with `global` scope and does not expire unless you set `--expires-in `. Use `heroku authorizations:revoke ` to invalidate it later.
Navigate to **Connections → Heroku** and enter:
* **API token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token against Heroku and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the token when the command prints it. If you lose it, revoke that authorization and create a new one rather than trying to recover the value.
The Heroku Dashboard also exposes an account-level **API Key** under **Account Settings**. Heroku revokes that key whenever your account password changes, so it is a poor fit for a long-lived connection. Prefer the CLI authorization above.
If your account signs in through SSO, Heroku will not let it create a non-expiring token. Heroku's own guidance is to keep a separate non-SSO user for integration tokens.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- |
| **HEROKU\_API\_KEY** | Heroku API token for the account whose apps, teams, and pipelines CloudThinker should reach | `HRKU-...` |
***
## Required permissions
Create the token from a Heroku account that belongs to only the teams CloudThinker should reach, then give that account the smallest app role that covers what you want the agent to do.
| Heroku app role | What CloudThinker can do with it |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **View** | App, dyno, add-on, team, private space, and pipeline inventory |
| **Operate** | Everything above, plus reading app logs, restarting dynos, maintenance mode, scaling, and provisioning paid add-ons |
| **Manage** | Not required by this connection |
Reading app logs requires **Operate**. A **View**-only account connects successfully and can list apps, but every log request fails.
Use the `global` token scope. Heroku's narrower scopes — `read`, `write`, `read-protected`, and `write-protected` — all exclude account information, and Heroku cannot resolve the token's own account without it, so app and pipeline lookups fail. See [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting).
Follow least privilege: create the token from a dedicated Heroku user rather than an account owner, keep that user out of teams the agent does not need, and rotate the token on the same schedule as your other credentials.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Heroku apps, dynos, add-ons, teams, and pipelines.
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Apps** | List apps and inspect a single app's region, stack, and current release state |
| **Logs** | Read recent app logs for error and crash triage |
| **Dynos** | List the dyno formation and the state of each running process |
| **Add-ons** | Inventory the add-ons attached to an app, inspect one, and browse available add-on services and their plans |
| **Teams & Private Spaces** | List the teams and private spaces the account can reach |
| **Pipelines** | List pipelines and inspect their stages and the apps in each |
| **Changes** | Restart dynos, turn maintenance mode on and off, scale the dyno formation, create an add-on, create a pipeline, and promote a pipeline stage — **requires approval** |
Every Heroku operation that is not a read is approval-gated. CloudThinker states the effect and the exact inputs, then waits for your confirmation before running it. Approving one change is not approval for the next one, or for the same change on a different app.
Three of the approval-gated changes are not free or not reversible in one step. Scaling the dyno formation and creating an add-on both change what Heroku bills you, and promoting a pipeline stage is a production release that no single call undoes. Read the inputs before you approve.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the Heroku connection and list my apps with their dyno formation
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Heroku apps with their stack, region, and current dyno formation and #report as a table
@alex my Heroku app is throwing errors — pull the recent logs, find the cause, and #recommend a fix
@alex audit the add-ons across my Heroku apps and #report which plans we are paying for
@alex show my Heroku pipelines and which app sits in each stage
```
For accounts with many apps, name the app or the pipeline in your prompt so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Write access
Restarts and maintenance mode are reversible in one step: a restart replaces dynos with the same formation, and maintenance mode is a switch the paired action clears.
Scaling, add-on creation, and pipeline promotion are not. Each one is recoverable only by a second deliberate action, and two of them change your bill. CloudThinker asks for approval on every one of them, one call at a time.
Database operations are outside this connection entirely. No agent tool reads Heroku Postgres credentials, runs SQL against your databases, or reads config vars. If you need query access to a Heroku Postgres database, add a [PostgreSQL connection](/guide/connections/postgresql) with its own credentials.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is missing, expired, or revoked. Create a fresh authorization with `heroku authorizations:create` and reconnect. If you used the Dashboard API Key, check whether the account password changed — Heroku revokes that key when it does.
The token's account is not a member of that app or team, or its app role is too low. Add the account to the team, or raise its app role to **Operate** for logs and dyno actions.
The token cannot read its own account, so Heroku cannot resolve which apps and pipelines it owns. This is what a narrow token scope looks like. Create a new authorization with the default `global` scope and reconnect.
The name is wrong, or the token's account cannot see that resource. Ask the agent to list apps or pipelines first and use a name from that list.
Heroku allows 4,500 API requests per hour per account and refills the pool at roughly 75 per minute. Wait for the pool to refill, and scope requests to a single app so the agent makes fewer calls per run.
Writes need explicit approval in the same turn. Approve the action when prompted; a rejected call is final and the agent will not retry it.
Private Spaces are available only to verified Heroku Teams and to Heroku Enterprise. An account without them has none to list, so an empty result here is not a fault in the connection.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Use a dedicated account** — a Heroku token inherits everything its user can reach, and cannot be narrowed to specific apps. Choose the account carefully.
- **Set an expiration** — pass `--expires-in ` to `heroku authorizations:create` and plan to rotate; a default authorization never expires on its own.
- **Revoke when you are done** — `heroku authorizations` lists your authorizations by ID and description, and `heroku authorizations:revoke ` blocks the token from making further requests. The Heroku Dashboard's account area also lists the applications that have access to your account and lets you revoke them there.
- **Treat logs as sensitive** — an app can print secrets into its own log output, so log triage can surface values you did not intend to share.
- **Approval for writes** — keep restarts, maintenance mode, scaling, add-on creation, and pipeline promotion approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Related
Similar setup for Vercel projects and deployments
Similar setup for Netlify projects and deploys
Query access to a Heroku Postgres database
How approval-gated actions work
# InfluxDB
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/influxdb
Connect InfluxDB to CloudThinker for bucket and database inventory, retention review, and bounded time-series queries on both InfluxDB 2 and InfluxDB 3
Connect your InfluxDB instance to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) list what your instance stores, show how long each container keeps its data, and answer questions by querying the data itself.
InfluxDB authenticates with a single **API token**. Reads need nothing else. Changing retention or creating and deleting a container is possible, but only after you turn it on and approve each change. **Your stored data points are never writable through this connection.**
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Supported | Notes |
| ---------------------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| **InfluxDB OSS 2.x** | Yes | Self-hosted. Buckets, organizations, and Flux |
| **InfluxDB Cloud 2** | Yes | Same as OSS 2.x, hosted by InfluxData |
| **InfluxDB 3 Core** | Yes | Databases, no organizations, and SQL |
| **InfluxDB 3 Enterprise** | Yes | Same as Core, and it can issue a read-only token |
| **InfluxDB 1.x** | No | Predates the token API this connection uses |
| **InfluxDB Cloud Dedicated** | No | Its management API is a separate product |
You do not tell CloudThinker which one you run. The connection asks the instance when you connect, and the **Connected** message names what it found. That answer decides everything afterwards, because InfluxDB 2 and InfluxDB 3 are different products: InfluxDB 2 keeps **buckets** inside an **organization** and queries in **Flux**, while InfluxDB 3 keeps **databases**, has no organizations, and queries in **SQL**.
## Prerequisites
* An **InfluxDB instance** reachable from CloudThinker over its **HTTP API**. Self-hosted InfluxDB 2 usually answers on `8086`, InfluxDB 3 Core on `8181`, and InfluxDB Cloud 2 on a URL like `https://us-east-1-1.aws.cloud2.influxdata.com`.
* An **API token** with read access to the buckets or databases you want the agent to see.
* On **InfluxDB 2 only**: the name of the **organization**, if this token reaches more than one.
Create a token for CloudThinker rather than reusing one. A token is the whole credential here, so a dedicated one keeps the access visible in the InfluxDB token list and revocable on its own.
## Setup
In the InfluxDB UI, open **Load Data → API Tokens**, then click **Generate** and choose **Read/Write API Token**.
Give it a description you will recognize, then select the buckets you want CloudThinker to read in the **Read** pane. Leave the **Write** pane empty. See the [InfluxDB 2 token guide](https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2/admin/tokens/create-token/) for the provider steps.
Grant write access to bucket resources only if you plan to let the agent change retention or create and delete buckets.
InfluxDB shows the token value **once, immediately after it is created**. Copy it now. If you lose it, create another one; the value cannot be shown again.
Go to **Connections → InfluxDB** and enter:
* **Base URL**: scheme, host, and port, such as `https://influx.example.com:8086`
* **API token**: the token you just copied
* **Organization**: your organization name, but only if this token reaches more than one. Leave it blank otherwise.
Click **Connect**.
On **InfluxDB 3 Core**, create an admin token with the `influxdb3` CLI:
```bash theme={null}
influxdb3 create token --admin --name cloudthinker
```
Core issues admin tokens only, so this token has full permissions on the server. Read [Security](#security) before you use one. See the [InfluxDB 3 Core token guide](https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb3/core/admin/tokens/admin/create/) for other creation methods.
On **InfluxDB 3 Enterprise**, create a resource token scoped to read the databases you want instead, which is the narrower option and the one to prefer.
The token value is returned once, in the command output. Copy it now.
Go to **Connections → InfluxDB** and enter:
* **Base URL**: scheme, host, and port, such as `https://influx.example.com:8181`
* **API token**: the token you just created
* **Organization**: leave blank. InfluxDB 3 has no organizations and ignores this field.
Click **Connect**.
Enter the **Base URL only**: scheme, host, port, and an optional reverse-proxy prefix such as `/influx`. Do not paste an API endpoint, query string, fragment, username, or password. Anything you put in the URL is carried into every request the connection makes.
Use `https` for a public or remote endpoint because the token is sent on every request. Plain `http` is supported for a local instance or a trusted private network.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Required |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------- |
| **Base URL** | Scheme, host, port, and optional reverse-proxy prefix; no API endpoint, query string, fragment, or embedded credentials | Yes |
| **API token** | An InfluxDB API token with read access to the buckets or databases you want seen | Yes |
| **Organization** | InfluxDB 2 only, and only when the token reaches more than one organization | No |
When you connect, CloudThinker asks the instance which generation it is, then reads one container to prove the token works. The **Connected** message names what it found, such as `InfluxDB 2 connection verified (v2.7.12)`. A failure comes back as one specific reason — see [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting).
## Required permissions
The token needs **read** access to the containers you want inspected, and nothing more:
| Generation | Minimum | How to grant it |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **InfluxDB 2** | Read on the buckets you want seen | A Read/Write API Token with buckets selected in the **Read** pane only |
| **InfluxDB 3 Enterprise** | Read on the databases you want seen | A resource token scoped to those databases |
| **InfluxDB 3 Core** | Not available | Core issues admin tokens only |
Write access is needed **only** if you also turn the write tool on, and then only to change retention and to create or delete a container. It is never needed to read.
**InfluxDB 3 Core cannot issue a narrow token.** Fine-grained tokens are an Enterprise feature, so any token a Core instance gives you has full admin permissions on that server. The connection itself still only reads unless you turn the write tool on, but the token is broader than the connection. Weigh that before connecting a Core instance you care about, and prefer Enterprise or InfluxDB 2 where a scoped token is possible.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can read what your instance holds.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Container inventory** | List the buckets or databases on the instance, with the retention set on each |
| **Retention review** | Name every container that keeps its data forever, which is the usual reason this connection is added |
| **One named container** | Confirm a single bucket or database by name, including one the inventory did not reach |
| **Bounded queries** | Answer a question from the data itself, in Flux on InfluxDB 2 and SQL on InfluxDB 3 |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony list the InfluxDB buckets or databases and the retention on each
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report which InfluxDB containers keep their data forever and explain the resulting storage exposure
@tony #report count the points written to the telemetry bucket in the last 24 hours
@tony #recommend a retention policy for our highest-volume container
```
Answers are bounded so a broad question cannot pull the whole instance: the inventory reads at most **25** containers, and a query returns at most **50** rows by default within a **60 second** budget. When a result is cut short the agent says so, and a row sample is never reported as a total. Name the container you care about, or ask for a count in the query itself, to get an exact answer.
A retention the token cannot read is reported as **unreadable**, which is not the same as forever. It means the exposure was not measured. The two are never merged into one count.
## Write access
The connection ships with writes turned **off**, and there are two separate barriers before anything changes.
| Barrier | What it means |
| ------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **The write tool is off by default** | A workspace owner turns it on. Until then, every change is refused |
| **Every change asks you first** | Even with the tool on, the agent states the exact container and the exact change and waits for your approval. Reads never ask |
What a change can and cannot touch:
| Action | Allowed |
| ----------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| Change a container's retention | Yes, after approval |
| Create a bucket or database | Yes, after approval |
| Delete a bucket or database | Yes, after approval |
| Write, edit, or delete stored data points | **Never.** The connection has no path to it at all |
Three things to weigh before turning it on:
* **Shortening retention deletes data immediately.** Setting a finite retention on a container that kept everything expires every point already older than the new window, with no copy kept. This is the most destructive thing the connection can do, and it does not look destructive.
* **Deleting works differently on each generation.** InfluxDB 2 removes the bucket and all of its data at once, with no undo. InfluxDB 3 soft-deletes: it renames the database with a timestamp suffix, keeps it listed as deleted, and hard-deletes it later — so your storage is **not** freed when the agent reports success.
* **The token is still the real limit.** Turning the tool on does not grant a permission your token does not already have. A read-only token stays read-only no matter what is switched on in CloudThinker.
## Troubleshooting
The token was revoked, or it belongs to a different instance. Create a new token and reconnect. InfluxDB shows a token's value only when it is created, so an incompletely copied token fails the same way.
The token is valid but its permissions do not cover the buckets or databases. Widen its read scope in InfluxDB, or create a token that includes them, then test the connection again.
Something answered, but it was not the InfluxDB API. Check that the **Base URL** points at the InfluxDB HTTP port — usually `8086` on InfluxDB 2 and `8181` on InfluxDB 3 Core — and that any path you added is the proxy prefix and nothing more.
The URL reaches something that is not an InfluxDB HTTP port, or it reaches an InfluxDB 1.x instance. This connection does not support 1.x, and it does not support the InfluxDB Cloud Dedicated management API. Confirm the port before reconnecting.
No response at all. Check the host and port, that the instance is running, and that it is reachable from CloudThinker rather than only from inside your network.
The token worked and the instance identified itself, but the response was not what the InfluxDB API returns. This is almost always a proxy in front of the instance rewriting API responses. Point the **Base URL** at the instance directly.
Something in front of the instance is steering the API call to another host. CloudThinker never follows it, because that would send your token somewhere you did not name. Point the connection at the host that serves InfluxDB itself.
On InfluxDB 2, a token that reaches more than one organization leaves no bucket or query unambiguously scoped. Reconnect and set the **Organization** field to the one you want.
Some statements are refused because they would stop being reads. On InfluxDB 2 the InfluxDB server itself evaluates Flux, so a statement that writes points or opens an outbound connection from the server is blocked. On InfluxDB 3, a SQL statement that starts with `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, `DELETE`, `DROP`, `CREATE`, `ALTER`, `TRUNCATE`, `GRANT`, `REVOKE`, or `COPY` is blocked. The refusal names what was blocked, and nothing was sent to your instance. Rewrite the question as a read.
Either the token cannot see the rest, or the inventory stopped at its limit of 25. Check the token's read scope first, then ask about the specific bucket or database by name, which is looked up directly.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **The token is the whole credential** — there is no second factor and no separate username, so scope it to the containers you want seen and nothing else.
- **Stored data points are unreachable** — the connection ships no path to write or delete a point, so no permission you grant and no switch you turn on makes your time-series data writable through CloudThinker.
- **Writes are off, then gated** — the write tool is off until a workspace owner turns it on, and every change still asks you first. Reads never ask.
- **Redirects are never followed** — the token goes to the host you configured, or nowhere.
- **Prefer a scoped token** — InfluxDB 2 and InfluxDB 3 Enterprise can both issue one. InfluxDB 3 Core cannot, so treat a Core token as an admin credential.
## Related
Metric queries, alert rules, and target health
Schema inspection and analytical query investigation
Dashboards, panels, and data source inventory
Database-focused engineering agent
# Kafka
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/kafka
Connect Apache Kafka on Confluent Cloud to CloudThinker with scope-based credentials for stream monitoring and management
Connect your Apache Kafka clusters to enable [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) and [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to monitor topic health, analyze consumer lag, and optimize streaming performance.
Kafka connections are submitted as a JSON credentials file with separate API key pairs per scope (Confluent Cloud) or a bootstrap address (self-hosted).
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| --------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Confluent Cloud** | All tiers |
| **Self-hosted Kafka** | 2.8+ (KRaft mode), 3.x |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Confluent Cloud** account with at least one Kafka environment and cluster, OR a self-hosted **Kafka 2.8+** (KRaft mode) or **3.x** cluster reachable from CloudThinker.
* For Confluent Cloud: admin access to create API keys at **confluent.cloud/settings/api-keys**.
* Network access from CloudThinker to the Kafka cluster's bootstrap servers and REST endpoints.
***
## Setup
Select your Kafka platform for specific connection instructions:
Go to [confluent.cloud/home](https://confluent.cloud/home), then open **Environments**.
Click the environment you want to connect.
The environment ID appears in the URL after you select it (for example, `env-xxxxx`).
Example navigation:
* Environment list: `https://confluent.cloud/environments`
* Selected environment URL pattern: `https://confluent.cloud/environments//overview`
Inside the selected environment, open **Clusters** and click your target cluster (for example, ``).
Collect:
* `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS`
* `KAFKA_REST_ENDPOINT`
* `KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID`
Keep `KAFKA_ENV_ID` as the selected environment ID from Step 1.
Go to [confluent.cloud/settings/api-keys](https://confluent.cloud/settings/api-keys) and click **+ Add API Key**.
Choose **Service Account** for production workloads, or **My Account** for development/testing.
Select the desired scope in Confluent onboarding, then save the generated API key and API secret pair.
Scopes you may create keys for:
* Kafka cluster
* Schema Registry
* ksqlDB cluster
* Flink region
* Cloud resource management
* Tableflow
In the selected environment, open **Stream Governance -> Schema Registry**.
Collect:
* `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT`
URL pattern example:
`https://confluent.cloud/environments//stream-governance/schema-registry/overview`
In the selected environment, open **Flink**.
Open **Compute pools** and create a pool with **+ Add compute pool** if needed.
Click the target compute pool and collect:
* `FLINK_COMPUTE_POOL_ID`
* `FLINK_ENV_ID` (same environment ID from URL)
URL pattern example:
`https://confluent.cloud/environments//flink/pools//overview`
Set `FLINK_REST_ENDPOINT` from your cloud provider and region (AWS, Azure, or GCP; for example ``).
Go to [confluent.cloud/settings/organizations/edit](https://confluent.cloud/settings/organizations/edit) and collect:
* `FLINK_ORG_ID`
In CloudThinker, navigate to **Connections → Kafka**.
Create a JSON file with the fields for the scopes you enabled (see [Connection field template](#connection-field-template) below). Upload this JSON file in the connection form.
Required fields depend on your profile — see [Profiles](#profiles) for details.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
### Scope-based credential model
Confluent Cloud uses scope-based API credentials. Each API key and secret pair grants access to a specific resource scope.
You can start with Kafka-only fields, then add Schema Registry, Flink, Cloud API, or Tableflow fields later.
| Scope | What it unlocks | Typical fields |
| ----------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Kafka cluster** | Manage topics (list, create, delete, configure), produce/consume messages, view cluster metadata | `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS`, `KAFKA_API_KEY`, `KAFKA_API_SECRET`, `KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID`, `KAFKA_ENV_ID`, `KAFKA_REST_ENDPOINT` |
| **Schema Registry** | List, inspect, and delete data schemas | `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT`, `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY`, `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_SECRET` |
| **Flink region** | Create and manage Flink SQL statements, explore catalogs/databases/tables, health checks and diagnostics | `FLINK_REST_ENDPOINT`, `FLINK_API_KEY`, `FLINK_API_SECRET`, `FLINK_COMPUTE_POOL_ID`, `FLINK_ENV_ID` |
| **Cloud resource management** | Discover environments and clusters, query operational metrics and billing costs | `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_KEY`, `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_SECRET` |
| **Tableflow** | Manage Tableflow-enabled topics and catalog integrations (e.g., AWS Glue) | `TABLEFLOW_API_KEY`, `TABLEFLOW_API_SECRET` |
| **Organization metadata** | Organization-level context for Flink resource management | `FLINK_ORG_ID` |
### Profiles
#### Minimal (Kafka-only)
Required:
* `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS`
* `KAFKA_API_KEY`
* `KAFKA_API_SECRET`
* `KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID`
* `KAFKA_ENV_ID`
**What you can do:** Manage topics (list, create, delete, configure), produce and consume messages, view cluster metadata and topic configurations.
#### Standard (Kafka + Schema Registry + Cloud Management)
Add:
* `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT`
* `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY`
* `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_SECRET`
* `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_KEY`
* `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_SECRET`
**What you can do:** Everything in Minimal, plus list and inspect data schemas, discover environments and clusters, query operational metrics, and view billing costs.
#### Advanced (Flink / Tableflow)
Add one or more optional scope groups as needed:
* **Flink:** `FLINK_REST_ENDPOINT`, `FLINK_API_KEY`, `FLINK_API_SECRET`, `FLINK_COMPUTE_POOL_ID`, `FLINK_ENV_ID`
* **Tableflow:** `TABLEFLOW_API_KEY`, `TABLEFLOW_API_SECRET`
**What you can do:** Everything in Standard, plus create and manage Flink SQL statements, explore Flink catalogs and databases, run health checks on streaming queries, and manage Tableflow-enabled topics with catalog integrations (e.g., AWS Glue).
### Connection field template
Use this template and fill values for your enabled scopes:
```json theme={null}
{
"BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS": "pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:9092",
"KAFKA_API_KEY": "",
"KAFKA_API_SECRET": "",
"KAFKA_REST_ENDPOINT": "https://pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:443",
"KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID": "lkc-xxxxx",
"KAFKA_ENV_ID": "env-xxxxx",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT": "https://psrc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY": "",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_SECRET": "",
"FLINK_API_KEY": "",
"FLINK_API_SECRET": "",
"FLINK_COMPUTE_POOL_ID": "lfcp-xxxxx",
"FLINK_ENV_ID": "env-xxxxx",
"FLINK_REST_ENDPOINT": "https://flink...confluent.cloud",
"FLINK_ORG_ID": "",
"CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_KEY": "",
"CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_SECRET": "",
"TABLEFLOW_API_KEY": "",
"TABLEFLOW_API_SECRET": ""
}
```
Ensure the CloudThinker application can reach your Kafka broker at `.:9092`.
In CloudThinker, navigate to **Connections → Kafka**.
Create a JSON file with the fields for the scopes you enabled (see [Connection field template](#connection-field-template-2) below). Upload this JSON file in the connection form.
Required fields depend on your profile — see [Profiles](#profiles-2) below for details.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
### Scope-based credential model
Self-hosted Kafka uses scope-based configuration. You can start with Kafka-only fields, then add Schema Registry fields later.
| Scope | What it unlocks | Typical fields |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------- |
| **Kafka cluster** | Manage topics (list, create, delete), produce/consume messages | `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS` |
| **Schema Registry** | List, inspect, and delete data schemas | `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT` |
### Profiles
#### Minimal (Kafka-only)
Required:
* `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS`
**What you can do:** Manage topics (list, create, delete), produce and consume messages.
#### Standard (with Schema Registry)
Add:
* `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT` (typically port 8081)
**What you can do:** Everything in Minimal, plus list, inspect, and delete data schemas.
### Connection field template
Use this template and fill values for your enabled scopes:
```json theme={null}
{
"BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS": ".:9092",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT": "http://:8081"
}
```
***
## Connection details
Connection fields are submitted as a JSON credentials file. Fields vary by platform and enabled scope — see the full templates in the [Setup](#setup) section.
CloudThinker supports partial scope onboarding — you can start with Kafka-only fields and add Schema Registry, Flink, Cloud API, or Tableflow credentials later.
| Field | Platform | Description |
| -------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| `BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS` | Both | Kafka cluster bootstrap address (required) |
| `KAFKA_API_KEY` / `KAFKA_API_SECRET` | Confluent Cloud | Kafka scope credentials |
| `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT` | Both | Schema Registry URL |
| `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY` / `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_SECRET` | Confluent Cloud | Schema Registry credentials |
| `FLINK_REST_ENDPOINT` | Confluent Cloud | Flink region endpoint |
| `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_KEY` / `CONFLUENT_CLOUD_API_SECRET` | Confluent Cloud | Cloud management credentials |
| `TABLEFLOW_API_KEY` / `TABLEFLOW_API_SECRET` | Confluent Cloud | Tableflow credentials |
***
## Required permissions
For Confluent Cloud, use a **Service Account** and grant each API key only the scope it needs. Start with Kafka-only credentials and add additional scopes incrementally.
**Confluent Cloud:** Create separate API key and secret pairs per scope. Restrict Kafka ACLs to the specific topics CloudThinker needs. Cloud Management credentials require at minimum the MetricsViewer role.
**Self-hosted Kafka:** No API keys are required. Ensure the broker's bootstrap address is network-reachable from CloudThinker on port 9092.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) and [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Consumer lag monitoring** | Track lag per consumer group, identify slow consumers |
| **Topic health analysis** | Check partition distribution, replication factor, under-replicated partitions |
| **Throughput metrics** | Monitor bytes in/out, message rates per topic |
| **Broker health** | Track broker availability, ISR (In-Sync Replicas) status |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all Kafka topics and check consumer group lag for the active consumer groups
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex check consumer lag for the orders-service group
@tony analyze message throughput trends for the events topic
@alex identify under-replicated partitions and #report the affected topics
```
***
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the Kafka broker process is running on `.`.
* Check that the broker port (default 9092) is open and not blocked by firewall.
* Verify the bootstrap server address `.:9092` is correct and reachable from CloudThinker.
* For local development, ensure Kafka is bound to an accessible IP (not just `127.0.0.1`).
When using partial scope onboarding, **remove the entire key-value pair** for unused scopes. Do not leave empty strings.
**Correct** (Kafka-only, Schema Registry removed entirely):
```json theme={null}
{
"BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS": "pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:9092",
"KAFKA_API_KEY": "",
"KAFKA_API_SECRET": "",
"KAFKA_REST_ENDPOINT": "https://pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:443",
"KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID": "lkc-xxxxx",
"KAFKA_ENV_ID": "env-xxxxx"
}
```
**Incorrect** (empty string values cause validation errors):
```json theme={null}
{
"BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS": "pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:9092",
"KAFKA_API_KEY": "",
"KAFKA_API_SECRET": "",
"KAFKA_REST_ENDPOINT": "https://pkc-xxxxx...confluent.cloud:443",
"KAFKA_CLUSTER_ID": "lkc-xxxxx",
"KAFKA_ENV_ID": "env-xxxxx",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT": "",
"SCHEMA_REGISTRY_API_KEY": ""
}
```
Verify the `SCHEMA_REGISTRY_ENDPOINT` URL is correct and reachable from CloudThinker. For self-hosted, ensure port 8081 is open. For Confluent Cloud, confirm the Schema Registry API key has the correct permissions for your environment.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Scope-limited API keys** — grant only the scopes CloudThinker needs; start with Kafka-only and add Schema Registry, Flink, or Cloud Management scopes incrementally
- **Network restrictions** — restrict bootstrap and REST endpoints to CloudThinker's egress IPs via security groups or firewall rules
***
## Related
Cloud infrastructure and streaming optimization agent
Setup instructions for AWS cloud resources
# Keycloak
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/keycloak
Connect Keycloak to CloudThinker for identity and access management operations
Connect your Keycloak realm to enable [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) (Security Professional) to inspect realms, audit clients, review users and roles, and analyze identity and access configuration.
Keycloak authenticates with a **confidential service-account client** that holds `realm-management` roles on the target realm.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------ |
| **Self-hosted Keycloak** | All versions |
| **Phase Two** | Managed Keycloak service |
## Prerequisites
* A **Keycloak realm** you want CloudThinker to inspect.
* **Admin access** to create a confidential client and assign service-account roles — `kcadm.sh` (self-hosted) or the realm console (Phase Two).
* The realm's **base URL** and **realm name**.
The connection scopes to the roles you grant the `cloudthinker-svc` service account. Assign the least-privileged `realm-management` roles that cover what CloudThinker needs.
## Setup
Both paths create the same artifact: a `cloudthinker-svc` confidential client with `realm-management` roles on its service account. Self-hosted uses `kcadm.sh`; Phase Two uses the realm console.
Provision the client with `kcadm.sh`, Keycloak's admin CLI. Run from any shell where it's available.
```bash theme={null}
kcadm.sh config credentials \
--server http://localhost:8080 --realm master \
--user admin --password ''
```
```bash theme={null}
kcadm.sh create clients -r \
-s clientId=cloudthinker-svc \
-s publicClient=false \
-s serviceAccountsEnabled=true \
-s standardFlowEnabled=false \
-s directAccessGrantsEnabled=false \
-s 'redirectUris=[]'
```
```bash theme={null}
kcadm.sh add-roles -r \
--uusername service-account-cloudthinker-svc \
--cclientid realm-management \
--rolename realm-admin
```
Use narrower roles (e.g. `view-realm`, `view-users`) if you want least-privilege.
```bash theme={null}
CID=$(kcadm.sh get clients -r \
-q clientId=cloudthinker-svc --fields id --format csv --noquotes | tail -n1)
kcadm.sh get clients/$CID/client-secret -r \
--fields value --format csv --noquotes | tail -n1
```
Navigate to **Connections → Keycloak** and enter:
* **KEYCLOAK\_URL**: `http://:8080`
* **KEYCLOAK\_REALM**: your realm name
* **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_ID**: `cloudthinker-svc`
* **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_SECRET**: secret from the previous step
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
For managed Keycloak via [Phase Two](https://dash.phasetwo.io/realms).
In the [Phase Two dashboard](https://dash.phasetwo.io/realms), open the console for the realm you want to connect.
Go to the **Clients** tab → **Create client** and configure:
* **Client ID**: `cloudthinker-svc`
* Click **Next**
* Enable **Client authentication** and **Authorization**
* Click **Next**, then **Save**
Open the new client → **Service account roles** → **Assign roles**.
Search for `realm-management` and assign the roles you want CloudThinker to use. We recommend assigning all `realm-management` roles — check both pages to avoid missing any.
In the same client, open **Credentials** and copy the value under **Client Secret**.
Back in [https://dash.phasetwo.io/realms](https://dash.phasetwo.io/realms), open the realm card and click **Details**. Copy the value under **Host** (e.g. `https://.auth.ac/auth`).
Navigate to **Connections → Keycloak** and enter:
* **KEYCLOAK\_URL**: Host URL from the realm details (e.g. `https://.auth.ac/auth`)
* **KEYCLOAK\_REALM**: your realm name
* **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_ID**: `cloudthinker-svc`
* **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_SECRET**: secret from the credentials step
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| **KEYCLOAK\_URL** | Keycloak base URL | `http://:8080` |
| **KEYCLOAK\_REALM** | Target realm name | `my-realm` |
| **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_ID** | Service-account client ID | `cloudthinker-svc` |
| **KEYCLOAK\_CLIENT\_SECRET** | Client secret from the credentials step | — |
## Required permissions
The `cloudthinker-svc` service account needs `realm-management` roles on the target realm. Common roles:
| Role | Purpose |
| ------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------ |
| `view-realm` | Read realm settings |
| `view-users` | List and inspect users |
| `view-clients` | List and inspect clients |
| `query-users`, `query-clients`, `query-groups` | Run lookup queries |
| `manage-users`, `manage-clients`, `manage-realm` | Make changes (assign only if needed) |
For read-only analysis, assign only the `view-*` and `query-*` roles. Add `manage-*` roles only when you need Oliver to make changes.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Oliver can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Realm inspection** | Review realm settings and configuration |
| **Client audit** | List clients, review flows and authorization settings |
| **User management** | View users, sessions, and credentials state |
| **Role and group review** | Inspect roles, composites, and group hierarchies |
| **Access analysis** | Identify over-privileged service accounts and stale clients |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report list all clients in the realm to verify the Keycloak connection
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report list all clients in the realm and flag any with direct access grants enabled
@oliver #report show service accounts with realm-admin and review whether each is needed
@oliver #recommend audit users without 2FA enabled
```
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the client secret was copied correctly
* Confirm **Client authentication** is enabled on the client
* Ensure the service account has `realm-management` roles assigned
* Service account is missing the required `realm-management` role for that operation
* Self-hosted: re-run `add-roles` with the missing role
* Phase Two: re-check both pages of the role assignment list
* Self-hosted: confirm the base URL matches your Keycloak hostname
* Phase Two: copy the URL exactly from the realm **Details → Host** field
* The client must be confidential — `publicClient=false` (self-hosted) or **Client authentication** enabled (Phase Two)
* Public clients have no secret
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated client** — use `cloudthinker-svc` as a dedicated service-account client, not a shared admin client.
- **Secret rotation** — rotate the client secret periodically via the **Credentials** tab.
## Related
Security and compliance agent
All available connections
# Kubernetes
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/kubernetes
Connect Kubernetes clusters to CloudThinker for workload analysis, resource optimization, and cluster operations
Connect your Kubernetes clusters to enable [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) to analyze workloads, optimize resources, and manage cluster operations.
Kubernetes connects via **cloud provider auto-discovery** (for EKS, GKE, and AKS) or a **service-account token** with cluster endpoint details for self-managed clusters.
***
## Prerequisites
Install Metrics Server before connecting — it is required for pod and node resource metrics:
```bash theme={null}
kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/metrics-server/releases/latest/download/components.yaml
```
| Component | Purpose |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| **Metrics Server** | Required for pod and node resource metrics |
| **kube-state-metrics** | Enhanced cluster metrics (optional) |
| **Network access** | CloudThinker must reach the cluster API server |
### Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ---------------- | ------------------- |
| **Amazon EKS** | All versions |
| **Google GKE** | Standard, Autopilot |
| **Azure AKS** | All versions |
| **Self-managed** | Kubernetes 1.24+ |
| **Rancher** | RKE, RKE2 |
| **OpenShift** | 4.x |
***
## Setup
### Auto-discovery from cloud connections
If you've already connected AWS, GCP, or Azure, your managed Kubernetes clusters are automatically discovered.
Set up an [AWS](/guide/connections/aws), [GCP](/guide/connections/gcp), or [Azure](/guide/connections/azure) connection first.
EKS, GKE, or AKS clusters appear automatically in CloudThinker. Select which clusters to enable for analysis. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status for each enabled cluster.
### Manual setup with service account
For self-managed clusters or additional access beyond what the cloud provider connection provides:
Create a dedicated namespace:
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: cloudthinker
```
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-readonly
namespace: cloudthinker
```
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-readonly
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
resources: ["*"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["apps", "extensions"]
resources: ["*"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["autoscaling"]
resources: ["*"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["metrics.k8s.io"]
resources: ["pods", "nodes"]
verbs: ["get", "list"]
```
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-readonly
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: ClusterRole
name: cloudthinker-readonly
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: cloudthinker-readonly
namespace: cloudthinker
```
Starting from Kubernetes 1.24, create a Secret for long-lived tokens:
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-readonly-token
namespace: cloudthinker
annotations:
kubernetes.io/service-account.name: cloudthinker-readonly
type: kubernetes.io/service-account-token
```
Apply with:
```bash theme={null}
kubectl apply -f cloudthinker-token-secret.yaml
```
```bash theme={null}
kubectl get secret cloudthinker-readonly-token -n cloudthinker \
-o jsonpath='{.data.token}' | base64 --decode
```
Get your cluster endpoint:
```bash theme={null}
kubectl cluster-info
```
Extract the CA certificate:
```bash theme={null}
kubectl get secret cloudthinker-readonly-token -n cloudthinker \
-o jsonpath='{.data.ca\.crt}' | base64 --decode
```
Navigate to **Connections → Kubernetes** and enter:
* Cluster API endpoint
* Service account token
* CA certificate (for self-signed clusters)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies access and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
The kubeconfig format CloudThinker uses for direct connections:
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: v1
kind: Config
clusters:
- cluster:
certificate-authority-data:
server: https://your-cluster-endpoint:6443
name: your-cluster
contexts:
- context:
cluster: your-cluster
user: cloudthinker-readonly
name: cloudthinker-context
current-context: cloudthinker-context
users:
- name: cloudthinker-readonly
user:
token:
```
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read-only)
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-readonly
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
resources: ["pods", "nodes", "services", "namespaces", "events", "configmaps"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["apps"]
resources: ["deployments", "replicasets", "statefulsets", "daemonsets"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["autoscaling"]
resources: ["horizontalpodautoscalers"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["metrics.k8s.io"]
resources: ["pods", "nodes"]
verbs: ["get", "list"]
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
name: cloudthinker-full-analysis
rules:
- apiGroups: [""]
resources: ["pods", "nodes", "services", "namespaces", "events", "configmaps", "secrets", "persistentvolumeclaims", "resourcequotas", "limitranges", "replicationcontrollers"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["apps"]
resources: ["deployments", "replicasets", "statefulsets", "daemonsets"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["batch"]
resources: ["jobs", "cronjobs"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["networking.k8s.io"]
resources: ["ingresses", "networkpolicies"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["autoscaling"]
resources: ["horizontalpodautoscalers"]
verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
- apiGroups: ["metrics.k8s.io"]
resources: ["pods", "nodes"]
verbs: ["get", "list"]
```
Start with the minimum ClusterRole and expand to the full-analysis role only when you need the broader capability set. Never grant write verbs — get, list, and watch are sufficient for all Kai capabilities.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) can inspect and optimize your cluster.
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| **Resource analysis** | Pod CPU/memory usage, requests vs limits |
| **Node health** | Node status, capacity, allocatable resources |
| **Workload optimization** | Right-sizing recommendations, HPA tuning |
| **Troubleshooting** | CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled, pending pods |
| **Security audit** | RBAC review, pod security, network policies |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@kai check the cluster connection and list all namespaces and node count
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@kai analyze pod resource utilization in the production namespace and #report the top CPU and memory consumers
@kai investigate crash loops in the payment service and #recommend a fix
@kai check node resource pressure across the cluster and #alert if any node is near capacity
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the API server endpoint is accessible from the internet. Check that firewall rules and security groups allow CloudThinker's IPs. For private clusters, set up VPN or bastion access and confirm the API server certificate is valid.
Verify the service account token is correct. Check that the ClusterRoleBinding is applied and that the token hasn't expired. Confirm the service account exists in the correct namespace.
Verify Metrics Server is installed by running `kubectl top nodes`. Check that Metrics Server pods are running and that the `metrics.k8s.io` API is available.
Verify the ClusterRole includes namespace list permission. Check if RBAC restricts access to certain namespaces and confirm the service account binding is cluster-wide.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Read-only access** — never grant write verbs to the CloudThinker service account; get, list, and watch are sufficient for all agent capabilities.
- **Namespace isolation** — keep the service account in a dedicated namespace (e.g., `cloudthinker`) to simplify auditing and revocation.
***
## Related
Kubernetes-focused optimization agent
Connect AWS for EKS auto-discovery
# MongoDB
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/mongodb
Connect MongoDB databases to CloudThinker for document query analysis, performance tuning, and operational insights
Connect your MongoDB databases to enable [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to analyze queries, optimize performance, and monitor database health.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ----------------------- | ------------------ |
| **Self-hosted MongoDB** | 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, 7.x |
| **MongoDB Atlas** | All versions |
## Prerequisites
* A MongoDB instance or Atlas cluster reachable from CloudThinker over the network.
* Admin access to create a dedicated database user and assign roles.
* The MongoDB connection string with credentials.
## Setup
Select your MongoDB platform for specific connection instructions.
Connect to your MongoDB instance using the Mongo shell (`mongosh`) with administrative privileges.
*Replace ``, ``, and `` with your credentials. The `/admin` database is required.*
```bash theme={null}
mongosh "mongodb://:@:27017/admin"
```
Ensure you are on the `admin` database where users are created:
```javascript theme={null}
use admin
```
Create a dedicated user for CloudThinker using standard MongoDB built-in roles:
```javascript theme={null}
db.createUser({
user: "",
pwd: "",
roles: [
{ role: "readAnyDatabase", db: "admin" },
{ role: "clusterMonitor", db: "admin" }
]
})
```
The `clusterMonitor` role is recommended for performance metrics analysis.
Ensure CloudThinker can reach your database:
* Add CloudThinker IPs to your firewall or security group
* Ensure MongoDB is bound to an accessible IP address in `mongod.conf`
Navigate to **Connections → MongoDB** and paste your connection string:
```
mongodb://:@:27017/admin?tls=true&appName=CloudThinker
```
Include `tls=true` if your deployment enforces TLS encryption. Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
Log in to your MongoDB Atlas dashboard at [cloud.mongodb.com/v2](https://cloud.mongodb.com/v2).
From the left sidebar, scroll down to the **Security** section and select **Database Access**.
Click **Add New Database User** and configure the following:
* **Authentication Method**: Password
* **Username**: ``
* **Password**: generate a secure password
* **Database User Privileges**: select **Built-in Role** → **Read Any Database**
Click **Add User**.
Navigate to **Network Access** under the **Security** section:
* Click **IP Access List** → **+ Add IP Address**
* Enter the CloudThinker static IP addresses shown on the CloudThinker connection setup screen
* Add a comment such as `CloudThinker Agent Access` for future auditing
* Click **Confirm**
Navigate to the **Databases** tab (under **Deployment**), click **Connect** on your cluster, and choose **Drivers**.
Atlas provides a string in this format:
```
mongodb+srv://:@..mongodb.net/?appName=
```
Customize it for CloudThinker:
```
mongodb+srv://:@..mongodb.net/admin?appName=CloudThinker&tls=true&retryWrites=false
```
* `/admin` explicitly specifies the authentication database
* `appName=CloudThinker` makes it easy to identify in your database logs
* `tls=true` enforces encryption in transit
* `retryWrites=false` is appropriate for this read-only user
Navigate to **Connections → MongoDB** and paste your customized connection string. Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| **Connection string** | Full MongoDB URI including credentials | `mongodb+srv://user:pass@host/admin?tls=true` |
| **TLS/SSL** | Enforce TLS for the connection — use `tls=true` in the URI | `true` |
| **Read preference** | Which nodes to route read operations to | `primary` |
| **Connection timeout** | Seconds to wait for connection | `10` |
## Required permissions
| Role | Purpose |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `readAnyDatabase` | Analyze queries and index usage across all collections |
| `clusterMonitor` | Access `serverStatus`, `replSetGetStatus`, and other diagnostic commands for performance metrics |
Assign both roles to unlock full query analysis and cluster health monitoring. Never grant write or admin roles to the CloudThinker user.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Query analysis** | Identify slow queries, analyze execution plans with `explain()` |
| **Index recommendations** | Find missing indexes, identify unused indexes |
| **Performance metrics** | Monitor connections, memory usage, and replication lag |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list all MongoDB databases and summarize their collection counts
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report analyze slow queries on the production MongoDB instance
@tony #recommend find missing indexes on the users collection
@tony #report check replication lag on the secondary nodes
```
## Troubleshooting
* Verify username and password are correct
* Ensure the user is created on the `admin` database, or append `?authSource=admin` to your connection string
* For Atlas: confirm the user was created with the correct privileges under Database Access
* Check that CloudThinker IPs are added to your Atlas Network Access list or your firewall
* For local MongoDB, ensure `bindIp` in `mongod.conf` is not set to only `127.0.0.1`
* Tony needs the `clusterMonitor` role to run `serverStatus` and `replSetGetStatus`
* Add the `clusterMonitor` role to the CloudThinker user on the `admin` database and reconnect
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **TLS required** — always use `tls=true` in the connection string to encrypt data in transit.
- **Minimal roles** — grant only `readAnyDatabase` and `clusterMonitor`; never grant write or admin roles.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Setup instructions for PostgreSQL databases
# Microsoft SQL Server
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/mssql
Connect SQL Server or Azure SQL to CloudThinker for schema discovery, record inspection and aggregation, and approval-gated row changes
Connect your SQL Server or Azure SQL database to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) discover your schema, read and aggregate records, and make single-row changes you approve one at a time.
The connection reaches your **tables** directly. It cannot run arbitrary SQL, call stored procedures, or change your schema. Reads happen without a prompt. **Every create, update, and delete asks you first, one call at a time.**
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Supported | Notes |
| ---------------------------------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------ |
| **SQL Server** | Yes | 2016 or later, on-premises or self-managed |
| **Azure SQL Database** | Yes | Managed, no version to choose |
| **Azure SQL Managed Instance** | Yes | Managed, no version to choose |
| **SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines** | Yes | 2016 or later |
| **Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server** | Yes | 2016 or later |
| **SQL Server 2014 and earlier** | No | Below the minimum version |
**SQL database in Microsoft Fabric** is not covered here. It does not accept SQL Server logins, so the username-and-password credential this connection uses cannot reach it.
## Prerequisites
* A SQL Server or Azure SQL database reachable from CloudThinker on its SQL port, `1433` by default.
* Permission to create a login or a database user and grant it read access.
* The tables you want the agent to reach in a normal user schema. Objects in `sys` and `INFORMATION_SCHEMA` are never exposed, whatever the user is granted.
## Setup
Give CloudThinker its own least-privilege account. Which statement you use depends on the platform.
**SQL Server and Azure SQL Managed Instance** — create a login in `master`, then a user for it in your database:
```sql theme={null}
-- In master
CREATE LOGIN cloudthinker WITH PASSWORD = '';
```
```sql theme={null}
-- In your database
CREATE USER cloudthinker FOR LOGIN cloudthinker;
```
**Azure SQL Database** — create the user directly in your database, with no login in `master`. Microsoft recommends this form because it keeps the database portable:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER cloudthinker WITH PASSWORD = '';
```
Grant on the specific schema that holds the tables you want reachable:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON SCHEMA :: dbo TO cloudthinker;
```
Or, tighter, one table at a time:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON OBJECT::dbo.orders TO cloudthinker;
```
Adding the user to the `db_datareader` role also works, but Microsoft notes it "grants read access to every table in the database, which is more than is strictly necessary". A schema or object grant is the better boundary.
* **Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance**: add CloudThinker to the server firewall rules.
* **SQL Server**: allow inbound `1433` from CloudThinker, and confirm the server accepts SQL Server authentication rather than Windows authentication only.
Go to **Connections → Microsoft SQL Server** and fill in the single **Connection string** field:
```text theme={null}
Server=,1433;Initial Catalog=;User ID=cloudthinker;Password=;Encrypt=True;
```
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker opens the connection, reads the tables the user can see, and the **Connected** message reports what it loaded. A failure comes back with the reason SQL Server gave — see [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting).
## Connection details
One field carries everything: an ADO.NET connection string for the user you created above.
| Field | Description | Default |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **Connection string** | ADO.NET connection string for the dedicated least-privilege user | — |
The keywords that matter:
| Keyword | What to put |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `Server` | Host and port, for example `sql.example.com,1433`. |
| `Initial Catalog` | The database name. **Required** when you created the user directly in the database rather than from a login in `master`. |
| `User ID` and `Password` | The user created in step 1. |
| `Encrypt` | `True`. It is the default in current SQL client versions, and worth stating anyway. |
| `TrustServerCertificate` | Leave it out, or `False`. Set it to `True` only for a self-signed or internal-CA certificate. |
With `Encrypt=True` and `TrustServerCertificate=False`, Microsoft's client encrypts traffic **only if the server presents a verifiable certificate**. If it does not, the connection attempt fails rather than falling back to plaintext. That failure is the single most common one on a first connect against a self-hosted server.
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read only)
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON SCHEMA :: dbo TO cloudthinker;
```
This is enough for schema discovery, reading records, and aggregation. Leave it here unless you want the agent to change data.
### Write access (only if you want it)
```sql theme={null}
GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON SCHEMA :: dbo TO cloudthinker;
```
Grant these on the specific schema you want changeable, never database-wide. **The grant is the durable boundary.** The per-call approval prompt decides whether CloudThinker asks; the grant decides whether SQL Server allows it. A user holding only `SELECT` cannot write, no matter what anyone approves.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Schema discovery** | List the reachable tables with their columns |
| **Record inspection** | Read rows with column selection, filtering, sorting, and paging |
| **Aggregation** | Count, sum, average, minimum, and maximum, with grouping and having |
| **Row changes** | Insert a row, or update and delete a row by its primary key — each one after you approve it |
What the connection cannot do, by design:
* No arbitrary SQL. The agent works through the table operations above, not a query console.
* No stored procedures.
* No schema changes. It cannot create, alter, or drop a table, an index, or a column.
* **No joins across tables in a single read.** Each read covers one table.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list the SQL Server tables you can reach and their columns
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report how many orders were placed per status in the last 30 days
@tony #report show the ten most recent rows in dbo.orders
@tony #recommend which columns in dbo.orders look like they need an index
```
## Write access
There is no connection-wide write switch. Every insert, update, and delete is approved individually, in the conversation, before it runs.
| Operation | What it needs |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Insert a row** | Your approval, plus `INSERT` on the table |
| **Update a row** | Your approval, the row's **primary key**, and `UPDATE` on the table |
| **Delete a row** | Your approval, the row's **primary key**, and `DELETE` on the table |
Two things to weigh:
* **Updates and deletes are keyed, not filtered.** The agent addresses one row by its primary key, so a mistyped filter cannot sweep a table. A table without a primary key cannot be updated or deleted through this connection at all.
* **Approval is per call, not per session.** Approving one delete does not approve the next.
If you never want the agent to change data, do not grant `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, or `DELETE`. That is stronger than declining each prompt.
## Troubleshooting
SQL Server answered and rejected the credentials.
* Confirm the user exists in the right place: a login lives in `master`, a user created with `WITH PASSWORD` lives in your database.
* Confirm the server accepts SQL Server authentication. A server set to Windows authentication only refuses every username-and-password login.
* Retype the password rather than pasting it. A pasted value carrying a stray space or line break fails here.
The server did not present a certificate the client could verify, and the client refused to continue unencrypted.
* Install a certificate the client trusts. This is the right fix.
* For a self-signed or internal-CA certificate on a private network, add `TrustServerCertificate=True` to the connection string. Traffic is still encrypted, but the server's identity is no longer checked.
Nothing answered at that host and port.
* Check that `Server` carries the host and port in SQL Server's own form, `host,1433`, with a comma rather than a colon.
* **Azure SQL**: add CloudThinker to the server firewall rules.
* **SQL Server**: confirm the firewall allows inbound `1433` and that the server is listening on TCP/IP, which is off by default on some installations.
* The user needs `SELECT` on that table or its schema. A table the user cannot read does not appear at all.
* Tables in `sys` and `INFORMATION_SCHEMA` are excluded and cannot be exposed.
* Name the table with its schema, for example `dbo.orders`. The agent sees the schema and the table name together, so an unqualified name can be ambiguous when two schemas hold the same table name.
Updates and deletes address exactly one row by its primary key. Without one, the operation has no way to identify a row and is refused. Reading and aggregating the table still work. Add a primary key if you want the agent to change it.
Some SQL Server data types are not carried over this connection: `geography`, `geometry`, `hierarchyid`, `json`, `rowversion`, `sql_variant`, `vector`, and `xml`. Tables holding them still work; those particular columns are not returned. Add a plain-text column holding the value you want visible if the agent needs to read it.
Expected. This connection has no SQL console and no stored-procedure access. Ask for the result you want — a filtered read, a grouped count — rather than for a statement to execute.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated user** — never reuse an application or admin account. A separate user keeps the audit trail readable and the blast radius small.
- **Grant the schema, not the database** — scope `SELECT` to the schema holding the tables the agent should reach. Everything else stays invisible.
- **Read-only by omission** — withhold `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE` and the connection is permanently read-only, regardless of what is approved in a conversation.
- **Keep encryption on** — leave `Encrypt=True` and reach for `TrustServerCertificate=True` only when you own the certificate and the network.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Similar setup for PostgreSQL databases
# MySQL
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/mysql
Connect MySQL databases to CloudThinker for query analysis, performance monitoring, and database optimization
Connect your MySQL databases to enable [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to analyze queries, optimize performance, and monitor database health.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------ |
| **Self-hosted MySQL** | 5.7, 8.0, 8.1+ |
| **MariaDB** | 10.x |
| **AWS RDS MySQL** | All versions |
| **AWS Aurora MySQL** | All versions |
| **Google Cloud SQL** | All MySQL versions |
| **Azure Database for MySQL** | Flexible Server |
## Prerequisites
* A MySQL instance reachable from CloudThinker over the network.
* Admin or root access to create a dedicated user and grant privileges.
* Performance Schema enabled (default in MySQL 5.7+; verify before connecting).
## Setup
Connect to MySQL as root or admin user:
```bash theme={null}
mysql -h your-host -u root -p
```
Create the CloudThinker user:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-secure-password';
```
Grant SELECT and monitoring privileges:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON *.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
GRANT SHOW DATABASES ON *.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
GRANT PROCESS ON *.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
```
Required for query analysis:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON performance_schema.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
```
```sql theme={null}
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'performance_schema';
-- Should return: ON
```
If disabled, add to `my.cnf` and restart:
```ini theme={null}
[mysqld]
performance_schema = ON
```
Ensure CloudThinker can reach your database:
* Add CloudThinker IPs to your security group or firewall
* For RDS: enable public access or use VPC peering
Navigate to **Connections → MySQL** and enter:
* **Host**: your database hostname or IP
* **Port**: database port (default: `3306`)
* **Database**: database name
* **Username**: `cloudthinker_readonly`
* **Password**: the password you set above
* **SSL**: enabled (recommended)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **Host** | Database hostname or IP | — |
| **Port** | MySQL port | `3306` |
| **Database** | Database name | — |
| **Username** | Dedicated user, e.g. `cloudthinker_readonly` | — |
| **Password** | User password | — |
| **SSL** | Enable SSL/TLS encryption | Enabled |
| **Connection timeout** | Seconds to wait for connection | `10` |
| **Read timeout** | Max time to wait for query results in seconds | `30` |
Connection string format:
```
mysql://cloudthinker_readonly:your-secure-password@your-host:3306/database-name
```
## Required permissions
### Minimum
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON your_database.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
GRANT PROCESS ON *.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```sql theme={null}
-- All of the above, plus:
GRANT SELECT ON performance_schema.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
GRANT SELECT ON mysql.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
GRANT REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO 'cloudthinker_readonly'@'%';
```
Start with the minimum grants. Add `performance_schema` and `REPLICATION CLIENT` to unlock slow-query data and replication monitoring.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Query analysis** | Identify slow queries from slow query log and Performance Schema |
| **Index recommendations** | Find missing indexes, identify redundant indexes |
| **Performance metrics** | Monitor connections, buffer pool, and query cache |
| **Table statistics** | Analyze table sizes, fragmentation, and engine status |
| **Replication monitoring** | Check replica status, lag, and errors |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report check MySQL connection health and show current active sessions
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report analyze slow queries on the production MySQL instance
@tony #recommend find missing indexes for high-frequency queries
@tony #dashboard show buffer pool usage and connection statistics
```
## Troubleshooting
* Verify host and port are correct
* Check your security group or firewall allows CloudThinker IPs
* For RDS: ensure "Publicly accessible" is enabled or use VPC peering
* Confirm MySQL is listening on the correct interface (`bind-address` in `my.cnf`)
* Verify username and password are correct
* Check the user has the correct host specification (`'user'@'%'` vs `'user'@'localhost'`)
* Ensure `GRANT` statements were followed by `FLUSH PRIVILEGES`
* Check with: `SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'performance_schema';`
* Enable in `my.cnf` and restart MySQL
* For RDS: modify the parameter group and reboot the instance
* Enable slow query log: `SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = 'ON';`
* Set the threshold: `SET GLOBAL long_query_time = 1;`
* For RDS: modify the parameter group
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **SSL required** — always enable SSL to encrypt data in transit.
- **Minimal grants** — grant only `SELECT` to the CloudThinker user; never grant write access.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Similar setup for PostgreSQL databases
# Neon
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/neon
Connect Neon Postgres to CloudThinker with OAuth-powered MCP for project discovery, schema inspection, and database operations
Connect your Neon account to let CloudThinker agents inspect Neon projects, review database schemas, analyze slow queries, and assist with approved database operations through Neon's hosted MCP server.
Neon uses **OAuth**, so you do not need to create a Neon API key or paste credentials into CloudThinker.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Neon account** with access to the projects you want CloudThinker to inspect.
* Permission to authorize CloudThinker through Neon's OAuth flow.
* A CloudThinker workspace where Neon is not already connected.
CloudThinker supports one Neon connection per workspace. To switch accounts, remove the existing Neon connection and reconnect.
***
## Setup
Navigate to **Connections → Neon** in your CloudThinker workspace.
Click **Connect** to open Neon's authorization page.
Sign in to the Neon account that owns or can access the projects you want CloudThinker to use, then approve access.
After authorization, CloudThinker stores the OAuth tokens and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
Neon uses OAuth — there are no connection fields to enter manually. CloudThinker stores the OAuth access and refresh tokens automatically after the authorization flow completes.
| Field | Description |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **OAuth tokens** | Issued by Neon and stored automatically; no manual entry required |
***
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits the Neon access granted during OAuth.
* **Read operations** include listing projects, inspecting schemas, reviewing metadata, and analyzing slow queries.
* **Write operations** such as SQL execution, branch changes, migrations, Neon Auth changes, and Data API provisioning require matching Neon access **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Project discovery** | Discover Neon projects, shared projects, organizations, computes, and tables |
| **Schema inspection** | Inspect schemas and table metadata |
| **Query analysis** | Review slow queries and suggest optimizations |
| **SQL execution** | Run SQL or transactions only after explicit user approval |
| **Branch management** | Manage branches, migrations, and Neon Auth — each requires approval |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony list my Neon projects and summarize their schemas
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony review slow queries on the production-db project and #recommend optimizations
@tony inspect the schema for the users table in the main branch
@tony list all available tables and branches on the analytics project
```
***
## Troubleshooting
You may be signed in to the wrong Neon account, or your browser session may not be signed in to Neon. Sign in to the intended Neon account and retry the CloudThinker Neon connection flow.
Only one OAuth Neon connection is allowed per workspace. Use the existing Neon connection or remove it before reconnecting.
The OAuth flow may have been completed with a Neon account that lacks access to those projects. Reconnect using the Neon account that owns or has access to the projects.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Approval for writes** — keep SQL, branches, migrations, Auth, and Data API changes approval-gated in CloudThinker
- **Reconnect carefully** — remove the existing workspace connection before switching Neon accounts
***
## Related
Connect custom tools and services with MCP
Database analysis and optimization
# Netlify
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/netlify
Connect Netlify to CloudThinker for project inventory, deploy health checks, form intake audits, and extension inspection
Connect your Netlify account to enable CloudThinker agents to list teams and projects, check deploy state, read form submissions, and inspect extensions — plus approval-gated changes like starting a deploy or updating project settings.
Netlify authenticates with a **personal access token**. The token carries the same access as the Netlify user who created it, so that user's teams define what the agent can reach. No OAuth flow is required.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Netlify account** with access to the teams and projects you want to investigate.
* A **personal access token** created from that account.
* Permission to create tokens in Netlify user settings.
Create the token from an account whose team membership matches what CloudThinker needs. Read operations never mutate Netlify resources — every write is approval-gated.
***
## Setup
In Netlify, open your **user settings** and go to **OAuth applications → Personal access tokens**. Create a new token:
* **Description**: `cloudthinker`
* **Expiration**: choose a lifetime and plan to rotate
Copy the token immediately — Netlify shows it only once.
Navigate to **Connections → Netlify** and enter:
* **Personal access token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token with Netlify and shows a **Connected** status with your site count.
Copy the personal access token immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new token if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **NETLIFY\_PERSONAL\_ACCESS\_TOKEN** | Netlify personal access token for the team whose projects CloudThinker should inspect | — |
***
## Required permissions
A Netlify personal access token inherits the permissions of the user who created it — there is no per-scope selection at creation time. Create it from an account that belongs to only the teams CloudThinker should reach, and give that account the smallest team role that still allows reading projects, deploys, forms, and extensions.
Follow least privilege: use a dedicated Netlify user rather than an owner account, set an expiration, and rotate the token on the same schedule as your other credentials.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Netlify teams, projects, and deploys.
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account & Teams** | Read the authenticated user, list teams, and inspect a single team |
| **Projects** | List projects and inspect a project's configuration, URL, and current deploy |
| **Deploys** | Inspect a deploy or the current deploy for a project, and flag failed or stale deploys |
| **Forms** | List the forms configured on a project with their submission counts |
| **Extensions** | List extensions and read full extension details |
| **Changes** | Start deploys, create projects, change project settings, manage form submissions and environment variables, and change extension state — **requires approval** |
Every Netlify operation that is not a read is approval-gated. CloudThinker states the effect and the exact inputs, then waits for your confirmation before running it.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the Netlify connection and list my teams and projects
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Netlify projects with their current deploy state and #report as a table
@alex which Netlify projects have a failed or stale production deploy — #recommend what to fix first
@alex audit Netlify Forms across my projects and #report which ones collect submissions
```
***
## Troubleshooting
CloudThinker verifies the token against the Netlify API before saving the connection, and Netlify answered 401 or 403. Reissue the token in Netlify user settings and reconnect.
The connection no longer holds a usable token. Confirm it still shows **Connected**, then reissue the personal access token and reconnect.
The token's user cannot see that project. Confirm the account that created the token belongs to the team owning it, then reissue the token from an account with access and reconnect.
Netlify answered 429. Retry later, and scope requests to a single team or project so the agent makes fewer calls per run.
Writes need explicit approval in the same turn. Approve the action when prompted; a rejected call is final and the agent will not retry it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Set token expiration** — choose an expiration when creating the token and plan to rotate it; Netlify tokens do not auto-rotate.
- **Approval for writes** — keep deploys, project settings, environment variables, and extension changes approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Related
Similar setup for Vercel projects and deployments
How approval-gated actions work
# Okta
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/okta
Connect Okta to CloudThinker for identity access reviews, sign-in investigation, and approval-gated group management
Connect your Okta organization to let CloudThinker agents review users, groups, application access, and sign-in activity. Agents can also create CloudThinker-owned groups and change their exact memberships after you approve each write.
## Prerequisites
* An Okta administrator who can create an API token.
* Read access to the users, groups, applications, and System Log data agents should investigate.
* Group-management permission if agents should create groups or change membership.
An Okta API token carries the permissions of the administrator who creates it. Use a dedicated administrator with the least-privilege role that covers the intended reviews and groups.
## Setup
In the Okta Admin Console, go to **Security → API → Tokens**, select **Create token**, and name it `cloudthinker`.
Copy the value immediately. Okta shows it once and expires a token that goes 30 days without a request.
Copy the organization domain from the top-right corner of the Admin Console. Use only the hostname, such as `acme.okta.com` or `acme.okta-emea.com`.
Do not include `https://`, a port, a path, or credentials. Prefer the plain organization domain over the `-admin` console domain.
Go to **Connections → Okta** and enter:
* **Okta domain**: the organization hostname
* **API token**: the token you copied
Select **Connect**. CloudThinker reads the organization settings and shows **Connected** with the verified organization and status.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- |
| **Okta domain** | Bare Okta organization hostname, with no scheme or path | `acme.okta.com` |
| **API token** | Token from **Security → API → Tokens** | — |
Connection verification reads organization settings only.
## Required permissions
The API token inherits its creator's administrator roles. Assign the dedicated service account the **Read-only Administrator** role for users, groups, applications, organization settings, and the System Log.
If agents should manage CloudThinker-owned groups, add a custom administrator role with **Create groups**, **Manage group membership**, and **Edit users' group membership**. Constrain the membership permissions to the intended group resources; Okta requires **Create groups** at organization scope.
| Use | Okta access needed |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Access reviews** | Read-only Administrator |
| **Sign-in investigation** | Read-only Administrator |
| **Create managed groups** | Create groups |
| **Add or remove members** | Manage group membership and Edit users' group membership |
An HTTP 403 means the token's administrator role cannot read or change that resource. It does not mean the resource is absent.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Identity inventory** | Read bounded samples of users and groups, including user status |
| **Person access review** | Trace one exact user to their groups, applications, and recent events |
| **Sign-in investigation** | Review bounded System Log windows for failures, lockouts, actors, and client IPs |
| **Application access** | Compare direct-user and group assignments, including inactive applications with assignments |
| **Group creation** | Create a CloudThinker-owned `OKTA_GROUP` after approval |
| **Membership control** | Add or remove one exact user from one exact CloudThinker-owned group after approval |
Okta list endpoints return cursors, not organization totals. Agents report bounded rows and whether more pages exist.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run Okta discovery and #report the users, groups, applications, and credential capabilities in the bounded result
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex review what alex@example.com can access in Okta over the last 7 days
@alex investigate failed Okta sign-ins in the last 24 hours and group them by outcome
@alex create an Okta group named CloudThinker-OnCall and add alex@example.com after I approve each change
```
## Write access
Okta write access is not general administration. Every write needs your approval and a fresh discovery read against the selected organization.
| Supported write | Safety boundary |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Create a group | Creates an `OKTA_GROUP` with a signed CloudThinker ownership receipt bound to its immutable group ID |
| Add one member | Requires the exact group ID, exact current group name, valid ownership receipt, and exact user login or ID |
| Remove one member | Uses the same checks and verifies the resulting membership state |
Agents refuse group update or deletion, user lifecycle changes, factors, credentials, sessions, tokens, administrator roles, application assignments, policies, and changes to unowned groups. Multiple Okta connections stay read-only until one is selected.
## Troubleshooting
The token is wrong, revoked, or expired after 30 days without a request. Check **Security → API → Tokens**, then reconnect with a current token.
The token is valid, but its creator's administrator role lacks access to the endpoint. Give the dedicated administrator the required read or group-management permission, create a new token if needed, and reconnect.
Enter only the Okta-hosted hostname. Remove the scheme, port, path, query, and credentials. Prefer `acme.okta.com` over `acme-admin.okta.com`.
Wait for the rate-limit window to reset before running the request again. Do not retry immediately.
Confirm that the agent selected one exact Okta connection, that the token's administrator can manage groups, and that the target is a CloudThinker-owned `OKTA_GROUP`. Other Okta mutations are intentionally unsupported.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated administrator** — the token inherits its creator's access, so use a least-privilege account instead of a personal super administrator.
- **Bounded writes** — approval alone does not grant arbitrary mutation; scripts restrict changes to signed CloudThinker-owned groups and verify the final state.
## Related
Identity and access management for Keycloak
Control how agent write tools request approval
# Connections
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/overview
Connect your cloud providers, databases, and services to CloudThinker for unified AI-powered operations
Connections give CloudThinker agents access to your infrastructure through the [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](/guide/connections/mcp). Connect a service once and every agent — [Alex](/guide/agents/alex), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony), [Kai](/guide/agents/kai), and [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) — can use it without separate setup.
No AWS or Kubernetes credentials yet? Look for **Demo available** in the connection details, then choose the read-only demo in the connection dialog. When it is ready, CloudThinker marks it as **Demo** and opens chat with an editable overview request that names the AWS account or Kubernetes cluster.
## Add a connection
Browse the catalog below and open the guide for the service you want to connect.
Follow the guide to create least-privilege credentials — read-only wherever possible.
In CloudThinker, navigate to **Connections** in the sidebar — or open **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) and select **Connections** — then select the service and enter the credentials. CloudThinker tests the credentials in the background, so expect a **Testing** status first, then **Connected**.
Ask an agent a question against the new connection. Each guide includes a verification prompt.
## Cloud platforms
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [AWS](/guide/connections/aws) | Cost analysis, security auditing, and infrastructure management via IAM role or access keys |
|
| [Google Cloud](/guide/connections/gcp) | Resource management, cost optimization, and security monitoring via service account |
|
| [Azure](/guide/connections/azure) | Multi-cloud operations, cost analysis, and compliance monitoring |
|
| [Firebase](/guide/connections/firebase) | Project and app inventory, SDK config lookup, and security-rule audits |
|
| [Cloudflare](/guide/connections/cloudflare) | DNS management, CDN optimization, and security configuration |
|
| [Vercel](/guide/connections/vercel) | Project inventory, deployment inspection, runtime log triage, and domain auditing |
|
| [Netlify](/guide/connections/netlify) | Project inventory, deploy health checks, form intake audits, and extension inspection |
|
| [Heroku](/guide/connections/heroku) | App and dyno inventory, log triage, add-on and pipeline review, and approval-gated platform controls |
|
| [DigitalOcean](/guide/connections/digitalocean) | Droplet and app inventory, database and Kubernetes drilldowns, exposure review, and billing context |
|
| [Fly.io](/guide/connections/flyio) | Read-only app, machine, volume, and region inventory across an organization |
|
| [GreenNode](/guide/connections/greennode) | IAM, VKS, vLB, vMonitor, and vServer reads with approval-gated VKS and vServer changes |
## Infrastructure & access
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [Kubernetes](/guide/connections/kubernetes) | Workload analysis, resource optimization, and cluster operations on EKS, GKE, AKS, or self-managed clusters |
|
| [Rancher](/guide/connections/rancher) | Read-only cluster and project inventory, cluster and node health, and a review of who has Rancher access |
|
| [Pulumi](/guide/connections/pulumi) | Stack inventory, resource search, policy review, and approval-gated deployments through Pulumi Cloud |
|
| [HCP Terraform](/guide/connections/terraform) | Connect HCP Terraform to inspect workspaces and recent runs, with approval-gated workspace controls |
|
| [SSH](/guide/connections/ssh) | Shell commands on your own servers with key-based authentication and trusted host keys |
|
| [HashiCorp Vault](/guide/connections/vault) | KV secret reads, dynamic credentials, and policy, token, and health audits |
|
| [Keycloak](/guide/connections/keycloak) | Realm inspection, client audits, and user and role reviews |
|
| [Backstage](/guide/connections/backstage) | Software catalog inventory, service ownership and dependency context, catalog metadata gaps, and approval-gated location registration |
|
| [Okta](/guide/connections/okta) | Identity access reviews, sign-in investigation, and approval-gated managed-group membership |
## Databases
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [PostgreSQL](/guide/connections/postgresql) | Query optimization, performance tuning, and analytics |
|
| [CockroachDB](/guide/connections/cockroachdb) | Bounded SQL analysis and approval-gated row changes with separate credentials |
|
| [MySQL](/guide/connections/mysql) | Query analysis, performance monitoring, and slow-query triage |
|
| [MongoDB](/guide/connections/mongodb) | Document query analysis, performance tuning, and operational insights |
|
| [Redis](/guide/connections/redis) | Cache performance monitoring across self-hosted, Upstash, or Redis Cloud deployments |
|
| [ClickHouse](/guide/connections/clickhouse) | Column-store schema inspection and analytical queries on ClickHouse Cloud or self-hosted clusters, read-only by default |
|
| [Apache Cassandra](/guide/connections/cassandra) | Keyspace and table inventory, replication and TTL audits, driver-visible ring health, and approval-gated row and schema changes |
|
| [Snowflake](/guide/connections/snowflake) | Warehouse credit analysis, slow-query triage, storage overhead review, and optional warehouse suspend and resume |
|
| [Neon](/guide/connections/neon) | Serverless Postgres project discovery, schema inspection, and query tuning via OAuth MCP |
|
| [Elasticsearch](/guide/connections/elasticsearch) | Log analysis, index management, and search performance optimization |
|
| [InfluxDB](/guide/connections/influxdb) | Bucket and database inventory, retention review, and bounded time-series queries on InfluxDB 2 and 3 |
|
| [Microsoft SQL Server](/guide/connections/mssql) | Schema discovery, record inspection and aggregation, and approval-gated row changes on SQL Server or Azure SQL |
## Messaging & streaming
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [Kafka](/guide/connections/kafka) | Confluent Cloud stream monitoring and management with scope-based credentials |
|
| [RabbitMQ](/guide/connections/rabbitmq) | Queue depth, consumer lag, DLQ analysis, and cluster health via the Management API |
|
| [Flespi](/guide/connections/flespi) | GPS device management, fleet telemetry, and IoT data analysis |
## Observability & monitoring
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [Grafana](/guide/connections/grafana) | Dashboard integration, metric analysis, and alerting |
|
| [Prometheus](/guide/connections/prometheus) | Read-only PromQL queries, metric discovery, scrape-target health, and active-alert inspection |
|
| [Datadog](/guide/connections/datadog) | Log search, metric queries, infrastructure monitoring, and incident investigation |
|
| [New Relic](/guide/connections/newrelic) | APM, NRQL queries, alerting, and incident investigation |
|
| [Dynatrace](/guide/connections/dynatrace) | DQL queries, problem investigation, and vulnerability review |
|
| [AppDynamics](/guide/connections/appdynamics) | Application health monitoring, health-rule violation triage, and error-event analysis |
|
| [Coralogix](/guide/connections/coralogix) | Log search, metrics, traces, and incident triage |
|
| [SigNoz](/guide/connections/signoz) | Service latency investigation, log search, alert-rule audits, and trace drill-downs |
|
| [Honeycomb](/guide/connections/honeycomb) | Trace queries, BubbleUp root-cause analysis, and approval-gated board and trigger changes |
|
| [Splunk Observability](/guide/connections/splunkobservability) | Read-only APM investigation, service latency and error breakdowns, exemplar traces, metric discovery, and SignalFlow queries |
|
| [Sumo Logic](/guide/connections/sumologic) | Read-only log search, monitor review, resource discovery, and Cloud SIEM insight triage |
|
| [Graylog](/guide/connections/graylog) | Read-only log search, cluster and stream inspection, and message count analysis |
|
| [Zabbix](/guide/connections/zabbix) | Infrastructure monitoring, alerting, and performance analysis |
|
| [Better Stack](/guide/connections/betterstack) | Uptime monitoring, incident triage, on-call schedules, and log search via OAuth |
|
| [Rollbar](/guide/connections/rollbar) | Error triage, top-error tracking, and deployment-correlated investigation |
|
| [Langfuse](/guide/connections/langfuse) | LLM trace investigation, conversation debugging, and prompt auditing |
|
| [PostHog](/guide/connections/posthog) | Product analytics, error triage, HogQL queries, and approval-gated flag, insight, dashboard, and survey changes |
|
| [Splunk Platform](/guide/connections/splunkplatform) | Read-only SPL searches, index and event-volume review, and saved search inspection |
## CI/CD & code quality
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [Jenkins](/guide/connections/jenkins) | Build pipeline monitoring, job analysis, and deployment tracking |
|
| [CircleCI](/guide/connections/circleci) | Pipeline status, build log triage, and approval-gated pipeline controls |
|
| [Buildkite](/guide/connections/buildkite) | Pipeline health, failed-build triage, and approval-gated build controls |
|
| [Docker Hub](/guide/connections/dockerhub) | Namespace and repository inventory, tag metadata, and approval-gated description updates |
|
| [ArgoCD](/guide/connections/argocd) | GitOps operations and application management |
|
| [Ansible AWX](/guide/connections/awx) | Job template launches, job monitoring, and inventory management |
|
| [SonarQube](/guide/connections/sonarqube) | Code quality analysis, security scanning, and technical debt tracking |
|
| [GitGuardian](/guide/connections/gitguardian) | Secrets detection, incident investigation, and honeytoken monitoring |
|
| [Harness](/guide/connections/harness) | Delivery health, failed-execution diagnosis, cloud cost insights, and approval-gated resource authoring |
## Incident & ticketing
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [PagerDuty](/guide/connections/pagerduty) | On-call management, incident alerting, and escalation policy integration |
|
| [Rootly](/guide/connections/rootly) | Live incident triage, alert review, and approval-gated incident action items |
|
| [ServiceNow](/guide/connections/servicenow) | Incident, change request, problem, and CMDB management |
|
| [Atlassian](/guide/connections/atlassian) | Jira issue tracking and Confluence knowledge base |
|
| [Jira Service Management](/guide/connections/jsm) | Operations alert triage, on-call lookup, and incident sync |
|
| [Backlog](/guide/connections/backlog) | Issue tracking, milestone planning, wiki, and pull-request context |
|
| [monday.com](/guide/connections/monday) | Board review, stalled-work analysis, sprint reporting, and approval-gated item updates |
|
| [ClickUp](/guide/connections/clickup) | Workspace discovery, task triage, workload review, and approval-gated task changes through OAuth MCP |
|
| [Asana](/guide/connections/asana) | Project health, workload review, delivery investigation, and task management after approval |
## Custom MCP
| | Connection | What agents do |
| -------------- | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
| [Custom MCP](/guide/connections/mcp) | Any tool or API that exposes an MCP server, immediately available to all agents |
If a service isn't in the catalog, add it as a [custom MCP connection](/guide/connections/mcp) — no connector code required.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
## Related
Set up the most common starting connection with an IAM role or access keys.
Extend agents with any tool that speaks the Model Context Protocol.
See what Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai, and Anna do with your connections.
Let agents act on connected services in Manual or Auto mode.
# PostgreSQL
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/postgresql
Connect PostgreSQL databases to CloudThinker for query analysis, index optimization, and performance monitoring
Connect your PostgreSQL databases to enable [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to analyze queries, optimize performance, and monitor database health.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| --------------------------------- | ------------------------------ |
| **Self-hosted PostgreSQL** | 12.x, 13.x, 14.x, 15.x, 16.x |
| **AWS RDS PostgreSQL** | All versions |
| **AWS Aurora PostgreSQL** | All versions |
| **Google Cloud SQL** | All PostgreSQL versions |
| **Azure Database for PostgreSQL** | Flexible Server, Single Server |
## Prerequisites
* A PostgreSQL instance reachable from CloudThinker over the network.
* Admin access to create a dedicated user and grant privileges.
* The `pg_stat_statements` extension installed if you want query-level analysis (required for slow-query data).
## Setup
Connect to your PostgreSQL instance using an admin account:
```bash theme={null}
psql -h your-host -U postgres -d your-database
```
Create a dedicated user for CloudThinker:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER cloudthinker_readonly WITH PASSWORD 'your-secure-password';
```
Allow connection and schema usage:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE your_database TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA information_schema TO cloudthinker_readonly;
```
Grant SELECT on all tables and views, including future ones:
```sql theme={null}
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA information_schema TO cloudthinker_readonly;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public
GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO cloudthinker_readonly;
```
This extension is required for query analysis:
```sql theme={null}
-- Enable extension (requires superuser)
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS pg_stat_statements;
-- Grant access to the user
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_statements TO cloudthinker_readonly;
```
For RDS/Aurora, add to your parameter group:
```
shared_preload_libraries = 'pg_stat_statements'
```
Ensure CloudThinker can reach your database:
* Add CloudThinker IPs to your security group or firewall
* For RDS: enable public access or use VPC peering
Navigate to **Connections → PostgreSQL** and enter:
* **Host**: your database hostname or IP
* **Port**: database port (default: `5432`)
* **Database**: database name
* **Username**: `cloudthinker_readonly`
* **Password**: the password you set above
* **SSL mode**: `require` (recommended)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- |
| **Host** | Database hostname or IP | — |
| **Port** | PostgreSQL port | `5432` |
| **Database** | Database name | — |
| **Username** | Dedicated user, e.g. `cloudthinker_readonly` | — |
| **Password** | User password | — |
| **SSL mode** | `disable`, `allow`, `prefer`, `require`, `verify-ca`, `verify-full` | `require` |
| **Connection timeout** | Seconds to wait for connection | `10` |
| **Statement timeout** | Max query execution time in ms | `30000` |
Connection string format:
```
postgresql://cloudthinker_readonly:your-secure-password@your-host:5432/your-database
```
## Required permissions
### Minimum
```sql theme={null}
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE dbname TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO cloudthinker_readonly;
```
### Recommended (full analysis)
```sql theme={null}
-- All of the above, plus:
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_statements TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_activity TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_user_tables TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON pg_stat_user_indexes TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT SELECT ON pg_statio_user_tables TO cloudthinker_readonly;
GRANT pg_read_all_stats TO cloudthinker_readonly; -- PostgreSQL 14+
```
Start with the minimum grants and add the recommended stats grants to unlock query-level analysis and cache hit reporting.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| **Query analysis** | Identify slow queries, analyze execution plans |
| **Index recommendations** | Find missing indexes, identify unused indexes |
| **Performance metrics** | Monitor connections, I/O, cache hit rates |
| **Table statistics** | Analyze table bloat, dead tuples, vacuum status |
| **Replication monitoring** | Check lag and streaming status on replicas |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report check PostgreSQL connection health and list active database sessions
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report analyze slow queries on the production PostgreSQL instance
@tony #recommend find missing indexes on the orders table
@tony #dashboard show database performance metrics including cache hit rates
```
## Troubleshooting
* Verify host and port are correct
* Check your security group or firewall allows CloudThinker IPs
* For RDS: ensure "Publicly accessible" is enabled or use VPC peering
* Confirm PostgreSQL is listening on the correct interface
* Verify username and password are correct
* Check `pg_hba.conf` allows the connection method
* Ensure the user has `CONNECT` privilege on the database
* Verify the extension is installed: `SELECT * FROM pg_extension WHERE extname = 'pg_stat_statements';`
* Check `shared_preload_libraries` includes `pg_stat_statements`
* Restart PostgreSQL after changing `shared_preload_libraries`
* For RDS: modify the parameter group and reboot the instance
* Verify the user has `SELECT` on the required tables
* Grant `pg_read_all_stats` role for PostgreSQL 14+
* Check schema permissions with `\dn+` in psql
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **SSL required** — always use SSL mode `require` or higher to encrypt data in transit.
- **Minimal grants** — grant only `SELECT` to the CloudThinker user; never grant write access.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Similar setup for MySQL databases
# Pulumi
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/pulumi
Connect Pulumi to CloudThinker for stack inventory, resource search, policy review, and approval-gated deployments
Connect your Pulumi account to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) inspect stacks, search the resources Pulumi manages, review policy violations, and look up Registry schemas through Pulumi's hosted MCP server. Pulumi uses **OAuth**, so you never paste a Pulumi access token into CloudThinker.
## Prerequisites
* A **Pulumi Cloud account** that belongs to the organization you want CloudThinker to inspect.
* Permission to authorize CloudThinker through Pulumi's OAuth flow.
The tools read the organization your Pulumi account defaults to. Authorize with the account that belongs to the organization holding the stacks you care about, or the agent reports an empty inventory.
## Setup
Go to **Connections → Pulumi** in your workspace.
Click **Connect** to open Pulumi's authorization page.
Sign in to the Pulumi account that can see the stacks you want, then approve access.
CloudThinker stores the OAuth tokens and the connection shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
Pulumi uses OAuth, so there are no fields to fill in. CloudThinker stores the tokens automatically once the authorization completes.
| Field | Description |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **OAuth tokens** | Issued by Pulumi and stored automatically; no manual entry required |
| **MCP endpoint** | Pulumi's hosted server at `mcp.ai.pulumi.com`; fixed, not configurable |
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits the Pulumi access granted during OAuth.
* **Read operations** cover stacks, managed resources, policy violations, organization members, Neo task history, and Registry schemas.
* **Deployments and Pulumi Neo** need matching Pulumi access **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker, because both change cloud resources.
Authorize with an account that reads the organization rather than one that administers it. Read access covers every capability below except the two that already ask you first.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Stack inventory** | List stacks in the organization with their project and last update |
| **Resource search** | Find Pulumi-managed resources by name, type, project, or stack |
| **Policy review** | List policy violations and group them by enforcement level |
| **Registry lookup** | Read provider resource and function schemas from the Pulumi Registry |
| **Organization members** | List the members and admins of the organization |
| **Neo tasks** | Read Pulumi Neo task history; driving Neo requires approval |
| **AWS deployment** | Deploy to AWS only after you approve the call |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list my Pulumi stacks and the organization they belong to
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report which Pulumi stacks have mandatory policy violations
@alex #report find every S3 bucket Pulumi manages and name the stack that owns it
@alex #recommend read the aws:s3/bucket schema and list the settings we leave unset
```
## Approval-gated tools
Four Pulumi tools change real state, so CloudThinker asks before each call: **deploy to AWS**, and the three tools that drive Pulumi Neo (bridge, continue a task, reset a conversation). The agent names the stack and the effect, then waits for your answer.
Everything else on this connection reads. Reading a stack never triggers a prompt, so an inventory or policy question completes in one turn.
Approve a deployment only when you recognize the stack in the prompt. A Pulumi deployment provisions real cloud resources and bills your cloud account.
## Troubleshooting
Your browser may be signed in to a different Pulumi account. Sign in to the intended account at app.pulumi.com, then retry **Connect** in CloudThinker.
Pulumi answers for the organization your account defaults to. Confirm that account is a member of the organization holding the stacks, then reconnect with the right account.
The token reaches only the organizations your Pulumi user belongs to. Add the user to the organization in Pulumi, or reconnect with an account that already belongs to it.
That is the approval gate, and it is per call. Answer the prompt in the conversation. See [Approval](/guide/approval) for how CloudThinker handles gated tools.
CloudThinker exposes a reviewed list of Pulumi tools. A tool Pulumi releases later stays hidden until CloudThinker reviews it and decides whether it needs approval.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Keep the gate on** — leave deployment and Pulumi Neo approval-gated; they are the only tools here that can change your cloud.
- **Reconnect deliberately** — the connection reaches whatever the authorizing account reaches, so switch accounts by removing the connection and authorizing again.
## Related
Cloud infrastructure and cost analysis
How CloudThinker gates tools that change state
# RabbitMQ
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/rabbitmq
Connect RabbitMQ to CloudThinker via the Management HTTP API for queue depth, consumer lag, DLQ analysis, cluster and node health, and alarm monitoring
Connect your RabbitMQ brokers to enable [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to monitor queue depths, analyze consumer lag, inspect dead-letter queues, and track cluster and node health.
RabbitMQ authenticates with a **username and password** over the Management HTTP API (default port `15672`) — the same API the RabbitMQ management UI uses, so no AMQP client setup is required.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Self-hosted RabbitMQ** | 3.8+ with the management plugin enabled |
| **Managed RabbitMQ** | CloudAMQP and other providers exposing the Management HTTP API |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **RabbitMQ broker** reachable from CloudThinker on its management port (default `15672`, or `15671` for HTTPS).
* The **management plugin enabled**. On self-hosted brokers:
```bash theme={null}
rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
```
* A **broker user** with the `monitoring` or `administrator` tag, so the Management HTTP API returns queue, node, and cluster data.
The `monitoring` tag is enough for all read and health-check capabilities. Only grant `administrator` if you want the agent to run the gated write operations (purge/delete queues, delete exchanges, update definitions) — these always require in-app approval. See [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
***
## Setup
On a self-hosted broker, enable the management plugin and confirm it is listening:
```bash theme={null}
rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
curl -u : http://localhost:15672/api/overview
```
Managed providers such as CloudAMQP expose the Management HTTP API by default — skip to the next step.
Create a dedicated user for CloudThinker and tag it `monitoring`:
```bash theme={null}
rabbitmqctl add_user cloudthinker
rabbitmqctl set_user_tags cloudthinker monitoring
rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p / cloudthinker "" "" ".*"
```
The `monitoring` tag grants read access to all queues, exchanges, nodes, and cluster health across virtual hosts.
Ensure CloudThinker can reach the broker at `:15672` (or `:15671` for TLS). Open the management port on your firewall or security group for CloudThinker's egress.
Navigate to **Connections → RabbitMQ** and enter:
* **Username**: the broker user (e.g. `cloudthinker`)
* **Password**: the user's password
* **Host**: the broker hostname or IP (host only — no scheme or port)
* **Management Port**: the management API port (default `15672`)
* **Use TLS**: enable for an HTTPS management API and AMQPS
* **Log Level**: connector log verbosity (`info` by default)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials against the Management HTTP API and shows a **Connected** status.
Set **Host** to the hostname only — do not include `http://`, `https://`, or the port. Use the **Use TLS** toggle to select HTTP vs. HTTPS, and **Management Port** for the port.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- |
| **RABBITMQ\_USERNAME** | Broker user with the `monitoring` or `administrator` tag | — |
| **RABBITMQ\_PASSWORD** | Password for the broker user | — |
| **RABBITMQ\_HOST** | Broker hostname or IP (no scheme, no port) | — |
| **RABBITMQ\_MANAGEMENT\_PORT** | Management HTTP API port | `15672` |
| **RABBITMQ\_USE\_TLS** | `Disabled` for HTTP + AMQP, `Enabled` for HTTPS + AMQPS | `Disabled` |
| **LOG\_LEVEL** | Connector log verbosity: `debug`, `info`, `warn`, `error` | `info` |
The management API listens on `15672` for HTTP and `15671` for HTTPS. When you enable **Use TLS**, set **Management Port** to your TLS management port.
***
## Required permissions
The connecting user needs a management tag so the HTTP API returns broker data:
| Tag | What it unlocks |
| --------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `monitoring` | Read access to queues, exchanges, bindings, connections, channels, nodes, cluster, and health checks — covers all monitoring and diagnostic capabilities. |
| `administrator` | Everything `monitoring` provides, plus the gated write operations (purge/delete queue, delete exchange, update definition). |
Follow least privilege: the `monitoring` tag is enough for queue, consumer-lag, DLQ, and cluster-health investigation. Only use `administrator` if you intend to run the gated write operations described below.
### Write operations require approval
This connection has four mutative tools enabled. They are always gated behind **in-app approval** — the agent must request your confirmation before any of them run:
* `delete_queue` — delete a queue
* `purge_queue` — drop all messages in a queue
* `delete_exchange` — delete an exchange
* `update_definition` — modify broker definitions
All other capabilities are read-only. Destructive operations also require the broker user to hold the `administrator` tag with write permissions on the target virtual host.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Queue depth & message rates** | Snapshot queue depth, ready vs. unacked, and publish/deliver rates |
| **Consumer lag** | Identify queues with high consumer lag or zero consumers |
| **Dead-letter analysis** | Inspect dead-letter queues for poison messages and error patterns |
| **Cluster & node health** | Check node status, local and global alarms, and quorum-critical queues |
| **Alarm & certificate checks** | Detect brokers in alarm and certificates nearing expiration |
| **Gated write operations** | Purge or delete queues, delete exchanges, and update definitions — each requires in-app approval |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony show RabbitMQ cluster status and list all queues with their current depths
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony check all queues for abnormal depth or zero-consumer conditions and #alert on any queue growing faster than 500 msg/s
@tony identify queues with high consumer lag and inspect their dead-letter queues for poison messages, then #recommend remediation steps
@tony check cluster node status, alarms, quorum-critical queues, and certificate expiration; #alert on any node down or in alarm
```
***
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the broker is reachable from CloudThinker at `:15672` (or your TLS management port).
* Confirm the management port — not the AMQP port `5672` — is open on your firewall or security group.
* For self-hosted brokers, ensure RabbitMQ is bound to an accessible interface, not just `127.0.0.1`.
The management plugin is not enabled. Run `rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management` and retry. On managed providers, confirm the Management HTTP API is exposed for your instance.
* Verify the username and password.
* Confirm the user has the `monitoring` or `administrator` tag: `rabbitmqctl set_user_tags monitoring`.
* A user with no management tag can authenticate to AMQP but is rejected by the Management HTTP API.
* Make sure **Use TLS** matches the broker: enable it only when the management API serves HTTPS (typically port `15671`).
* If **Use TLS** is enabled but the port serves plain HTTP (or vice versa), the connection fails — align the toggle and **Management Port**.
* The `monitoring` user may lack permissions on some virtual hosts. Grant read permissions on the vhosts you want visible: `rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p "" "" ".*"`.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated user** — create a separate `cloudthinker` broker user; never reuse the `guest` or admin account
- **TLS in transit** — enable **Use TLS** so management API traffic is encrypted between CloudThinker and the broker
***
## Related
Database-focused monitoring and optimization agent
Setup instructions for Apache Kafka streaming
# Rancher
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/rancher
Connect Rancher to CloudThinker for read-only cluster and project inventory, cluster and node health, and a review of who has access
Connect your Rancher server to let [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) (Kubernetes) list the clusters, projects, and nodes Rancher manages, check the health conditions of one cluster and the readiness of its nodes, and review who holds Rancher access to a cluster or a project.
Rancher authenticates with an **API key bearer token**. The connection is **read-only** and deliberately narrow: agents can describe what Rancher manages and can change none of it.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Rancher server** on **2.8 or later**, reachable from CloudThinker over **HTTPS**. 2.8 is the first release to support the Rancher Kubernetes API, which is the only thing this connection reads.
* A **dedicated Rancher user** for CloudThinker with read access to the clusters and projects you want inspected — see [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
* A **Rancher API key** for that user.
* Optional: a **PEM certificate bundle** if your Rancher certificate is issued by a private CA.
Create a dedicated Rancher user rather than reusing a person's account. The token inherits that user's access, so a dedicated reader keeps the scope visible and revocable in one place.
***
## Setup
Add a user for CloudThinker and give it read access to the clusters and projects it should see. Rancher's built-in **Cluster Member** role lets a user view most cluster-level resources, and the **Read Only** project role lets a user view everything in a project without creating, updating, or deleting anything. For a tighter scope, build a custom role — see [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
Sign in as that user, open the **user avatar → Account & API Keys** in the upper right, and click **Create API Key**.
Set an **Expiry**. Rancher caps it at the server's `auth-token-max-ttl-minutes` setting and silently uses that cap when you ask for longer.
Leave **Scope** as **No Scope**. A scoped key works only against the Kubernetes API of the cluster you scope it to, not against the Rancher API this connection reads. Narrow the access through the user's roles instead, not through the key.
Copy the **Bearer Token**. Rancher shows it once, along with the Access Key and Secret Key.
Navigate to **Connections → Rancher** and enter:
* **Rancher URL**: the address you sign in to, such as `https://rancher.example.com`
* **API token**: the Bearer Token you just copied
* **CA certificate bundle**: leave blank unless Rancher uses a private CA
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads a single cluster from Rancher to verify the token, and the status turns **Connected**.
Enter the **Rancher address only** — the same one you sign in to, such as `https://rancher.example.com`. Do not append an API path, a query string, a fragment, or a username and password. CloudThinker adds the API path itself and rejects a URL that carries anything else.
A Rancher API key stops working at its expiry, and the connection then fails with a rejected-token error. Set an expiry that matches your rotation schedule and update the connection with a new token before the old one lapses.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| **Rancher URL** | The address you sign in to, with no API path, query, fragment, or credentials | `https://rancher.example.com` |
| **API token** | The Bearer Token from the API key you created | — |
| **CA certificate bundle** | Optional. The PEM certificates of a private certificate authority | — |
The Rancher URL must use `https`. The token is sent with every request, so plain `http` is rejected.
**TLS verification cannot be turned off.** There is no skip-verification option, because the token is sent to whichever server answers. If Rancher uses a private CA, paste that CA's certificates into **CA certificate bundle** instead. The field accepts PEM certificates only — it must begin with `-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----` and end with `-----END CERTIFICATE-----`, stay under 256 KB, and contain no private key.
***
## Required permissions
The token needs **read** access to the Rancher management resources the connection inspects:
| Resource | Used for |
| ------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| **Clusters** | Managed-cluster inventory and health conditions |
| **Nodes** | Node readiness for one cluster |
| **Projects** | Project inventory and which cluster each belongs to |
| **Cluster and project role bindings** | Who holds Rancher access to a cluster or a project |
Start from a built-in role and narrow it:
| Role | What it gives |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Cluster Member** | Views most cluster-level resources and can create new projects |
| **Read Only** (project) | Views everything in a project, and cannot create, update, or delete |
| **Custom role** | Grants only the reads above, when Cluster Member is wider than you want |
No Rancher permission beyond read is ever needed. There is no Rancher action an agent can ask you to approve, because there is no Rancher action it can take at all — granting write access only widens what a leaked token could do.
***
## What this connection cannot reach
The connection can only ask Rancher to read, and only from the small set of management resources listed above. Everything below stays out of reach even when the token itself is allowed to read it:
* **Secrets** and **kubeconfigs**
* **API tokens** and **cluster registration tokens**
* **Cloud credentials** and **authentication settings**
* **Global settings**
* **Every change to Rancher** — creating, updating, deleting, or scaling anything
* The **older Rancher v3 API**, which the connection never calls
Ask an agent to change something in Rancher and it will tell you the connection cannot do it, and that nothing changed. It will not try another route.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can read what Rancher knows about your clusters.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Cluster inventory** | List the clusters Rancher manages, the projects on them, and their nodes |
| **Cluster health** | Report the current conditions of one named cluster and the readiness of its nodes |
| **Who has access** | Show which users, groups, and service accounts are granted a role on one cluster or project, and which role |
| **Project scope** | Show which cluster a project belongs to |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@kai summarize the clusters Rancher manages, their projects, and node health
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@kai check the health conditions and node readiness of the prod-sea cluster in Rancher and #report
@kai show who has Rancher access to the prod-sea cluster and #recommend anything to tighten
@kai list the Rancher projects on staging-cluster and which nodes are not ready
```
Answers are bounded so a broad question cannot pull everything Rancher manages: each lookup returns one page of at most **50** results. When Rancher does not report a total, agents say "returned 12" rather than "12 exist" — a full page is not proof that you have seen everything. Name the cluster or project you care about to get an exact answer.
Each message gets **one** look at Rancher. Ask two Rancher questions at once and the agent answers the second from what the first returned, rather than fetching again. Send a follow-up message when you want fresh data.
Agents read the roles granted **in Rancher** only. They do not inspect the RBAC rules inside the Kubernetes cluster itself, so they cannot tell you what a user can do once they are in. Use the [Kubernetes connection](/guide/connections/kubernetes) for that.
***
## Troubleshooting
The key expired, was deleted, or was copied incompletely. Rancher shows the Bearer Token only once, so create a new key under **Account & API Keys** and update the connection.
The token authenticated, but its Rancher user cannot read the clusters. Give that user the required read-only role on the clusters you want inspected, then test the connection again.
The URL points somewhere other than Rancher, or this Rancher is older than 2.8, the first release to support the Rancher Kubernetes API. Reconnect with the Rancher address only, such as `https://rancher.example.com`, and check your Rancher version.
Rancher, or a proxy or load balancer in front of it, returned HTTP 429. Wait, then ask one narrow question rather than several broad ones.
Nothing answered at that URL. Check the host, the network path from CloudThinker, and — if Rancher uses a private CA — that the CA certificate bundle is the one that issued its certificate.
The address you entered does not answer directly; something in front of it redirects elsewhere. CloudThinker never follows a redirect, because that would hand your token to a server you did not name. Point the connection at the address that serves Rancher itself.
The address is plain `http`, which would send the token in clear text. Serve Rancher over HTTPS and reconnect.
The bundle is not plain PEM certificates. It must begin with `-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----`, end with `-----END CERTIFICATE-----`, stay under 256 KB, and contain no private key. Paste the CA certificate chain only, never a server key.
The API token is empty, or it carries whitespace or quoting that cannot be sent safely in a request header. Re-copy the Bearer Token from Rancher without surrounding quotes or line breaks.
Either the token's user cannot see the rest, or the answer came from a single page of results. Check the user's cluster access first, then narrow the question to the cluster or project you care about.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **TLS verification is always on** — it cannot be disabled, so a private CA needs its bundle pasted in rather than a skipped check.
- **Narrow through roles, not the key** — a Rancher API key has no read-only setting, so what the token can see is exactly what its user can see. Give that user the least access it needs.
- **Watch the expiry** — a key that lapses silently breaks the connection; rotate it on schedule and update the connection with the new token.
- **Read-only by construction** — the connection can only ask Rancher to read, so no permission you grant turns it into a way to change anything.
***
## Related
Workload analysis, resource optimization, and cluster operations
Kubernetes-focused operations agent
# Redis
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/redis
Connect Redis to CloudThinker for cache performance monitoring across self-hosted, Upstash, or Redis Cloud deployments
Connect your Redis databases to enable [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) to inspect keyspace usage, analyze command patterns, and monitor database health.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| **Self-hosted Redis** | 6.x, 7.x (vanilla and Redis Stack) |
| **Upstash Redis** | All plan tiers |
| **Redis Cloud** | All plan tiers |
## Prerequisites
* A Redis instance reachable from CloudThinker over the network.
* Admin access to create an ACL user (self-hosted) or RBAC user (Upstash/Redis Cloud).
* A `REDIS_URL` connection string with credentials.
## Setup
Select your Redis platform for specific connection instructions.
Two common deployment shapes are supported:
* **Vanilla Redis** — minimal image, no modules. Use when you only need core Redis commands.
* **Redis Stack** — bundles RediSearch, RedisJSON, RedisTimeSeries, and Bloom. Use when Tony needs `FT.*`, `JSON.*`, `TS.*`, or `BF.*` commands. Vanilla soft-fails those.
**Vanilla Redis (no modules):**
```bash theme={null}
docker run -d --name redis-min \
-p 6379:6379 \
redis:7-alpine \
redis-server --requirepass --appendonly yes
```
The admin password is set via the `--requirepass` server flag. `--appendonly yes` enables AOF for durability across restarts.
**Redis Stack (with modules and RedisInsight UI on port 8001):**
```bash theme={null}
docker run -d --name redis-stack \
-p 6379:6379 -p 8001:8001 \
-e REDIS_ARGS="--requirepass " \
redis/redis-stack:latest
```
Verify the instance:
```bash theme={null}
redis-cli -a ping
# PONG
```
Create a dedicated user for CloudThinker. Redis ACL usernames allow `[A-Za-z0-9_-]`; use `cloudthinker-readonly`.
```bash theme={null}
redis-cli -a ACL SETUSER cloudthinker-readonly on \
'>' \
'~*' \
'+@read' '-@write' '-@dangerous' '-@admin'
```
* `on` — enable the user
* `>` — set the password (the `>` prefix is ACL syntax)
* `~*` — match all keys; narrow to `~app:*` for stricter scoping
* `+@read -@write -@dangerous -@admin` — reads only; blocks writes, `FLUSHALL`/`CONFIG`/`DEBUG`/`SHUTDOWN`, and replication
* Optional: append `-@slow` to block `KEYS`, `SMEMBERS`, `HGETALL` on large collections
Mount a `users.acl` file so ACLs survive container restarts:
```text theme={null}
user default on > ~* &* +@all
user cloudthinker-readonly on > ~* +@read -@write -@dangerous -@admin
```
Start Redis with the file mounted:
```bash theme={null}
-v $PWD/users.acl:/data/users.acl
```
and add `--aclfile /data/users.acl` to the server command.
```bash theme={null}
redis-cli -u redis://cloudthinker-readonly:@localhost:6379 SET foo bar
# (error) NOPERM ... has no permissions to run the 'set' command
redis-cli -u redis://cloudthinker-readonly:@localhost:6379 GET foo
# works
```
Ensure CloudThinker can reach your database:
* Add CloudThinker IPs to your firewall or security group
* Ensure Redis is bound to an accessible interface (avoid `bind 127.0.0.1` only)
Navigate to **Connections → Redis** and enter your connection string as **REDIS\_URL**:
```
redis://cloudthinker-readonly:@:6379
```
Use `rediss://` (note the second `s`) if your deployment terminates TLS. Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
Open the [Upstash Redis console](https://console.upstash.com/redis) and click **Create Database**. In the modal:
* Enter a **Database Name**
* Pick a **Primary Region** and **Cloud Provider**
* Enable **Eviction** (recommended)
* Click **Next**, choose your plan, and confirm
On the database page, scroll to the **Connection** section. The default tab is **REST** — switch to the **TCP** tab and copy the URL:
```
rediss://:@.upstash.io:
```
`` is unique to your database; `` is typically `6379`. Upstash enforces TLS, so the scheme is `rediss://`.
Upstash supports RBAC under the **RBAC** tab on the database page. Activate RBAC, then create an account named `cloudthinker-readonly` with read-only permissions. The ACL model is the same as the self-hosted setup — grant `+@read` and deny `-@write`, `-@dangerous`, `-@admin`.
See the [Upstash RBAC documentation](https://upstash.com/docs/redis/overall/enterprise#rbac) for the exact UI flow.
Navigate to **Connections → Redis** and paste the URL as **REDIS\_URL**. Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
Open the [Redis Cloud databases page](https://cloud.redis.io/#/databases) and click **New database**. Pick your plan, **Database Name**, **Database Version**, **Cloud Vendor**, and **Region**, then click **Create Database**.
Return to the databases page — your new database appears in the list.
On the database tile, find the **Connection to database** card and click **Connect**. In the side panel:
* Close the default **Redis SDK clients** dropdown
* Select **Redis CLI**
* Copy the URL
The URL follows this format:
```
redis://:@.cloud.redislabs.com:
```
Redis Cloud ports are typically in the `13xxx` range rather than `6379`.
Open the [Data Access Control roles page](https://cloud.redis.io/#/data-access-control/roles):
* Click **New role** and name it `cloudthinker-readonly`
* Set **ACL Rules** to **Read-Only**
* Pick the databases this role can access
* Click **Save role**
Then create or assign a user bound to this role and use that user's credentials in the connection URL.
Navigate to **Connections → Redis** and paste the URL as **REDIS\_URL**. Click **Connect**. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| **REDIS\_URL** | Redis connection URI including credentials | `redis://cloudthinker-readonly:pass@host:6379` |
| **TLS/SSL** | Use `rediss://` scheme to require TLS | `rediss://` for Upstash; optional elsewhere |
| **Port** | Redis port | `6379` (self-hosted, Upstash); `13xxx` (Redis Cloud) |
| **Database index** | Logical DB index | `0` |
## Required permissions
Recommended ACL categories for the CloudThinker user:
| Category | Setting | Why |
| --------------------- | ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `+@read` | Allow | Read keys, run `INFO`, `CLIENT LIST`, etc. |
| `-@write` | Deny | Block `SET`, `DEL`, and other mutating commands |
| `-@dangerous` | Deny | Block `FLUSHALL`, `CONFIG`, `DEBUG`, `SHUTDOWN`, replication |
| `-@admin` | Deny | Block administrative commands |
| `-@slow` *(optional)* | Deny | Block `KEYS`, `SMEMBERS`, `HGETALL` on large collections |
Key scoping (`~*` for all keys, or `~app:*` for a prefix) narrows what the CloudThinker user can access. Start with `~*` and tighten as needed.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Keyspace analysis** | Inspect key patterns, sizes, and TTL distributions |
| **Command stats** | Review command latency and throughput via `INFO commandstats` |
| **Performance metrics** | Monitor memory, connections, eviction, and replication lag |
| **Module insights** | Inspect RediSearch indexes, RedisJSON documents, and TimeSeries (Redis Stack only) |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report run Redis INFO and summarize memory usage, connected clients, and keyspace stats
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report analyze hot keys and memory distribution on the production Redis instance
@tony #report check memory fragmentation ratio and eviction stats
@tony #report review replication lag on the Redis replica
```
## Troubleshooting
* Verify the username and password in the connection URL
* For self-hosted, confirm the user is enabled with `ACL WHOAMI` and `ACL LIST`
* For Upstash and Redis Cloud, make sure you copied the TCP/Redis CLI URL, not the REST or SDK URL
* The read-only user is working as intended for write commands
* If reads are also blocked, re-check the ACL rules — `+@read` must be granted
* Verify host and port are reachable from CloudThinker
* For self-hosted, ensure Redis is not bound only to `127.0.0.1`
* Add CloudThinker IPs to your firewall or cloud provider allowlist
* Vanilla Redis does not include modules. Run Redis Stack (`redis/redis-stack`) or a managed equivalent that bundles the required modules.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Use rediss\:// for TLS** — use the `rediss://` scheme whenever your deployment supports TLS to encrypt data in transit.
- **Persist ACLs** — use `aclfile` for self-hosted deployments so the read-only user survives restarts.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Setup instructions for MongoDB databases
# Snowflake
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/snowflake
Connect Snowflake to CloudThinker for warehouse credit analysis, slow-query triage, storage review, and optional warehouse control
Connect your Snowflake account to let [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer) read warehouse credit burn, rank slow and failing queries, and measure table storage overhead. CloudThinker reaches Snowflake over the SQL REST API with a programmatic access token, and a new connection reads only until you turn the write tool on.
## Prerequisites
* `ACCOUNTADMIN` (or equivalent) to create the role, the service user, and the token.
* A network policy you can attach to that user. Snowflake refuses token authentication until one exists.
* A warehouse the role can use. Metadata queries need no compute, so the connection test can pass while real analysis still fails without one.
## Setup
Run as `ACCOUNTADMIN`. `USAGE_VIEWER` covers metering and storage, `OBJECT_VIEWER` covers object inventory, and `GOVERNANCE_VIEWER` is what makes `QUERY_HISTORY` readable:
```sql theme={null}
USE ROLE ACCOUNTADMIN;
CREATE ROLE IF NOT EXISTS CT_READONLY;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.OBJECT_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.GOVERNANCE_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT MONITOR USAGE ON ACCOUNT TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT USAGE ON WAREHOUSE COMPUTE_WH TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
```
A `SERVICE` user has no password, no MFA, and no SSO, so it authenticates only with the token:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS SVC_CLOUDTHINKER
TYPE = SERVICE
DEFAULT_ROLE = CT_READONLY
DEFAULT_WAREHOUSE = COMPUTE_WH
COMMENT = 'CloudThinker connection';
GRANT ROLE CT_READONLY TO USER SVC_CLOUDTHINKER;
```
Narrow `ALLOWED_IP_LIST` to your egress ranges for anything beyond a test account:
```sql theme={null}
CREATE NETWORK POLICY IF NOT EXISTS CT_POLICY ALLOWED_IP_LIST = ('0.0.0.0/0');
ALTER USER SVC_CLOUDTHINKER SET NETWORK_POLICY = CT_POLICY;
```
Skipping this step is the most common setup failure, and the resulting error (`390403`) does not name the policy.
```sql theme={null}
ALTER USER SVC_CLOUDTHINKER ADD PROGRAMMATIC ACCESS TOKEN CT_DEV
ROLE_RESTRICTION = 'CT_READONLY'
DAYS_TO_EXPIRY = 90;
```
Snowflake shows the token once, on creation. `DAYS_TO_EXPIRY` is a hard expiry: on that day the connection starts failing with `390318` and you mint a new token.
Go to **Connections → Snowflake** and enter:
* **Account identifier**: `MYORG-MYACCOUNT`, found under **Snowsight → Account details**. Not the full URL.
* **Programmatic access token**: the token from the previous step. Not an account password.
* **Role**: optional; leave blank to use the user's default role.
* **Warehouse**: optional; leave blank to use the user's default warehouse.
Click **Connect**. The status shows **Connected** once CloudThinker resolves the account, region, role, and warehouse.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ----------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------ |
| **Account identifier** | `ORG-ACCOUNT`, from **Snowsight → Account details** | — |
| **Programmatic access token** | Token created with `ALTER USER ... ADD PROGRAMMATIC ACCESS TOKEN` | — |
| **Role** | Role the connection assumes; must sit inside the token's `ROLE_RESTRICTION` | User's default role |
| **Warehouse** | Warehouse billed for the credits this connection burns | User's default warehouse |
The REST host lowercases the account identifier and renders the separator as a hyphen, so an identifier written with an underscore still resolves.
## Required permissions
### Read-only (default)
```sql theme={null}
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.USAGE_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.OBJECT_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT DATABASE ROLE SNOWFLAKE.GOVERNANCE_VIEWER TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT MONITOR USAGE ON ACCOUNT TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
GRANT USAGE ON WAREHOUSE COMPUTE_WH TO ROLE CT_READONLY;
```
`GOVERNANCE_VIEWER` is easy to miss. Without it, spend and storage answers keep working while every slow-query and error answer fails on `QUERY_HISTORY`.
### Write access (only if you enable it)
```sql theme={null}
-- Suspend and resume: name each warehouse the agent may control.
GRANT USAGE, OPERATE, MONITOR ON WAREHOUSE CT_AGENT_WH TO ROLE CT_READWRITE;
-- Where the findings table lives.
GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE MONITORING TO ROLE CT_READWRITE;
GRANT USAGE, CREATE TABLE ON SCHEMA MONITORING.ALERTS TO ROLE CT_READWRITE;
```
Grant `OPERATE` on the warehouses the agent may act on, never on a shared production warehouse. A dedicated agent warehouse with a resource monitor gives its compute a ceiling no prompt can raise.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Tony can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account discovery** | Identity, warehouses, databases, and which `ACCOUNT_USAGE` views the role can read |
| **Credit analysis** | Metered credits per warehouse and per day, with the measured window stated |
| **Query health** | Slowest readable queries, recurring error classes, and remote spill |
| **Storage review** | Largest tables, time-travel and failsafe overhead, and per-database growth |
| **Inventory** | Schemas, roles, and this connection's own grants |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony #report list my Snowflake warehouses and which ACCOUNT_USAGE views this connection can read
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony #report which Snowflake warehouses burned the most credits in the last 30 days
@tony #report show the slowest Snowflake queries and any recurring errors
@tony #recommend where are time travel and failsafe adding storage overhead
```
Snowflake exposes credits, not currency, and the price per credit is not readable through this connection. Agents report credits as credits.
## Write access
The connection ships read-only, and write is a per-connection decision because access follows the credential. One workspace can hold a read-only token and a write-capable token at the same time.
| Tool permission | Credential | What the agent can do |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `snowflake_cli_write_only` off (default) | any | Reads only. The write scripts refuse before they build a request. |
| `snowflake_cli_write_only` on | read-only role | Still nothing. Snowflake denies the statement and the agent reports the denial. |
| `snowflake_cli_write_only` on | write-capable role | Suspend or resume a named warehouse, and keep measured findings in a `CT_FINDINGS` table. |
Turn it on under **Connections → Snowflake → Tool permissions**. Two things to weigh first:
* **Write means exactly two actions, not arbitrary SQL.** Raising a resource monitor, lowering `DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS`, or resizing a warehouse is still reported to you as a statement to run in Snowsight.
* **The grant is the stronger control.** The tool permission decides whether CloudThinker asks for a write; the token's `ROLE_RESTRICTION` and the role's grants decide whether Snowflake allows one.
A suspend cannot be conditional in Snowflake. The busy check and the `ALTER` are two statements, so a query can start between them and lose its compute. Agents report the state change and this limit, never that the suspend was safe.
Every write still needs your approval on the tool call.
## Troubleshooting
The user has no network policy. Snowflake refuses token authentication until one is attached: `ALTER USER SVC_CLOUDTHINKER SET NETWORK_POLICY = CT_POLICY;`
The token expired or was revoked. `DAYS_TO_EXPIRY` is a hard expiry. Mint a new token and update the connection.
A missing database role, not a typo in the view name. Ask the agent to run discovery: it lists every `ACCOUNT_USAGE` view the role can read and prints the exact `GRANT` line for the ones it cannot.
A resource monitor is over quota, or the warehouse is suspended and cannot resume. This is account capacity, not permission, so no `GRANT` fixes it. An account admin raises or resets the resource monitor.
The connection stays **Connected** because the credential is valid and the test probe needs no compute.
The service user has no `DEFAULT_WAREHOUSE` and none was configured. Set **Warehouse** on the connection, or give the user a default.
The role sits outside the token's `ROLE_RESTRICTION`. Use a role the token may assume, or clear **Role** to take the user's default.
Not an error. `ACCOUNT_USAGE` lags by up to a few hours and keeps one year of history, so a narrow window over a quiet account returns no rows.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated service user** — a `TYPE = SERVICE` user has no password, no MFA, and no SSO, so the token is the only way in and the audit trail stays readable.
- **Restrict and expire the token** — `ROLE_RESTRICTION` bounds everything the connection can reach, and `DAYS_TO_EXPIRY` forces a rotation you would otherwise forget.
## Related
Database-focused optimization agent
Similar setup for ClickHouse clusters
# SSH
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/ssh
Connect your own servers to CloudThinker over SSH so agents can run shell commands using key-based authentication and trusted host keys
Connect your servers over SSH to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) run shell commands on your hosts: checking disk usage, tailing logs, inspecting services, and diagnosing issues directly on the box.
## Prerequisites
| Requirement | Detail |
| -------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Reachable host** | The server must accept inbound SSH from CloudThinker on its SSH port |
| **Login user** | An existing user account with shell access |
| **Authorized key** | The public half of your key present in that user's `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` |
| **Key-based auth enabled** | `sshd` must allow public-key authentication for the user |
## Setup
Use an existing key pair or generate a dedicated one for CloudThinker:
```bash theme={null}
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "cloudthinker" -f ./cloudthinker_key
```
This produces `cloudthinker_key` (private) and `cloudthinker_key.pub` (public). Both OpenSSH (`-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----`) and PEM (`-----BEGIN RSA/EC PRIVATE KEY-----`) formats are accepted, including `ed25519`, `rsa`, and `ecdsa` keys.
Add the public key to the login user's authorized keys on the server:
```bash theme={null}
ssh-copy-id -i ./cloudthinker_key.pub user@server.example.com
# or append cloudthinker_key.pub manually to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
```
Navigate to **Connections → SSH** and enter:
* **Host**: hostname or IP, e.g. `server.example.com` or `10.0.0.5`
* **User**: the login user, e.g. `ubuntu`
* **Port**: SSH port (optional, defaults to `22`)
* **Private key**: the full private key, including the `BEGIN`/`END` lines
* **Passphrase**: optional, only needed if the private key has one
CloudThinker tests the connection and shows a **Connected** status once it succeeds.
### Host-key verification
The first time you connect, CloudThinker records your server's host key. On every later connection it checks that the key still matches, so you are warned if the server's identity changes unexpectedly.
If the key changes, the connection stops and CloudThinker shows you both the previously trusted fingerprint and the new one. This normally happens after a server rebuild or SSH key rotation. Once you have confirmed the change is expected, choose **Trust new host key** to continue.
If you did not expect the server's identity to change, do not trust the new key yet. An unexpected change can indicate the connection is being intercepted. Verify the new fingerprint against your server first.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------- |
| **Host** | Hostname or IP address of the target server | `server.example.com` |
| **User** | Login user with shell access | `ubuntu` |
| **Port** | SSH port | `22` |
| **Private key** | Full private key including `BEGIN`/`END` headers | `-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----...` |
| **Passphrase** | Passphrase if the key is encrypted | — |
## Required permissions
Alex runs commands with the permissions of the login user. No root access is required unless your agents need to run privileged commands.
Scope the login user to only the commands and paths your agents need. Use `command=` and `from=` options in `authorized_keys` to restrict what the key can do and from where.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex runs shell commands on your server over SSH.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **System inspection** | Disk, memory, CPU, processes, and service status |
| **Log analysis** | Read and search application and system logs |
| **Diagnostics** | Investigate failures, connectivity, and configuration on the host |
| **Operational checks** | Run read-only commands to report on the server's state |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report show system uptime, disk usage, and top memory processes on the server
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report check disk usage on all filesystems and flag anything above 80%
@alex #report tail /var/log/app/error.log and summarize the last 100 error lines
@alex #report show which processes are using the most CPU and memory right now
```
Commands run with the permissions of the login user. Scope that user to what your agents actually need.
## Troubleshooting
* Confirm the public key is in the login user's `~/.ssh/authorized_keys`
* Verify the **User** matches an account that key is authorized for
* Ensure the private key was pasted in full, including the `BEGIN`/`END` lines
* If the key is passphrase-protected, provide the **Passphrase**
* Verify the **Host** and **Port** are correct
* Confirm the server accepts SSH from CloudThinker (firewall, security group, or allowlist)
* Check that the SSH daemon is running and listening on that port
* Expected after a server rebuild or SSH key rotation: review the new fingerprint and choose **Trust new host key**
* If the change is unexpected, investigate before re-trusting
* The connection is healthy but the command returned a non-zero exit code
* Check the command, the user's permissions, and paths on the remote host
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated key** — generate a key pair used only for CloudThinker so it can be revoked independently.
- **Rotate and verify** — replace the key periodically and always confirm a host key change before re-trusting.
## Related
Cloud engineering and infrastructure operations
Connect clusters for workload analysis and operations
# HCP Terraform
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/terraform
Connect HCP Terraform to inspect workspaces and recent runs, with approval-gated workspace controls
Connect HCP Terraform to CloudThinker to inventory workspaces, review recent run status, and make approved workspace changes. This connection uses an organization token for one HCP Terraform organization.
## Prerequisites
* An HCP Terraform organization containing the workspaces you want to inspect.
* The organization name shown in HCP Terraform.
* An organization owner who can create or revoke the organization's API token.
An organization token has authority across its HCP Terraform organization. CloudThinker limits its own actions to the capabilities on this page, but you should still treat the token as an organization-wide secret.
## Setup
Sign in to [HCP Terraform](https://app.terraform.io/), then select the organization you want to connect from the sidebar. Copy its organization name.
Open **Organization settings → API Token**. Under **Organization Tokens**, use the displayed controls to generate the organization token, then copy it immediately.
Only organization owners can generate or revoke this single organization-wide token. Before creating or rotating it, coordinate with the organization owners and any existing automations that use it.
Navigate to **Connections → HCP Terraform** and enter:
* **Organization name**: the name of the organization you selected
* **Organization token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the organization and shows a **Connected** status.
HCP Terraform displays a token only when you create it. Store it securely before leaving the page. Creating or revoking the organization's token can affect other automations that use it.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- |
| **Organization name** | The organization name shown in HCP Terraform. Do not enter its URL or HCP organization ID. | `platform-team` |
| **Organization token** | The organization token created under **Organization settings → API Token → Organization Tokens**. | — |
## Required permissions
Use this organization's **single organization token**, not a personal or team token. Only an organization owner can generate or revoke it. HCP Terraform organization tokens can manage organization-level resources but cannot start runs or create configuration versions.
Use the existing organization token when the organization already has one. Before creating or rotating it, coordinate with the organization owners and existing automations. The token has organization-wide authority even though CloudThinker exposes only the bounded workspace actions below.
## Agent capabilities
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Workspace inventory** | List a bounded set of workspaces and inspect their names, lock state, and workspace settings. |
| **Recent run status** | Review a bounded set of recent run statuses. Run status is not infrastructure health. |
| **Workspace controls** | Create, rename, lock, unlock, or safely delete an empty workspace after visible approval. |
Workspace inventory and recent run status are read-only. Before creating, renaming, locking, unlocking, or safely deleting a workspace, CloudThinker asks for a separate visible approval for that action.
### Limits
This connection cannot start plans, applies, or runs. It cannot upload or download configuration or state, change variables, show sensitive outputs, force unlock or force delete a workspace, delete an organization, administer teams or tokens, or connect to Terraform Enterprise custom endpoints.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my HCP Terraform workspaces and their locked status
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex summarize recent HCP Terraform run statuses by workspace
@alex create an empty HCP Terraform workspace named staging-empty and ask for approval first
@alex safely delete the empty HCP Terraform workspace named staging-empty and ask for approval first
```
## Troubleshooting
Enter the organization name shown in HCP Terraform. Do not paste the organization URL or an HCP organization ID.
Create a replacement organization token if the current one is expired or no longer valid, then update **Organization token** and reconnect.
Check that **Organization name** and **Organization token** belong to the same HCP Terraform organization, then reconnect.
The token belongs to a different organization than the one entered in **Organization name**. Enter the matching organization name or use that organization's token.
Wait and reconnect later. Do not repeatedly retry the connection while HCP Terraform is rate limiting requests.
HCP Terraform could not complete the verification. Retry later; the connection does not treat this as a successful result.
For safe deletion, this can mean the workspace still manages resources. CloudThinker does not force-delete it. Keep the workspace until it is empty, and unlock it before an allowed workspace change if needed.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Set and track expiration** — HCP Terraform tokens expire, and you cannot change an expiration after creation. Choose the shortest duration your policy permits and replace the token before it expires.
- **Coordinate rotation** — only one organization token is valid at a time. Confirm which integrations use it before you generate or revoke a token.
## Related
Review how CloudThinker asks before a workspace change.
Connect another infrastructure-management service.
# HashiCorp Vault
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/vault
Connect HashiCorp Vault to read KV secrets, issue dynamic credentials, and audit policies, tokens, and health via Token or AppRole auth
Connect your HashiCorp Vault cluster to enable [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) (Security Professional) to read KV secrets, retrieve dynamic database and cloud credentials, and inspect policies, tokens, audit devices, and cluster health — all through the `vault` CLI running in CloudThinker's secure sandbox.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| **Vault open-source** | Self-hosted, recent releases |
| **Vault Enterprise** | Namespaces supported |
| **HCP Vault Dedicated** | Set namespace (default `admin`) |
## Prerequisites
1. **A reachable Vault address** — the sandbox connects to `VAULT_ADDR` over the network, not your laptop. Use a public DNS name or HCP endpoint, not `localhost` or a private address the sandbox cannot route to.
2. **Credentials** — a Vault token, or an AppRole (`role_id` + `secret_id`), backed by a policy that grants read access to the paths you want agents to query.
3. **(Enterprise / HCP only)** The **namespace** the secrets live in.
## Setup
Choose the authentication method that fits your deployment. AppRole is recommended for production because the `secret_id` can be rotated without replacing a long-lived token.
Grant read access to only the paths CloudThinker should reach:
```bash theme={null}
vault policy write cloudthinker-read - <
Bind a token to that policy:
```bash theme={null}
vault token create \
-policy=cloudthinker-read \
-ttl=720h \
-display-name=cloudthinker
```
Copy the `token` value from the output.
Navigate to **Connections → HashiCorp Vault** and enter:
* **VAULT\_ADDR**: your Vault URL including scheme and port, e.g. `https://vault.example.com:8200`
* **VAULT\_NAMESPACE**: leave blank for open-source Vault; set it for HCP (`admin`) or Enterprise namespaces
* **VAULT\_AUTH\_METHOD**: **Token**
* **VAULT\_TOKEN**: the token from the previous step
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token with `vault token lookup` and shows a **Connected** status.
Enable the AppRole auth method (skip if already enabled) and grant read access to your paths:
```bash theme={null}
vault auth enable approle
vault policy write cloudthinker-read - <
Bind an AppRole to the policy:
```bash theme={null}
vault write auth/approle/role/cloudthinker \
token_policies=cloudthinker-read \
token_ttl=1h \
token_max_ttl=4h \
secret_id_ttl=720h
```
```bash theme={null}
vault read auth/approle/role/cloudthinker/role-id
vault write -f auth/approle/role/cloudthinker/secret-id
```
Copy the `role_id` and the generated `secret_id`.
Navigate to **Connections → HashiCorp Vault** and enter:
* **VAULT\_ADDR**: your Vault URL including scheme and port, e.g. `https://vault.example.com:8200`
* **VAULT\_NAMESPACE**: leave blank for open-source Vault; set it for HCP (`admin`) or Enterprise namespaces
* **VAULT\_AUTH\_METHOD**: **AppRole**
* **VAULT\_ROLE\_ID**: the `role_id`
* **VAULT\_SECRET\_ID**: the `secret_id`
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker performs an `auth/approle/login`, confirms a client token is returned, and shows a **Connected** status.
Tokens and secret IDs are redacted from any error message CloudThinker shows during the health check.
## Connection details
| Field | Required | Notes |
| ----------------------- | ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **VAULT\_ADDR** | Yes | Full URL including scheme, e.g. `https://vault.example.com:8200` |
| **VAULT\_NAMESPACE** | No | HCP Vault Dedicated (`admin`) and Vault Enterprise namespace deployments only |
| **VAULT\_AUTH\_METHOD** | Yes | `token` or `approle` |
| **VAULT\_TOKEN** | Token auth | Shown when the auth method is Token |
| **VAULT\_ROLE\_ID** | AppRole | Shown when the auth method is AppRole |
| **VAULT\_SECRET\_ID** | AppRole | Shown when the auth method is AppRole |
## Required permissions
Attach a policy to the token or AppRole that grants `read` and `list` on the secret paths Oliver needs to query. Vault's default-deny means Oliver can never exceed the policy attached to your credential.
Start with the minimum read paths and add `create`/`update` capabilities only if you want Oliver to run write workflows.
## Agent capabilities
Oliver's actions are bounded by the policy on your token or AppRole. Read operations run automatically; any action that mutates Vault or issues a lease requires approval in CloudThinker.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Secret reads** | Read and list KV v1/v2 secret paths and values |
| **Health inspection** | Check seal status, mounted secret engines, and auth methods |
| **Policy audit** | List and read policies, audit devices, and token metadata |
| **Dynamic credentials** | Generate short-lived database and cloud credentials — requires approval |
| **Secret writes** | Create, update, and delete KV secrets and versions — requires approval |
| **Lease management** | Revoke or renew credential leases — requires approval |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report list all mounted auth methods and check Vault health
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report list all secrets under the kv mount and summarize what's there
@oliver #report show Vault health, seal status, and version
@oliver #recommend audit the current token — what policies and TTL does it have
```
## Troubleshooting
The `vault` CLI runs inside CloudThinker's sandbox, not on your machine. `localhost`, `127.0.0.1`, and `host.docker.internal` resolve to the sandbox itself and fail with `dial tcp ... no such host` or connection refused. Point `VAULT_ADDR` at a public DNS name or HCP Vault Dedicated endpoint. A Vault behind a firewall or VPN must be exposed through a public endpoint, an allowlisted egress, or a network bridge first.
`vault` needs the full URL including scheme. `vault.example.com:8200` (no scheme) causes a connection error. Use `https://vault.example.com:8200`, or `http://...` for a dev-mode server.
The token or AppRole policy does not grant access to the requested path. Check the policy with `vault token lookup` and ensure it covers the paths the agent queries. For example, to read `kv/data/production/*` the policy needs `capabilities = ["read", "list"]` on that path.
HCP Vault Dedicated and Enterprise multi-namespace deployments require `VAULT_NAMESPACE`. For HCP the default is `admin`. If you see `no handler for route` or `permission denied` on HCP or Enterprise, confirm the namespace is set.
A `secret_id` has a TTL (`secret_id_ttl`). Once it expires, auth fails with `invalid secret_id`. Generate a new one, update **VAULT\_SECRET\_ID**, and reconnect:
```bash theme={null}
vault write -f auth/approle/role/cloudthinker/secret-id
```
`vault status` shows `Sealed: true` and no operation succeeds. A Vault operator must unseal the cluster (`vault operator unseal`) before agents can read or write.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Prefer AppRole in production** — rotate the `secret_id` without replacing a long-lived token.
- **Gate write operations** — keep write paths approval-gated so credential issuance and mutations always require human sign-off.
## Related
Security and compliance agent
Gate write operations behind approval
# Vercel
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/vercel
Connect Vercel to CloudThinker for project inventory, deployment inspection, runtime log triage, and domain auditing
Connect your Vercel account to enable CloudThinker agents to inventory projects, inspect deployments and build events, fetch runtime logs, audit domains and aliases, and run approval-gated controls like canceling stuck deployments or pausing projects.
Vercel authenticates with an **access token** that CloudThinker passes to the official Vercel MCP server (`@vercel/sdk`). The token's **scope** — personal account or a specific team — determines what the agent can reach. No OAuth flow is required.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Vercel account** with access to the teams and projects you want to investigate.
* An **access token** scoped to the right team.
* Permission to create tokens for that scope.
Scope the token to only the team CloudThinker needs. The connection's read operations never mutate Vercel resources — only the three approval-gated controls do.
***
## Setup
In Vercel, go to **Settings → Tokens → Create Token**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Scope**: pick the **team** (or personal account) CloudThinker should access
* **Expiration**: choose a lifetime and plan to rotate
Copy the token immediately — Vercel shows it only once.
Navigate to **Connections → Vercel** and enter:
* **Token**: the access token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker starts the Vercel MCP server and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the access token immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new token if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------ | ------- |
| **VERCEL\_TOKEN** | Vercel access token used as the MCP bearer token | — |
CloudThinker resolves the team and projects from the token's scope, so no manual team ID or URL configuration is required.
***
## Required permissions
Scope the token to the **team** whose projects, deployments, domains, and logs CloudThinker should reach. Read operations work with any token that can see those resources; the three control operations additionally require the token's scope to allow them **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: scope the token to a single team and set an expiration. Keep control operations approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Vercel projects and deployments.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Teams & Projects** | List teams and projects, and inspect project domains |
| **Deployments** | List and inspect deployments, deployment events, and build output |
| **Runtime Logs** | Fetch runtime logs for error triage |
| **Domains & Aliases** | Audit domains, domain configuration, and aliases |
| **Account** | Read the authenticated Vercel user |
| **Deployment Control** | Cancel deployments, pause and unpause projects — **requires approval** |
`Cancel deployment`, `Pause project`, and `Unpause project` are approval-gated. CloudThinker requests confirmation before running them; read-only operations run without approval.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex check the Vercel connection and list accessible teams and projects
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list all projects across my Vercel teams with their framework and latest deployment status and #report as a table
@alex the latest production deployment failed — pull the build events, find the error, and #recommend a fix
@alex show runtime error logs for my Vercel project over the last 6 hours and #alert on 5xx spikes
```
For accounts with many projects, scope requests to a single team or project so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is missing, expired, or revoked. Create a fresh Vercel token and reconnect the Vercel connection.
The token's scope does not include those teams. Create a new token scoped to the correct team and reconnect.
Only one Vercel connection is allowed per workspace. Use the existing connection or remove it before reconnecting.
Cancel, pause, and unpause require both a token scope that permits the action and explicit approval in CloudThinker. Approve the action when prompted, and confirm the token's scope allows it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Set token expiration** — choose an expiration when creating the token and plan to rotate it; Vercel tokens do not auto-rotate.
- **Approval for controls** — keep cancel, pause, and unpause actions approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Related
Connect custom tools and services with MCP
How approval-gated actions work
# Spend and Forecast
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/cost-optimization/analytics
Read the CostOps spend summary, monthly trend, service breakdown, forecast, credits, and provider-specific currency
CostOps shows billing data for one selected cloud connection at a time. The dashboard keeps provider-specific billing behavior visible instead of merging accounts or converting every currency.
## Spend summary
| Metric | Meaning |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Current-month spend | Gross usage cost ingested so far for the current month |
| Credits applied | Provider credits absorbed against current-month usage when available |
| Net billed | Current-month gross spend minus credits, never below zero |
| Current-month forecast | Available end-of-month projection for the selected connection |
| Potential monthly savings | Upper-bound estimate across open Quick win and Needs review findings |
**Updated \** sits in the page header beside the Daily refresh control, not in the spend summary. It reports when CostOps last ingested billing rows for the connection.
CostOps does not show a month-over-month percentage on the current-month summary. Comparing a partial month with a completed month would misstate the change.
## Monthly spend and forecast
Expand **Monthly spend & forecast** to load the chart. CostOps opens it automatically the first time a scan starts for a connection, and you can collapse it again. It separates three kinds of points:
| Point | How to read it |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Historical | Completed monthly totals before the current month |
| Current month | Provisional spend to date, shown with its end-of-month projection when available |
| Forecast | Available future monthly projections |
Provider billing data can arrive late. AWS Cost Explorer commonly lags by 24–48 hours, GCP export rows can lag usage, and Azure Cost Management can lag by up to 24 hours. The freshness note beside **Updated** explains the selected provider.
## Top services last month
The service panel ranks up to 15 services from the last completed month. Its header uses the full bill total, including services grouped into **Other services**.
Each service row can show:
* last-month spend and share of the full bill;
* month-over-month change when the prior month has data;
* potential monthly savings and finding count;
* scan progress or a failed scan state.
Select a service to filter the findings panel. Account-wide findings remain in **All** because no single service owns them.
## Currency behavior
| Provider | Currency rule |
| -------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| AWS | Cost Explorer data is stored and displayed in USD |
| GCP | Exported cost is normalized to USD during ingestion |
| Azure | Cost Management data stays in the billing scope's currency |
CostOps reads the currency from the ingested month. It does not label Azure values as USD or invent a conversion rate.
## Missing data
| State | What happens |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| No cloud connection | CostOps asks you to connect AWS, GCP, or Azure |
| Billing source missing | GCP or Azure setup appears instead of the dashboard |
| Billing source unreadable | CostOps explains the missing billing permission; the connection stays connected |
| Source has no rows | CostOps waits for the provider to publish billing data |
| Forecast unavailable | Spend remains visible and the forecast reads **Forecast pending** |
## Related
Follow the full setup and scan flow
Review the opportunities tied to spend and services
Interpret potential savings without treating it as realized value
Use agent-generated analysis for broader infrastructure questions
# CostOps
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/cost-optimization/overview
Understand current spend, run read-only scans, and review ranked savings for one AWS, GCP, or Azure connection
CostOps turns billing data from one cloud connection into a current spend view and agent-verified savings findings. It supports AWS, GCP, and Azure without combining their billing scopes or currencies.
## How it works
1. **Connect a cloud account** — add an [AWS](/guide/connections/aws), [GCP](/guide/connections/gcp), or [Azure](/guide/connections/azure) connection with read access.
2. **Set the billing source** — AWS uses the connected account. GCP uses one Cloud Billing Standard export, and Azure uses one readable subscription or billing scope.
3. **Run the first scan** — CostOps reads billing data, starts one full-connection cost scan, and keeps running in the background if you leave the page.
4. **Review spend and findings** — compare current spend, forecast, top services, and potential monthly savings for the selected connection.
5. **Keep it current** — daily refresh pulls new billing data and runs cost keepers. Turning it off is immediate; turning it on asks you to confirm, because it resumes agent spend.
The scan is read-only. A missing CostOps permission or billing source blocks CostOps, but it does not disconnect the cloud connection. The daily refresh control appears after the first scan produces cost data, and requires CostOps management permission.
## What you can do
| Capability | What CostOps shows | Learn more |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| Current-month spend | Gross spend so far, credits when available, net billed amount, and an end-of-month forecast | [Spend and forecast](/guide/cost-optimization/analytics) |
| Monthly trend | Finalized monthly totals, the current provisional month, and available forecast months | [Spend and forecast](/guide/cost-optimization/analytics) |
| Top services | Last month's service spend, share of bill, month-over-month change, and related savings | [Spend and forecast](/guide/cost-optimization/analytics) |
| Cost findings | Verified opportunities in the **What Keeper found** panel, classified as Quick win, Needs review, or No action, and ranked by estimated monthly savings | [Cost findings](/guide/cost-optimization/recommendations) |
| Potential savings | The estimated monthly value of open, actionable findings | [Savings estimates](/guide/cost-optimization/savings) |
| Connection controls | Switch between connected accounts, retry scan errors, and control daily refresh | [Cost findings](/guide/cost-optimization/recommendations) |
## Provider behavior
| Provider | Billing data | Setup before the dashboard | Display currency |
| -------- | ----------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------- |
| AWS | Cost Explorer | None beyond a readable AWS connection | USD |
| GCP | Cloud Billing Standard export in BigQuery | Select one readable export when CostOps finds several | USD after ingestion normalization |
| Azure | Cost Management | Select one readable subscription or billing scope | The billing scope's currency |
If GCP or Azure has a readable billing source but no published rows, CostOps waits for the provider to publish data. The connection remains healthy.
## Get started
Add the read-only cloud connection CostOps uses for billing and verification
Understand the spend, forecast, currency, and service breakdown on the dashboard
See how scans classify, filter, and refresh savings opportunities
Learn what potential monthly savings includes and excludes
# Cost Findings
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/cost-optimization/recommendations
Review verified CostOps findings, understand their classes, and filter opportunities by cloud service and connection
A CostOps scan asks the provider's cost keeper to investigate one connection with read-only cloud commands. The keeper writes verified opportunities as draft recommendations, which CostOps presents as findings.
## Finding classes
| Class | What it means | Included in potential savings |
| ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| Quick win | Work that is reversible, low-effort, and at least 80% confidence. All three conditions must hold. | Yes |
| Needs review | A plausible opportunity that needs more context, carries more effort, or is not straightforward to reverse. | Yes |
| No action | Spend that the scan checked and found justified. It records the result without proposing a change. | No |
No action findings appear in **All**. CostOps does not expose them as a separate filter because they do not require work.
## What a finding contains
Each finding card shows:
| Field | How to use it |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Title and description | Understand the observed cost pattern and the proposed response |
| Class | Read the Quick win or Needs review classification |
| Potential savings | Treat it as an estimated monthly opportunity, not a guaranteed reduction |
| Confidence | See how certain the keeper is that the finding and estimate are accurate |
| Reversible | Know whether you can manually undo the proposed action without a one-click rollback promise |
**Effort** and **Risk** appear when you open the finding's detail dialog, not on the card. CostOps uses the finding's billing service to drive the service filter; it is not displayed as a field.
The scan verifies a candidate with a fresh provider read before it creates, updates, or closes a finding. Detection output alone is not proof.
## Quick wins band
**Quick wins · ready to review** sits above the findings list when the scan found at least one quick win. It shows the top 2 quick wins with their combined monthly estimate. Selecting one opens its Actions dialog directly, rather than the read-only detail view.
## Filter findings
Findings appear in the **What Keeper found** panel. Use the CostOps dashboard to narrow the same connection-scoped finding pool:
* Select **All**, **Quick wins**, or **Needs review**.
* Select a row under **Top services last month** to show findings attributed to that billing service. This also rescopes the Quick wins and Needs review counts on the tabs to that service.
* Select the same service again to clear the filter.
* Switch the cloud connection at the top of the page to load that connection's spend and findings.
The default view shows the top 5 findings, marks the highest-value one **Start here**, and collapses the rest behind **Show N more actions**. A filtered or paginated view renders a flat ranked list with no priority badge. Findings paginate 20 per page, ranked by estimated monthly savings.
Account-wide findings, such as commitment coverage or cross-service tagging, have no single billing service. They appear in **All** and do not appear under a service filter.
## Recover from scan errors
CostOps shows progress while a scan runs and keeps that state across navigation. If one service fails, use its retry control under **Top services last month** without restarting completed work.
The findings error summary also offers **Re-scan** to start a new full-connection analysis. Scan and retry controls require CostOps management permission.
Daily refresh and scan recovery are different controls. Daily refresh keeps billing data and cost keepers current; retry and re-scan recover a scan that finished with errors.
## From finding to Plan
A CostOps finding is a draft recommendation. Saving it changes that recommendation to active so it can appear in [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan); it does not create a second object. The control is a bookmark icon labelled **Save recommendation**.
Use Plan for assignment, approval, scheduling, and execution tracking. CostOps remains the source view for billing context, scan state, and the current savings classification.
## Related
See the full connection-to-dashboard flow
Understand how actionable findings contribute to potential savings
Move promoted recommendations through approval and execution
Learn how continuous detection and agent reconciliation produce findings
# Savings Estimates
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/cost-optimization/savings
Interpret CostOps potential monthly savings, including which findings count and why the total is an upper bound
CostOps reports **Potential monthly savings**, not realized savings. The number helps you size the open opportunity for one connection before you decide what to implement.
## What the estimate includes
CostOps sums the monthly estimates on open, actionable findings:
| Finding class | Included | Reason |
| ------------- | -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Quick win | Yes | The action is high-confidence, low-effort, and reversible |
| Needs review | Yes | The opportunity can be real, but it needs more context or care |
| No action | No | The scan confirmed the spend and does not propose work |
The headline uses every matching open finding for the connection. It does not depend on how many cards the current page has loaded.
## Why it is an upper bound
Two findings can overlap. For example, a right-sizing finding and a commitment-coverage finding can both estimate savings against the same compute spend.
For that reason:
* do not treat the total as a guaranteed bill reduction;
* do not subtract it from the CostOps forecast;
* review resource overlap before adding estimates to a plan;
* use the finding's confidence, reversibility, effort, and risk to prioritize work.
CostOps keeps the forecast and potential savings separate because they answer different questions. The forecast estimates where the bill is heading; potential savings estimates the value of open actions.
## How filters affect the findings total
The headline **Potential monthly savings** remains the full actionable estimate for the selected connection. Filters change the recoverable total in the **What Keeper found** panel subtitle, not the headline. That line appears only when the filtered total is above zero, and scan progress or a scan-error notice replaces it while a scan runs or after one fails.
| Findings panel state | Recoverable total |
| -------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| No finding filter | All open Quick win and Needs review findings for the selected connection. The **All** tab also lists No action findings, which never count toward the total |
| Quick wins | Open Quick win findings only |
| Needs review | Open Needs review findings only |
| One service selected | Actionable findings attributed to that billing service |
| Account-wide finding | Included in the unfiltered total, but not in a service-specific total |
The top service rows show the potential savings attributed to each service. The dashboard headline always remains connection-scoped.
## Potential is not realized
CostOps does not currently calculate realized savings, return on investment, capture rate, or 30/60/90-day post-implementation variance. Promote a finding to [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) to govern the work, but keep external billing validation for realized-savings reporting.
This distinction prevents an estimate from being presented as financial proof.
## Related
See how Quick win, Needs review, and No action are assigned
Read the bill trajectory separately from the opportunity estimate
Govern promoted recommendations through approval and execution
Understand the agent runs that verify and reconcile findings
# Google Chat Integration
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/google-chat-integration
Connect Anna to Google Chat, map spaces to CloudThinker workspaces, and deliver agent conversations and notifications.
Use Google Chat to work with Anna in direct messages or shared spaces and receive configured workspace notifications.
Google Chat is an integration, not a connection, and adding Anna does not grant CloudThinker access to other Google Workspace data.
## Prerequisites
* A CloudThinker Team plan.
* A Google Workspace administrator who can install Anna for your organization.
* The Google account that sent the message to Anna.
An organization Owner or Admin must map a shared space. A workspace member with chat access can map their own direct message. Direct messages cannot receive workspace notifications.
## Setup
Sign in as a CloudThinker organization Owner or Admin. Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations → Google Chat**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations/google-chat).
A Google Workspace administrator installs Anna once for your organization. Google publishes no universal installation link.
Open Google Chat, then start a direct message with Anna or add Anna to a shared space.
If Anna already appears in an existing direct message, remove Anna and add Anna again. Google sends the setup event only after a fresh add.
Anna replies with a personal configuration link. Open it within 15 minutes.
An organization Owner or Admin must open the link for an unmapped shared space. A member with chat access can configure their own direct message.
Select the CloudThinker workspace when prompted. Continue with the same Google account that messaged Anna.
**Success state:** CloudThinker shows **Google Chat is ready**.
Return to Google Chat and mention Anna again. Anna answers in the mapped workspace and continues the conversation in that thread.
## Ask Anna for work
Mention Anna to start work in a mapped direct message or shared space. Add a specialist alias and tool tag to route the request.
```text theme={null}
@Anna @alex #dashboard summarize this month's cloud costs
@Anna @oliver #report review our critical security findings
@Anna @kai investigate pod failures in production
```
Replies in the same Google Chat thread continue the same CloudThinker conversation. See [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) for supported aliases and tool tags.
### Send files to Anna
Upload a file directly to the Google Chat message when Anna needs to inspect it. Google Drive attachments are not downloaded because adding Anna does not grant Drive access.
Anna cannot upload generated files back to Google Chat.
## Configure notifications
Mapped shared spaces can receive workspace notifications, including incident updates. Configure the destination for each event in the [notification matrix](/guide/notifications).
Direct messages never appear as notification destinations. If a space is missing, confirm that it is a shared space mapped to the current workspace.
## Manage mapped spaces
Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations → Google Chat**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations/google-chat) to review every mapped space and its workspace.
An organization Owner or Admin can move a space to another workspace in the same organization. New messages start fresh conversations there; earlier conversations remain in the original workspace.
Disconnect Google Chat from the same page when the organization should stop using the integration.
## Troubleshooting
Mention Anna again in the same Google Chat conversation. For an existing direct message, remove Anna and add Anna again so Google sends a fresh setup event.
Each link works for 15 minutes. Mention Anna again to create a new link, then open it with the same Google account that sent the message.
An organization Owner or Admin must map an unmapped shared space. Ask one to mention Anna in that space and open the new link.
Ask a workspace administrator to grant you chat access. Then mention Anna again and use the new configuration link.
Direct messages cannot receive notifications. Confirm that the destination is a shared space mapped to the current workspace, then select it in the notification matrix.
## Related
Use agent aliases and tool tags in Google Chat
Choose which updates each shared space receives
Send incident outcomes to operational platforms
Set up another ChatOps message surface
# Incident Memory
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/incident-memory
Understand how agent-written incident lessons are stored, recalled during later RCA runs, and verified after remediation.
Incident Memory is the file-backed context Anna can write during RCA and read at the start of a later investigation. It preserves useful operational knowledge without feeding raw memory into Pulse classification.
## What gets written
Incident Memory is agent-written. CloudThinker does not automatically extract a fixed record from every completed Incident.
| Memory kind | Use |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Observation | A concrete fact or action from one investigation |
| Recollection | What happened in a specific past Incident and what changed |
| Lesson | A reusable pattern supported by more than one source Incident |
Entries can include the affected service, evidence, action taken, a verification command, and an outcome. The agent writes only material it judges useful for later RCA.
## How recall works
1. Anna writes incident memory files during an RCA run.
2. At the start of a later RCA, CloudThinker reads valid, recent entries from the workspace memory tree.
3. The selected entries appear in Anna's incident-memory context before hypothesis work begins.
4. Anna compares the current evidence with those lessons instead of treating a past resolution as proof.
Recall re-enters DRE at **Analyze**. Pulse may maintain separate cluster memory, but it does not receive raw incident-memory files in its classification prompt.
The current Incident UI does not show an "Informed by similar incidents" badge or a per-memory recall list. Memory changes the RCA context behind the scenes.
## Verification outcomes
An incident-memory entry can carry one of three outcomes:
| Outcome | Meaning |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Verified | A follow-up check confirmed the expected result |
| Unverified | No conclusive follow-up result is recorded |
| Failed | The expected result did not hold; the entry becomes counter-evidence |
When a runbook includes a verification command, Anna can schedule a one-time follow-up and update the outcome. This is a bounded, agent-driven check. DRE does not run a universal post-remediation state machine for every Incident.
Failed lessons are not injected as valid guidance. Failed recollections can remain as counter-examples so a later RCA does not repeat the same assumption.
## Availability and limits
* File-native incident memory must be available for the workspace and RCA runtime.
* Only entries that pass the memory format and safety checks are eligible for recall.
* Recall is capped and ordered by recent updates, so the model does not receive the entire history.
* Cancelled or failed RCA runs contribute memory only if the agent already wrote a valid entry.
* Re-running RCA does not mechanically replace an older entry; Anna can revise, combine, or supersede memory when evidence changes.
## Use memory well
* Record the evidence that distinguishes the root cause from a symptom.
* Add a concrete verification command to remediation runbooks where practical.
* Treat recalled context as a hypothesis lead, not as a diagnosis.
* Review a failed verification before reusing the same Scoped Action.
## Related
See where memory enters the three-phase investigation.
Add the procedures and verification commands DRE can use during response.
# DRE Insights
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/insights
Measure DRE reliability, human-judged RCA accuracy, Pulse efficiency, and runbook readiness from one analytics workspace.
Open **DRE → Insights** to review how the complete response loop performs. The workspace separates operational speed from human-judged accuracy so a confident agent verdict does not count as a correct result by itself.
## Choose an insight view
| View | What it answers |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Overview | How quickly and reliably does DRE move through detection, investigation, and resolution? |
| Accuracy & trust | How often do human verdicts confirm the RCA result? |
| Pulse analysis | How well does Pulse correlate Signals, suppress noise, and resolve Clusters? |
| Runbook analytics | Which incidents have usable remediation coverage, and where are the gaps? |
## Review reliability
Use **Overview** for stage timing, MTTR trends, recurring incidents, impact, and per-service reliability. A change in one stage can explain a change in the total response time, so review the stage timings before you attribute a regression to RCA.
## Judge accuracy with human verdicts
**Accuracy & trust** uses explicit human feedback about the investigation result. Agent confidence and the final disposition do not count as proof that the RCA was correct.
Use this view to answer:
* Which services or incident types receive enough human verdicts to measure?
* Where do operators reject or correct the proposed root cause?
* Is the amount of human feedback sufficient to support a decision?
When an operator disagrees with a diagnosis, they pick one reason: **wrong root cause**, **wrong service**, **fix wouldn't work**, **false positive**, or **something else**. Read the distribution before you change a prompt — wrong service points at topology or context, while fix wouldn't work points at remediation quality.
Treat a small sample as incomplete evidence. Review the underlying Incidents before you change an integration, prompt, or operational process.
## Find Detect and Resolve gaps
Use **Pulse analysis** for correlation yield, Cluster MTTR, Signals ingested, noise suppressed, and top noisy sources. Use **Runbook analytics** for coverage, executions, and missing procedures.
## Related
Interpret correlation, suppression, volume, and Cluster MTTR.
Understand the evidence and outcomes behind the accuracy results.
Add procedures and control mutating commands.
Change automatic RCA and re-investigation sensitivity.
# DRE Integrations
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/integrations
Connect operational platforms, then manage how DRE listens for Signals, reads investigation context, and sends outcomes.
Open **DRE → Integrations** to manage a platform as one operational relationship. Each platform groups its connection instances, the events it can receive, and the outcomes it can send back.
A segmented control switches the page between two layouts: **Split**, a platform sidebar beside a detail pane, and **Cards**, a grid of every platform. Both show the same platforms, so pick whichever reads better for you.
## Understand the three parts
| Part | Purpose | Examples |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Connections | Authenticate the account, workspace, or project that DRE can access. | Cloud account, Slack workspace, GitHub organization |
| Signals | Bring operational events into Pulse. | Webhook, polling, chat event |
| Outcomes | Send a response artifact or update to another system. | Incident update, Slack war room, Jira follow-up, draft fix merge request, postmortem |
One platform does not need to support every part. The integration page shows what the selected platform can do and what remains unconfigured.
## Configure the capability you need
Select a platform, then configure only the sections it supports and your incident process needs.
### Connections
Add the account, workspace, or project instances that DRE should read. Some platforms support several connection instances. Some webhook or outcome capabilities do not require a connection.
### Signals
When the platform is an event source, configure a webhook, polling, or chat path. Send or retrieve one representative event and confirm that Pulse produces the expected Signal.
### Outcomes
When the platform is a response destination, enable the supported Incident update, war room, follow-up ticket, draft fix, postmortem, or provider synchronization action. An outcome-only platform does not need a Signal path.
A war room has its own minimum severity: **Critical**, **High**, or **All**. Set it so routine incidents do not open a channel.
A postmortem is written on request and costs a model call. It is an outcome, not a lifecycle state, so requesting one does not change the Incident's status.
## Read integration readiness
A platform can appear as ready, needing a connection, needing setup, partially configured, in error, needing review, or not configured. Readiness describes the complete platform setup, not authentication alone.
For a Signal capability, use source-first verification: a webhook must deliver a Signal, polling must retrieve an event, or chat must produce the expected event. Only then treat that signal path as active.
## Related
Verify a webhook, polling, or chat event in Pulse.
Map third-party payloads into stable operational Signals.
Follow the Detect, Analyze, Resolve, and Validate stages.
Control automatic RCA and re-investigation sensitivity.
# Manual Incident Logging
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/manual-logging
Log an Incident from a human report, attach evidence, set when it occurred, and start RCA when you are ready.
Log an Incident when a customer report, operator observation, or ad hoc investigation starts outside Pulse. The Incident enters the Investigation queue with the context you provide; RCA starts only when you click **Investigate**.
## Prerequisites
* Permission to edit Incidents in the workspace
* A clear title and severity
* Optional screenshots, logs, or exports that help Anna establish the first hypotheses
## Log an Incident
Go to **Deep Response Engine → Investigation** and click **Log Incident**.
Choose an optional quick-start template, then complete the form.
| Field | Requirement | Purpose |
| -------------------- | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Quick Start Template | Optional | Prefills a common Incident shape such as an API outage or deployment regression |
| Title | Required | Names the Incident in the queue and related Outcomes |
| Description | Optional | Records symptoms, impact, known timing, and work already attempted |
| Attachments | Optional | Adds up to five files, 25 MB each, for Anna to inspect during RCA |
| Severity | Required | Sets Critical, High, Medium, Low, or Info; the workspace default starts the field |
| Occurred At | Required | Records when the Incident happened; defaults to now and can be backdated up to 30 days |
Add the evidence and timing Anna should start from
Click **Log Incident**. CloudThinker opens the new Incident in the queue.
Review the context, then click **Investigate** to start RCA. Manual investigation works even when **DRE auto-investigates** is off.
**Success state:** the Incident shows an active RCA with Context, Analysis, and Resolution phase progress.
## What happens next
| Before you investigate | During RCA | After RCA |
| ---------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| The Incident is queued for triage | Anna gathers context and can spawn read-only hypothesis investigators | The Incident moves to Needs your decision when RCA records a verdict or pauses |
| Attachments remain available to the RCA conversation | Findings, hypotheses, and evidence stream into the timeline | Remediation suggestions can be tracked as pending, done, or dismissed |
| You can still correct Incident metadata | The Open AI Conversation action opens the durable RCA conversation | A matching runbook may wait for approval or run if policy allows it |
## When to log manually
| Situation | Use |
| -------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Customer or operator reports a problem | Manual Incident |
| You want to investigate an issue before monitoring fires | Manual Incident |
| An alerting platform can send webhooks | Configure a [DRE Signal](/guide/incident/integrations) |
| Pulse already grouped the related Signals | Escalate the Cluster instead of creating a duplicate Incident |
## Next steps
Follow the three RCA phases and read the verdict.
Set the default severity used by the manual Incident form.
# Deep Response Engine
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/overview
Understand how DRE turns noisy operational events into investigated incidents, approved actions, and reusable lessons.
The Deep Response Engine (DRE) is CloudThinker's four-stage incident response flow. [Pulse](/guide/pulse/overview) detects actionable problems, Anna investigates them, approved runbooks carry out scoped actions, and useful lessons can inform later investigations.
## How it works
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
A["Detect\nPulse"] --> B["Analyze\nParallel RCA"]
B --> C["Resolve\nScoped Action"]
C --> D["Validate\nVerify and learn"]
D -. "reused by a later RCA" .-> B
```
1. **Detect** — Pulse ingests raw events, applies suppression, groups related events into clusters, classifies them, and routes actionable clusters.
2. **Analyze** — Anna runs a three-phase RCA. She can delegate bounded, read-only hypothesis checks to temporary subagents and then records the verdict.
3. **Resolve** — a matching, enabled [runbook](/guide/incident/runbooks) can become a Scoped Action. Policy decides whether it runs, waits for approval, or is denied.
4. **Validate** — the agent can schedule a bounded follow-up check and write incident memory. Reusable lessons return at the start of a later RCA, not during Pulse classification.
DRE does not guarantee that every incident reaches every stage. An investigation can end without a root cause, a runbook may not match, and post-fix verification depends on the runbook and agent-written follow-up.
## Start from the cockpit
Open **Deep Response Engine → Overview** to answer two questions: what needs you now, and what DRE handled without you.
| Area | What it shows |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Detect funnel | Raw events, visible Signals, Clusters, and Incidents over the cockpit window |
| Needs your decision | RCA reached a verdict or paused and now needs human input |
| Awaiting your approval | A runbook is staged behind an approval decision |
| Critical & high open | Unresolved Incidents at the top two severities |
| AI is handling | Incidents currently queued or under investigation |
| Recent incidents | The latest Incidents, regardless of outcome |
Each attention tile opens the matching slice of the [Investigation queue](/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis). A source-health banner appears when an enabled polling source fails or pauses, so a broken intake path does not look like a quiet system.
## Control automatic investigation
**DRE auto-investigates** in [Settings](/guide/incident/settings) controls the automatic Detect-to-Analyze handoff.
| Setting | Behavior |
| ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| On | Routed clusters create Incidents and eligible system-triggered RCA starts automatically |
| Off | Pulse still detects, routes, and files Incidents, but RCA waits for you to click **Investigate** |
Manual investigation always remains available. Turning automatic investigation back on does not start a backlog of Incidents created while it was off.
## What you can do
| Capability | Description | Guide |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Connect DRE platforms | Configure connections, Signals, and Outcomes for each external platform | [Integrations](/guide/incident/integrations) |
| Triage Pulse | Work the Needs you, Active, Forming, Routed, Resolved, and All lanes | [Pulse](/guide/pulse/overview) |
| Follow RCA | Review the verdict, confidence, causal graph, evidence, timeline, and remediation queue | [Investigation and RCA](/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis) |
| Govern actions | Supply runbooks and set per-command execution effects | [Runbooks](/guide/incident/runbooks) |
| Measure results | Review response trends, human-judged accuracy, Pulse performance, and runbook coverage | [Insights](/guide/incident/insights) |
| Reuse lessons | Feed agent-written observations, recollections, and lessons into later RCA runs | [Incident memory](/guide/incident/incident-memory) |
## Get started
Add one webhook, polling source, or messaging channel to DRE.
Triage current clusters and inspect what Pulse routed or suppressed.
Follow active RCA and act on completed verdicts.
Choose automatic investigation, repeat sensitivity, and manual severity defaults.
# Investigation and RCA
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis
Follow Anna's evidence-led investigation from context gathering through a structured root-cause verdict and remediation plan.
Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is the Analyze stage of the [Deep Response Engine](/guide/incident/overview). Anna gathers context, starts the read-only specialist work that the incident needs, tests competing explanations, and returns a structured verdict.
RCA can start automatically for an eligible Pulse incident when **DRE auto-investigates** is on. A manually logged Incident waits until you click **Investigate**.
## How an investigation runs
RCA has three phases:
| Phase | What happens |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Context | Anna reads the Incident, Pulse signals, available topology, and connected operational data. |
| Analysis | Anna can start parallel, read-only subagents to test hypotheses against logs, metrics, traces, changes, and dependencies. |
| Resolution | Anna records the supported root cause or another disposition, then organizes evidence and recommended actions. |
The specialist set is dynamic. Anna selects the domains required by the evidence instead of running a fixed agent roster for every Incident. A typical investigation uses two to four subagents, with a maximum of eight.
RCA reads connected systems during investigation. A proposed action follows the runbook effect: **Allow**, **Require Approval**, or **Deny**.
## Read the result
The investigation view keeps the conclusion and its proof together:
| Section | What to look for |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Root cause | The confirmed explanation, identification time, and agent-recorded confidence. |
| How it happened | A causal graph that connects the initiating condition to the visible impact. |
| Hypotheses | The explanations Anna tested, including confirmed and ruled-out paths. |
| Evidence | Supporting logs, metrics, traces, changes, alerts, and configuration observations. |
| Timeline | The ordered investigation steps and important operational events. |
| Affected services | The services and dependencies involved in the incident. |
| Remediation | Recommended next actions, including any runbook that needs approval. |
Confidence is supporting context, not a guarantee. The interface groups the agent-recorded score as **High** at 0.8 or above, **Medium** from 0.5 to below 0.8, and **Low** below 0.5. Review the linked evidence before you approve a change.
## Investigation outcomes
Anna can complete an RCA run with one of these terminal outcomes:
| Outcome | Meaning |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Root cause identified | The evidence supports a root cause and remediation can proceed. |
| False alarm | The reported condition was not an incident. |
| Not found | The available evidence did not support a root cause. |
| Resolved | Remediation was verified with a person in the loop. |
| Auto-resolved | The agent verified the remediation with nobody in the loop. |
**On hold** is not terminal. It pauses the investigation when Anna needs information, access, or a decision. The Incident enters **Needs your decision** until a person supplies what RCA needs to continue. **Acknowledged** is also not terminal: a responder owns the Incident but analysis has not started.
The Investigation queue groups work by what needs attention: **AI is handling**, **Needs your decision**, **Not started**, **Resolved**, and **Dismissed**. Incidents with a **Not found** result do not remain in the visible queue.
## Start or rerun RCA
Select an Incident from the Investigation queue. Review its source, severity, signals, and existing evidence.
Click **Investigate** when the Incident is waiting for manual analysis. Pulse-created Incidents can start automatically when On Duty is enabled and the routing rules qualify them.
Read the root cause, causal graph, hypotheses, evidence, and remediation before you approve an action or resolve the Incident.
Rerun RCA when new evidence changes the case. The new run does not erase the earlier investigation.
## Example investigation
These examples show how an investigation can move from one infrastructure symptom to a correlated root cause.
```text theme={null}
@alex #report investigate EC2 termination patterns for the past 60 days.
Break down the events by Auto Scaling group, termination reason, instance
type, and availability zone.
```
An infrastructure investigation begins with the termination pattern.
```text theme={null}
@alex #report correlate CreateNetworkInterface failures with the EC2
termination events. Test whether scale-down behavior affects ENI cleanup
or subnet capacity.
```
A second pass tests whether the symptoms share a cause.
```text theme={null}
@anna #report synthesize the EC2 and EKS findings into one RCA. Include
the supported root cause, evidence, causal sequence, remediation, and
follow-up checks.
```
Anna combines the supported findings into one reviewable verdict.
## Related
Create an Incident from a human report, then start RCA when you are ready.
Set On Duty behavior and re-investigation sensitivity.
Review the actions that DRE can suggest, approve, or block.
See how agent-written lessons can inform later investigations.
# Runbooks
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/runbooks
Connect operational procedures, control mutating commands, and review the remediation actions DRE executes during incidents.
Runbooks give DRE approved operational procedures for the Resolve stage. During RCA, an agent can find a relevant runbook, propose its commands, and apply the configured effect before any mutation runs.
Keep the procedures that DRE can use during an Incident in one place.
## Add a runbook source
Open **DRE → Runbooks**, then add one of these sources:
| Source | Use it for |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Confluence | Search operational procedures in selected spaces or labels. |
| GitHub | Read runbook files from a repository, branch, and optional path. |
| GitLab | Read runbook files from a GitLab project, branch, and optional path. |
| Manual upload | Store Markdown procedures directly in CloudThinker. |
Choose the system that already owns the operational procedure.
External sources remain in their original system. During RCA, agents use the corresponding connection tools to search and read them. Manual uploads are stored in the workspace.
For a manual upload, select up to 20 Markdown files at once. Each file can be up to 5 MB. DRE extracts mutating commands from their code blocks so you can review the permitted effect.
## Control command effects
Each mutating command has one of three effects:
| Effect | Behavior |
| ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Allow | DRE can execute the command without a separate approval. |
| Require Approval | DRE pauses and waits for a human decision. |
| Deny | DRE cannot execute the command. |
Read-only investigation commands do not need a runbook effect. Per-command controls are available for manually uploaded runbooks. A command with no matching effect defaults to **Require Approval**, so an unrecognized command from an external runbook source waits for a person.
Review each extracted mutation before it can become part of an Incident response.
## Use a runbook during RCA
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
A["RCA identifies a remediation"] --> B["Agent finds a runbook"]
B --> C{"Command effect"}
C -->|Allow| D["Execute"]
C -->|Require Approval| E["Wait for decision"]
C -->|Deny| F["Block"]
D --> G["Record outcome"]
E -->|Approved| D
E -->|Rejected| F
```
The Runbooks page has two tabs: **Runbook sources** and **Execution history**. Execution history keeps the source and command context for each run. Review the recorded result before you resolve the Incident or rely on the remediation as verified.
An uploaded runbook records its execution as per-command, so the history shows which extracted command carried the decision.
## Related
See how RCA produces evidence and remediation proposals.
Approve or reject actions that require a human decision.
Review runbook coverage, executions, and gaps.
Feed useful remediation outcomes into later investigations.
# DRE Settings
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/settings
Control automatic investigation, re-investigation sensitivity, and the default severity for manually logged Incidents.
Open **DRE → Settings** to control when DRE investigates and how it treats new evidence. These settings affect RCA behavior; they do not disable Pulse detection or Incident creation.
The page is one scroll with a **Behaviour** group and, when your workspace has it, a **Policies** group. Runbooks are not here — they live on their own [Runbooks](/guide/incident/runbooks) page.
## Re-investigation sensitivity
Choose how readily DRE starts a new investigation when an existing Incident receives more evidence:
| Option | Behavior |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Conservative | Re-investigate only when the new evidence strongly changes the case. |
| Balanced | Use the recommended balance between responsiveness and repeated work. |
| Sensitive | Re-investigate with a lower threshold for meaningful new evidence. |
## DRE auto-investigates
Use the On Duty toggle to control automatic RCA.
* **On:** eligible Pulse-created Incidents can start RCA automatically.
* **Off:** Pulse continues to detect, correlate, and create Incidents, but analysis waits until a person clicks **Investigate**.
Turning On Duty back on applies to future routing decisions. Incidents created while it was off do not automatically form a backlog of RCA work. A person can always start RCA manually.
## Default manual severity
Choose the initial severity for newly logged manual Incidents, from **Critical**, **High**, **Medium**, **Low**, or **Info**. The default is **Medium**. The person logging the Incident can change it before creation.
## Policies
Some workspaces also show a Policies section. Policies control which proposed operational actions DRE can allow, pause for approval, or deny. If the section is not available, use the runbook effects and workspace approval controls exposed to your account.
## Related
Create a manual Incident with the correct initial severity.
See when investigations start and how to read the result.
Control the effects of proposed mutating commands.
Configure connections, Signals, and outcomes.
# AWS CloudWatch
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/webhook-integrations/cloudwatch
Send AWS CloudWatch alarm events to Pulse through Amazon EventBridge, then verify Signal delivery and Incident routing.
Connect AWS CloudWatch alarms to CloudThinker so that alarm state changes enter Pulse as Signals. The recommended approach uses **Amazon EventBridge** to route CloudWatch alarm events to your CloudThinker webhook URL with no Lambda function.
***
## Architecture overview
```
CloudWatch Alarm → EventBridge Rule → API Destination → CloudThinker Webhook
```
When a CloudWatch alarm changes state, EventBridge forwards the event through an API Destination. CloudThinker parses the event into a Signal. Pulse then correlates and routes the problem, and an eligible Incident can start RCA automatically.
**Why EventBridge?** EventBridge sends clean JSON directly to your webhook with built-in retry logic, dead-letter queues, and IAM-based security. No subscription confirmation handshake is needed (unlike SNS), and no Lambda function is required to transform the payload.
***
## Prerequisites
* An AWS account with permissions to create EventBridge rules, API destinations, and connections
* A CloudWatch alarm configured for the metric you want to monitor
* A CloudThinker webhook URL (created in the steps below)
***
## Setup guide
1. In CloudThinker, go to **DRE** → **Integrations**
2. Click **Connect** on the **AWS CloudWatch** card
3. Enter a name (e.g., "Production CloudWatch Alerts")
4. Review the pre-configured field mappings — these are set for EventBridge format:
| Signal Field | JSONPath | Extracts |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Title | `detail.alarmName` | Alarm name |
| Description | `detail.state.reason` | State change reason |
| Severity | `detail.state.value` | Alarm state (`ALARM`, `OK`, `INSUFFICIENT_DATA`) |
| Service | `detail.configuration.metrics[0].metricStat.metric.namespace` | AWS service namespace (e.g., `AWS/EC2`) |
5. The default auth method is **API Key** with header `x-api-key` — this matches the EventBridge connection setup
6. Configure severity mapping and auto-trigger settings as needed
7. Click **Create** and **save the Secret Key** — you'll need it for the EventBridge connection
The secret key is only shown once during creation. Copy it immediately — you'll paste it as the API key value in the EventBridge connection.
1. In the AWS Console, go to **Amazon EventBridge** → **Integration** → **Connections**
2. Click **Create connection**
3. Configure the connection:
* **Name:** `cloudthinker-webhook`
* **Authorization type:** API Key
* **API key name:** `x-api-key`
* **API key value:** Paste the **Secret Key** from the CloudThinker webhook creation dialog
Save the secret key during webhook creation — it is only shown once. This key authenticates EventBridge requests to CloudThinker.
1. Go to **Amazon EventBridge** → **Integration** → **API destinations**
2. Click **Create API destination**
3. Configure:
* **Name:** `cloudthinker-incidents`
* **API destination endpoint:** Paste your CloudThinker webhook URL
* **HTTP method:** `POST`
* **Connection:** Select the `cloudthinker-webhook` connection created above
* **Invocation rate limit:** `100` per second (adjust as needed)
1. Go to **Amazon EventBridge** → **Rules**
2. Select the **default** event bus
3. Click **Create rule**
4. Configure:
* **Name:** `cloudwatch-alarms-to-cloudthinker`
* **Description:** Route CloudWatch alarm state changes to CloudThinker
* **Event bus:** default
* **Rule type:** Rule with an event pattern
5. Define the **event pattern**:
```json theme={null}
{
"source": ["aws.cloudwatch"],
"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"]
}
```
You can also filter by specific alarms or states:
```json theme={null}
{
"source": ["aws.cloudwatch"],
"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"],
"detail": {
"state": {
"value": ["ALARM"]
}
}
}
```
6. Select target:
* **Target type:** EventBridge API destination
* **API destination:** Select `cloudthinker-incidents`
* **Execution role:** Create a new role or use an existing one with `events:InvokeApiDestination` permissions
7. Click **Create rule**
Use the AWS CLI to simulate an alarm state change:
```bash theme={null}
aws cloudwatch set-alarm-state \
--alarm-name "YourAlarmName" \
--state-value ALARM \
--state-reason "Testing CloudThinker integration"
```
Within a few seconds, you should see a new Signal in Pulse with the alarm details. An actionable Cluster can then route into an Incident.
To reset the alarm back to normal:
```bash theme={null}
aws cloudwatch set-alarm-state \
--alarm-name "YourAlarmName" \
--state-value OK \
--state-reason "Test complete"
```
***
## Event payload
EventBridge delivers CloudWatch alarm events in the following format. CloudThinker's field mappings extract Signal data from this structure automatically.
```json theme={null}
{
"version": "0",
"id": "abcd1234-ef56-gh78-ij90-klmnopqrstuv",
"detail-type": "CloudWatch Alarm State Change",
"source": "aws.cloudwatch",
"account": "123456789012",
"time": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z",
"region": "us-east-1",
"detail": {
"alarmName": "HighCPUUtilization",
"state": {
"value": "ALARM",
"reason": "Threshold Crossed: 1 out of the last 1 datapoints [85.0 (15/01/24 10:25:00)] was greater than the threshold (80.0)",
"reasonData": "{\"version\":\"1.0\",\"queryDate\":\"2024-01-15T10:30:00.000+0000\",\"startDate\":\"2024-01-15T10:25:00.000+0000\",\"statistic\":\"Average\",\"period\":300,\"recentDatapoints\":[85.0],\"threshold\":80.0,\"evaluatedDatapoints\":[{\"timestamp\":\"2024-01-15T10:25:00.000+0000\",\"sampleCount\":5.0,\"value\":85.0}]}",
"timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:00.000+0000"
},
"previousState": {
"value": "OK",
"reason": "Threshold Crossed: 1 out of the last 1 datapoints [65.0 (15/01/24 10:20:00)] was not greater than the threshold (80.0)",
"timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:20:00.000+0000"
},
"configuration": {
"description": "CPU utilization exceeded 80%",
"metrics": [
{
"id": "m1",
"metricStat": {
"metric": {
"namespace": "AWS/EC2",
"name": "CPUUtilization",
"dimensions": {
"InstanceId": "i-0123456789abcdef0"
}
},
"period": 300,
"stat": "Average"
},
"returnData": true
}
]
}
}
}
```
***
## Severity mapping
CloudWatch alarm states map to CloudThinker severity levels. The default mapping is:
| CloudWatch State | CloudThinker Severity |
| ------------------- | --------------------- |
| `ALARM` | High |
| `INSUFFICIENT_DATA` | Medium |
| `OK` | Info |
You can customize this mapping in the webhook configuration under **Severity Mapping**.
***
## Filtering alarms
You can control which alarms trigger incidents by refining the EventBridge rule's event pattern.
**By alarm name prefix:**
```json theme={null}
{
"source": ["aws.cloudwatch"],
"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"],
"detail": {
"alarmName": [{ "prefix": "prod-" }]
}
}
```
**By specific alarm states:**
```json theme={null}
{
"source": ["aws.cloudwatch"],
"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"],
"detail": {
"state": {
"value": ["ALARM", "INSUFFICIENT_DATA"]
}
}
}
```
**By metric namespace:**
```json theme={null}
{
"source": ["aws.cloudwatch"],
"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"],
"detail": {
"configuration": {
"metrics": {
"metricStat": {
"metric": {
"namespace": ["AWS/EC2", "AWS/RDS"]
}
}
}
}
}
}
```
***
## Multi-region setup
CloudWatch events are regional — alarms only emit events to the EventBridge bus in their own region. For multi-region monitoring:
1. **Option A: Cross-region event forwarding** — Create an EventBridge rule in each source region that forwards CloudWatch alarm events to a central region's event bus, then route from there to CloudThinker.
2. **Option B: Per-region rules** — Create an API destination and rule in each region pointing to the same CloudThinker webhook URL. This is simpler but requires maintaining rules across regions.
***
## Troubleshooting
1. **Check the EventBridge rule** — Go to EventBridge → Rules → select your rule → Monitoring tab. Verify the rule is matching events (`Invocations` metric > 0)
2. **Check the API destination** — Go to API destinations → select yours → verify the endpoint URL matches your CloudThinker webhook URL
3. **Check CloudThinker delivery history** — Go to **DRE → Integrations**, select the platform and webhook, then review its delivery history
4. **Test with CLI** — Run `aws cloudwatch set-alarm-state` to simulate an alarm and verify the full chain
Verify the field mappings match the EventBridge event format. CloudWatch events routed through EventBridge use the `detail.*` prefix:
* Title: `detail.alarmName` (not `AlarmName`)
* Severity: `detail.state.value` (not `NewStateValue`)
* Description: `detail.state.reason` (not `NewStateReason`)
If you previously used SNS, update the field mappings to the EventBridge format.
* Ensure the event pattern uses `"detail-type": ["CloudWatch Alarm State Change"]` (exact string, case-sensitive)
* Ensure the rule is on the **default** event bus — CloudWatch sends events to the default bus
* Verify the alarm is in the same region as the EventBridge rule
* **401/403**: Verify the EventBridge connection's API key value matches the webhook's secret key, and the key name is `x-api-key`
* **422**: The payload format may not match expected field mappings — check the event payload structure
* **429**: You've exceeded the webhook rate limit — increase the rate limit in CloudThinker webhook settings
***
## Alternative: SNS route
CloudThinker also supports receiving CloudWatch alarms via SNS. This path is useful if you already have SNS topics configured for your alarms.
```
CloudWatch Alarm → SNS Topic → CloudThinker Webhook
```
When using the SNS route, CloudThinker automatically:
* Confirms the SNS subscription (no manual confirmation needed)
* Unwraps the SNS notification envelope to extract the alarm payload
To set up: add your CloudThinker webhook URL as an **HTTPS subscription** on your SNS topic. The subscription will be auto-confirmed within seconds.
The EventBridge route is recommended over SNS because it provides a cleaner event format, native filtering, and doesn't require a subscription handshake.
***
## Related
Learn about all supported platforms and general webhook configuration.
Review how an eligible CloudWatch Incident can start automatic RCA.
# Custom Source
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/webhook-integrations/custom-source
Send events from any system that can POST JSON, then map its fields to a Pulse Signal by clicking the payload it really sent.
Custom source is the DRE integration for a system that has no card of its own: an in-house uptime checker, a cron job, a script, or a vendor CloudThinker does not list yet. If it can send an HTTP POST with a JSON body, it can raise a Signal.
A Custom source is not the workspace webhook under **Settings → Integrations → Webhooks**. That one starts a conversation. A Custom source enters Pulse, so its events can be suppressed, clustered, and routed into an Incident.
## Add a Custom source
Open **DRE → Integrations** and select the **Custom source** card. One card holds every custom source you create.
Type the name your team will recognize, for example `Acme uptime`. CloudThinker creates the endpoint and shows its URL.
Copy the URL into your system and let it fire once. The page waits for the first delivery, then shows the JSON it received.
Send a representative event, not an empty test body. The fields you can map are the fields this event contained.
Every field in the captured JSON is listed with its value. Pick the one that carries the incident title, then the ones for severity, service, resource, and description. Save.
The source is live after you save. The next event arrives in Pulse as a Signal with a real title.
## What the mapping accepts
A mapped field is a dotted path into your JSON. `event.data.title` reads `title` inside `data` inside `event`. A list index is `[0]`, as in `alerts[0].labels.severity`.
There is no `$.` prefix. Paths that begin with `$.` are JSONPath and CloudThinker does not read them.
You do not type these paths. You click them in the captured payload, so a mapping you can save is a mapping that resolves.
| Field | Required | What it does |
| ----------- | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Title | Yes | Names the Signal and the Incident. |
| Severity | No | Feeds routing and the automatic RCA threshold. |
| Service | No | Helps Pulse correlate related events and scope snoozes. |
| Resource | No | Identifies the affected host, cluster, or component. |
| Description | No | Gives operators and agents the symptom in the source's own words. |
Only **Title** is required. Map the rest when your payload carries them.
A path holds at most eight segments. If your payload nests the value deeper than that, send a flatter body.
## Authenticate the endpoint
A Custom source uses bearer authentication. Send the token in the `Authorization` header:
```bash theme={null}
curl -X POST "" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer " \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"event": {"data": {"title": "Checkout latency high", "priority": "critical"}}}'
```
## Verify the complete path
A `200` response proves delivery only. Open Pulse and confirm the Signal, its title, and its severity. If automatic RCA is enabled and the severity clears the threshold, confirm that the Incident enters **AI is handling**.
An event that arrives before you save a mapping still becomes a Signal. CloudThinker falls back to a `title` key in the payload, and then to `Webhook signal`. Nothing is dropped, but the Signal is harder to read. Map first.
## Change the mapping later
Open the Custom source card, select the source under **Signals**, and edit its webhook. Incident settings, including automatic RCA and its minimum severity, live there too. A new source uses the same defaults as every other DRE webhook.
The payload shown in the picker is the last event CloudThinker stored. Stored bodies are removed after the retention period, so a source that has not fired recently has nothing to map. Fire it once more, then map.
## Related
Map events from a platform CloudThinker already supports.
Send CloudWatch alarm events through EventBridge.
Follow Signals through suppression, correlation, and routing.
Review each platform's connections, Signals, and outcomes.
# Webhook Signals
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/incident/webhook-integrations/overview
Map third-party webhook events into Pulse Signals, test delivery, and control when eligible Incidents start automatic RCA.
Webhook integrations send raw provider events into Pulse. Pulse suppresses known noise, groups related surviving events into Clusters, and classifies each Cluster into a Signal. An actionable Signal Cluster can then route into an Incident.
A webhook event does not create an Incident directly. The Pulse routing decision sits between the incoming Signal and the Incident.
## Create a webhook signal path
Open **DRE → Integrations**, select a platform, and add a webhook under its Signals section.
Start from the DRE integration for the platform that sends the event.
Choose the monitoring or alerting platform that owns the event.
Map the JSON fields for the Signal title, description, severity, service, resource, and timestamp. Add authentication and a rate limit when the sender requires them.
Automatic RCA is **on by default** for a new incident webhook, with a minimum severity of **Medium**. Change either value here, or turn automatic RCA off. The workspace On Duty setting must also allow automatic investigation.
Copy the generated URL and request format, send one representative event, and confirm that Pulse receives a Signal.
## Map stable fields
Use fields that remain stable across repeated deliveries:
| Field | Why it matters |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Title and description | Give operators and agents enough context to understand the symptom. |
| Severity | Supports routing and attention decisions after normalization. |
| Service or resource | Helps Pulse correlate related events and scope snoozes. |
| Event type | Separates different operational conditions from the same source. |
| Timestamp | Preserves event order and incident timing. |
Map the sender's native severity values to CloudThinker's severity levels. Test a normal event and a critical event before you activate the path.
## Verify the complete path
A successful HTTP response proves delivery only. Verify the resulting Signal in Pulse, its Cluster membership, and whether the Cluster routes as expected. If automatic RCA is enabled, verify that an eligible Incident enters **AI is handling**.
## Related
Send CloudWatch alarm events through EventBridge.
Follow Signals through suppression, correlation, and routing.
Review each platform's connections, Signals, and outcomes.
Control On Duty behavior and re-investigation sensitivity.
# Infrastructure Analytics
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/analytics
Review cost overview, high-consuming services, and recommendations in Infrastructure Analytics
Infrastructure Analytics is a cost dashboard with a cost overview, high-consuming services, and recommendations. Billing trends and forecasts live in [Spend and forecast](/guide/cost-optimization/analytics).
## Dashboard
| Section | What it shows |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| Cost overview | The dashboard's cost summary |
| High-consuming services | The services with the highest cost |
| Recommendations | Recommendations available to review |
## Use agent requests
Use [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) for supported agent-request syntax. For continuous cloud findings outside this dashboard, use [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers).
## Related
Open keepers that surface continuous cloud findings
Analyze spending patterns and anomalies across connected accounts
Run a Well-Architected assessment on discovered resources
Add view-scoped relationships around the resources you review
# Infrastructure Assessment
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/assessment
Run automated Well-Architected assessments on discovered resources and turn findings into a remediation plan.
Run Well-Architected assessments on discovered resources — agents read the actual configuration and evaluate it against all six pillars, with no questionnaire required. Screenshots show AWS.
Assessments are available on **Advanced**, **Business legacy**, **Scale**, **Scale Plus**, and **Enterprise** plans.
## Prerequisites
* A cloud connection with the permissions your agents need to read the resources you want to assess.
* [Resources](/guide/infrastructure/resources) already discovered in CloudThinker — assessments only evaluate discovered resources.
* Optional: tag or resource filters ready if you want to scope the run.
## Create an assessment
Go to **Assessment** and click **Create Assessment**.
Enter a clear name and optional description, then choose **Create**.
Your new assessment appears in the list with status **Pending**. Click **Run assessment** to configure it.
## Configure and run the assessment
Pick the pillars to evaluate:
| Pillar | What it checks |
| -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| **Cost Optimization** | Right-sizing, reserved capacity, idle spend |
| **Security** | Encryption, access control, compliance |
| **Reliability** | Backup, redundancy, fault tolerance |
| **Performance Efficiency** | Throughput, latency, resource utilization |
| **Operational Excellence** | Monitoring, automation, runbook coverage |
| **Sustainability** | Resource efficiency, carbon footprint |
Choose the discovered resources to include. Scope to categories or specific resources — filter by service type, tags (for example `Environment: production`), or region, and use **Select All** on a filtered list. Only discovered resources are assessable.
Confirm pillars and selected resources, then click **Start Assessment**. A progress indicator shows resources as agents collect configuration, analyze usage patterns, and evaluate each pillar's best practices.
## Review results and take action
After the run, review analytics for findings by pillar, severity breakdown, potential savings, and scope. Multi-resource runs also surface the top affected resources and systemic patterns, such as widespread over-provisioning.
Expand recommendations by resource to see effort, risk, and remediation details. Sort by potential savings, severity, or effort to prioritize — fixing one systemic issue can resolve findings across many resources.
Click a recommendation to view impact analysis, savings, and implementation guidelines.
Choose how to proceed: run Impact Analytics to project the change before you make it, generate implementation guidelines, ask a custom prompt, or implement directly with agent assistance. Click **Start** to launch the action.
Recommendations are drafted by default — save them to make them appear on the
[Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) page, where you assign priority and track implementation over time.
## Run your first assessment: one resource, one pillar
For your first run, scope to a single resource and a single pillar to learn the workflow before scaling up. Good first candidates:
* An **EC2 instance** running a production workload
* An **RDS database** you suspect is over-provisioned
* An **S3 bucket** with unknown access patterns
Pick **Cost Optimization** or **Security** as the pillar — they typically surface the most actionable findings.
More resources and pillars mean longer assessment time. A single resource with one pillar takes 1–2 minutes. Scale gradually.
A first run against one over-provisioned instance might report: average CPU at 12% over 30 days, no Reserved Instance or Savings Plan coverage, and a recommendation to downsize with an estimated monthly saving. Once you've seen how it works, run the same pillar across all your EC2 instances to check whether over-provisioning is a systemic pattern.
After a large run, ask [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) to condense the results:
```text theme={null}
@anna #report Summarize the top 5 issues from this assessment and create an action plan
```
Run assessments monthly or after major infrastructure changes to catch drift and new issues. For day-to-day guardrails between runs, use [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers).
## Next steps
Save assessment findings to Plan to track implementation and ROI
Set up daily guardrails to maintain the standards your assessment identified
Discover additional resources to include in your next assessment run
Deep-dive into cost findings from the Cost Optimization pillar
# Keepers
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers
Enable autonomous keepers that catch cost, security, and performance drift and turn findings into tracked recommendations.
CloudKeepers are autonomous monitors that enforce cost, security, and performance guardrails across every connected cloud account and Kubernetes cluster. The app sidebar shows them as **Keepers** under **Infrastructure**.
## How keepers are organized
Keepers form a **3 × 3 matrix** of providers and pillars:
| Provider | Cost | Security | Performance |
| -------------- | -------- | -------- | ----------- |
| **AWS** | AWS-COST | AWS-SEC | AWS-PERF |
| **GCP** | GCP-COST | GCP-SEC | GCP-PERF |
| **Kubernetes** | K8S-COST | K8S-SEC | K8S-PERF |
Each keeper monitors one provider–pillar combination. Enable only the keepers you need — for example, AWS-COST and K8S-SEC — or all nine for full coverage.
Each keeper contains multiple **detection rules** (40+ rules total) that you toggle and tune individually:
* **Cost rules**: idle compute instances, unattached storage, old snapshots, unused static IPs, oversized databases, idle load balancers, over-requested pod resources, and more
* **Security rules**: public S3 buckets, unused IAM roles, MFA disabled on root, open security groups, secrets in parameter store, and more
* **Performance rules**: RDS connection limits, missing health probes, CrashLooping pods, throttled resources, and more
## Autonomy
Every detection rule runs in one of two modes:
| Mode | What happens |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Manual** | You approve each agent write action before it runs, according to your Tool Permissions. A tool set to **Always allow** still runs without pausing. |
| **Auto** | An AI classifier auto-approves agent write actions for this workspace. |
Autonomy is set per rule, so most rules can stay in Manual while well-understood cost rules — like cleaning up unattached volumes — run in [Auto](/guide/auto-mode).
## Prerequisites
* At least one cloud account or Kubernetes cluster connected with read/monitoring permissions and, optionally, remediation permissions.
* [Slack](/guide/slack-integration), Microsoft Teams, or email destinations configured if you want alerts beyond in-app [notifications](/guide/notifications).
* Optional: tags or filters ready if you plan to scope findings to specific environments.
## Set up your first keepers
Go to **Infrastructure → Keepers** to see the onboarding view. It walks you through three steps: connect a cloud account, enable keepers, and run your first detection scan. Click **Enable Your First Keepers** to begin.
The setup wizard has two steps. In **Select Keepers**, choose which keepers to activate — filter by provider (AWS, Kubernetes) or pillar (Cost, Security, Performance). In **Review & Configure**, fine-tune detection rules per keeper, set each rule to Manual or Auto, and adjust which rules are enabled.
Once keepers are enabled, select one from the sidebar to see its **Dashboard** tab. Four stat cards — **Open Findings**, **Critical & High**, **Potential Savings**, and **This Week** — give you a quick pulse. The **Findings Over Time** chart breaks down trends by severity.
Switch to the **Findings** tab to see a board with a column for each finding status. Each finding card shows the title, estimated savings, effort level, and risk severity. Click a card to drill into details, or drag it between columns to update its status.
The **Runs** tab shows every detection run with its status, summary, duration, and how many findings were created or updated. Use this as an audit trail to verify keepers are running on schedule.
In the **Settings** tab, set the cron schedule (default: daily at 07:00 UTC), and toggle individual detection rules on or off. Each rule shows a description of what it detects and supports per-rule autonomy and threshold configuration.
## From finding to recommendation
Keepers turn raw detections into tracked, governed work:
1. **Detect** — each keeper runs on its cron schedule (default: daily at 07:00 UTC) or on demand, scanning all permitted resources — not just the ones you previously discovered. Every run leaves an audit trail in the **Runs** tab.
2. **Triage** — each finding is tagged with pillar, severity, effort, and estimated savings so you can prioritize the highest-value fixes. Move findings through their statuses as you work:
| Status | Meaning |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- |
| **New** | Just detected; nobody has looked at it yet. |
| **Acknowledged** | A team member has seen the finding and owns the follow-up. |
| **Active** | Work on the finding is underway. |
| **Resolved** | The underlying issue is fixed and verified. |
| **Dismissed** | Reviewed and intentionally not acted on. |
3. **Promote** — findings start as drafts; promote the ones worth acting on into active recommendations. Every recommendation includes an impact analysis with before/after estimates and a step-by-step playbook. From the detail view, use **Impact Analytics** for deeper analysis, **Generate Guidelines** for shareable runbooks, **Custom Prompt** to explore edge cases, or **Implement** to execute the change.
4. **Track** — save recommendations to [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) for approvals, scheduling, and execution tracking, so governance, FinOps, and security teams share the same source of truth.
Keepers are your daily operational guardrail. [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment) is a deeper, periodic evaluation and is not meant for day-to-day runs.
## Keeper settings
Each keeper has a dedicated **Settings** tab where you can configure:
* **Schedule**: a cron expression for automated runs (minimum 1-hour interval).
* **Detection rules**: toggle individual rules, set each rule to Manual or Auto, and adjust per-rule thresholds (idle CPU %, lookback days, snapshot max age).
* **Commands & permissions**: manage which cloud commands each rule is allowed to execute, with per-command effects (Allow / Require Approval / Deny).
* **Notifications**: Email, Slack, and Teams channels with per-channel minimum severity thresholds. In-app [notifications](/guide/notifications) are always delivered regardless of channel settings.
## Examples
### Cost guardrails
Infrastructure that grew organically hides waste that manual audits rarely catch. AWS-COST flags idle EC2 instances, unattached EBS volumes, aging snapshots, and underused NAT gateways — and it reads context: a volume tagged for daily backups serves a purpose, while an untagged test volume from last year is genuinely orphaned. Review findings on the dashboard, promote the high-confidence ones, and save them to [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) for approval and execution.
### Security guardrails
Security drift accumulates between audits: overly broad IAM roles, public S3 buckets, unencrypted volumes, and security groups open to 0.0.0.0/0. AWS-SEC scans continuously and weighs operational context — HTTP from anywhere is normal for a load balancer but dangerous for a database, and a root account access key outranks an unused read-only role. Route critical findings to Slack for immediate triage and track multi-team fixes in Plan.
## Related
Save findings to Plan for approvals, scheduling, and execution tracking
Run deeper periodic Well-Architected assessments alongside daily keeper runs
Route keeper alerts to Slack channels for real-time triage
Schedule additional recurring analysis to complement keepers
# Infrastructure Management
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/overview
Discover, map, assess, and act on AWS and GCP resources from one place; Azure discovery is coming soon
The Infrastructure module gives you one operational picture of resources discovered from AWS and GCP connections, with [Alex](/guide/agents/alex), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver), [Kai](/guide/agents/kai), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony), and [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) ready to help you act on them. Azure resource discovery is coming soon.
## How it works
1. **Discover** — [Resources](/guide/infrastructure/resources) scans your connected AWS and GCP accounts and keeps a live inventory of compute, storage, database, and network assets.
2. **Map** — [Topology](/guide/infrastructure/topology) syncs Resource nodes from that inventory. You or the topology agent add relationships inside a topology view.
3. **Assess** — [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment) runs an automated Well-Architected review across all six pillars and produces prioritized findings with implementation steps.
4. **Analyze** — [Analytics](/guide/infrastructure/analytics) shows a cost overview, high-consuming services, and recommendations.
5. **Act** — [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) is the recommendation board for actions and status tracking.
## What you can do
| Capability | Description | Learn more |
| --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| Resource inventory | Filter, tag, and act on assets across AWS and GCP; Azure discovery is coming soon | [Resources](/guide/infrastructure/resources) |
| Topology views | Add view-scoped relationships between synced Resource nodes | [Topology](/guide/infrastructure/topology) |
| Well-Architected assessment | Run automated reviews across all six pillars with prioritized findings | [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment) |
| Cost dashboard | Review a cost overview, high-consuming services, and recommendations | [Analytics](/guide/infrastructure/analytics) |
| Recommendation board | Run actions and track recommendation status | [Plan](/guide/infrastructure/plan) |
Looking for savings analysis or always-on monitoring? Billing trends, cost findings, and savings estimates live in [CostOps](/guide/cost-optimization/overview). Continuous drift, waste, and misconfiguration checks run as [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers).
## Get started
Link AWS or GCP to activate discovery and analysis; Azure discovery is coming soon
Browse the live inventory and start filtering, tagging, and acting on assets
Add continuous guardrails that surface drift and waste every day
Read billing data and review agent-verified savings findings
# Plan
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/plan
Review recommendations, run actions, and track their status on the shared recommendation board.
Plan is the recommendation board where you review saved recommendations and take action. How findings become recommendations is documented on [Keepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers#from-finding-to-recommendation); for approval guidance outside Plan, see [Approval](/guide/approval).
## Prerequisites
* At least one source of findings: [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers), an [assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment), or `#recommend` results from an agent conversation.
## Review recommendations and take action
Findings start as drafts in their source views — they appear in Plan only after you save them.
Go to **Plan** to see all saved recommendations.
Open any draft finding from Keepers, an assessment, or `#recommend` conversation results and choose **Save to Plan**. Saved items appear on the recommendation board. Unsaved drafts remain in their source views.
Use **More Filters** to scope by resource name, pillar, service, assessment, or source. This helps focus the recommendations that need action.
Open a recommendation to review impact analysis, savings, risk notes, and implementation guidance before deciding what to run.
Choose **Impact Analytics**, **Implement**, **Generate Guidelines**, or **Custom Prompt**.
## Track recommendation status
Each recommendation has one status: **Pending**, **In Progress**, **Implemented**, or **Ignored**.
## Next steps
Run Well-Architected assessments that feed remediation findings into Plan
Enable continuous monitors that detect drift and generate findings
Review verified CostOps findings and their savings classes
# Resources
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/resources
Discover AWS and GCP cloud assets, scope scans by tags, and act on cost, security, and performance findings from one inventory.
Resources gives you a live inventory across AWS and GCP: run targeted discovery, filter by service and tag, and trigger optimization actions per resource. Screenshots show AWS; Azure resource discovery is coming soon.
## Prerequisites
* At least one AWS or GCP cloud account connected.
* Optional: tags you plan to scope discovery with, such as `ENV=dev` or `Environment=production`.
## Discover resources
Go to **Infrastructure → Resources**, click **Connect** for your cloud (AWS shown here), and start **Resource Discovery**. The banner shows the flow: connect, run the first scan (\~30s), then automate.
Choose the services to include (names vary by cloud; AWS shown in the screenshot). Use **Select All** or search to narrow, then save when the selection matches your discovery scope.
Add environment tags such as `ENV=dev` or `Environment=production`, or use **Add Custom Tag** for teams, projects, and cost centers.
* **No selected tags** → all resources are scanned.
* **Selected tags** → only resources matching those tags are scanned.
The inventory shows totals, potential savings, and per-resource entries. Filter by resource name, service, or category (for example, Compute). Hover **Actions** on a row to run **Optimize Cost**, **Scan Security**, or **Check Performance**.
## How discovery scope affects other features
| Feature | Relationship to discovery |
| -------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Agents | Operate on any resources your cloud permissions allow, not just discovered ones. Discovery makes those resources easier to manage inside CloudThinker. |
| [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers) | Keepers run across all permitted resources in your cloud; they are not limited by discovery scope. |
| [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment) | Evaluates only resources that have been discovered — run discovery first. |
## Tips
* Start broad, then narrow with tags so critical resources aren't missed.
* Note which services and tags each scan covers so discovery configurations stay reproducible.
* After each scan, act on high-value cost and security findings first.
## Next steps
Set up continuous monitoring so new resources are automatically evaluated
Run a Well-Architected assessment on your discovered resources
Manage and track recommendations from resource optimization actions
Visualize discovered resources and add scoped relationships
# Topology
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/infrastructure/topology
Build view-scoped resource relationships and investigate dependency paths with the Topology Explorer
The Topology Explorer renders discovered Resource nodes and view-scoped relationships as an interactive map. Resource discovery syncs nodes only; users or the topology agent create relationships in a view.
## Build a topology view
Connect each cloud account through [Connections](/guide/connections/overview), then run [Resource Discovery](/guide/infrastructure/resources). Discovery creates Resource nodes; it does not create relationships.
Click **New View** in the Topology Explorer.
Drag Resource nodes from the left panel onto the canvas.
Click and drag between resources to create a relationship. Each relationship stays scoped to the current view.
Ask the topology agent to create relationships in the current view when you want agent assistance.
Name and save your topology view.
## Resource types
The Topology Explorer supports all major cloud resource types:
| Category | Resources |
| ---------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| Compute | EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS, VMs, Cloud Run |
| Networking | VPC, load balancers, CloudFront, API Gateway |
| Database | RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, Cloud SQL |
| Storage | S3, EFS, EBS, Cloud Storage |
| Security | IAM roles, security groups, ACM certificates |
| Kubernetes | Clusters, deployments, services, pods |
## Views, filters, and export
| Control | What it does |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Load View** dropdown | Opens a saved topology view |
| Search and filter panel | Finds resources by name or ID; filters by type, tags, or metadata; shows/hides categories |
| **Synced** indicator | Shows when Resource nodes were last updated from discovery |
| Export | Saves the view as PNG/SVG, PDF, or JSON, or generates a share link |
## How agents use topology
Every agent can read the topology map and reason over dependency paths:
| Agent | Topology usage |
| ------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) | Cost impact visualization, resource optimization paths |
| [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) | Security exposure mapping, compliance visualization |
| [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) | Database dependency chains, performance bottlenecks |
| [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) | Service mesh visualization, pod relationships |
| [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) | Cross-service incident coordination, architecture reviews |
## Topology-driven RCA
Topology speeds up [root cause analysis](/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis) because most incidents originate in a dependency, not in the service that alerted. Here is a worked example.
**The alert:** checkout success rate drops to 60%. Checkout logs show scattered timeouts, but the payment service, database, and cache all report healthy.
1. Start from the alert, not from logs. Ask Alex to show the topology centered on `checkout-service`.
2. Trace upstream. The view shows the relationship chain checkout service → payment gateway → external payment API.
3. Confirm the affected dependency before acting. Ask Alex to show relationships in the current topology view around the payment gateway. Review the view's gateway-to-external-API relationship with the incident evidence before deciding whether the third-party provider is the origin.
4. Resolve and document. Fail over to the backup payment provider, then export a topology snapshot for the [incident record](/guide/incident/manual-logging) and postmortem.
### Reading a cascading failure
When several services fail at once, the topology timeline view shows the origin and the propagation order in a single view, instead of each team investigating its own service. In this cascade, every downstream failure traces back to one expired SSL certificate:
| Time | Service | Status | Cause |
| -------- | --------------- | ------ | ----------------------- |
| 10:00:00 | Auth service | Failed | SSL certificate expired |
| 10:00:05 | User service | Failed | Cannot validate tokens |
| 10:00:08 | Order service | Failed | Auth dependency |
| 10:00:10 | Payment service | Failed | Auth dependency |
| 10:00:15 | All services | Failed | Cascade complete |
Build your topology and add its scoped relationships before an incident. Resource discovery keeps Resource nodes current for the views you maintain.
## Other things to ask
* `@alex show downstream dependencies of payment-service` — check blast radius before a risky change
* `@oliver map all connections from instance i-0abc123` — scope security exposure during an investigation
* `@tony map every service connecting to the production database` — find the source of connection exhaustion
* `@kai show service dependencies and single points of failure in the cluster` — harden Kubernetes reliability
* `@alex compare the production topology with the DR region and list missing resources` — validate disaster recovery coverage
## Related
View all discovered infrastructure resources
Run agent-led RCA on incidents
Run infrastructure assessments
# CloudThinker Language
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/language
Look up the @agent #tool syntax: agent mentions, tool tags, context modifiers, and prompt patterns for every agent
CloudThinker Language is the structured prompt syntax that works identically across every agent, in chat, [Slack](/guide/slack-integration), and automations. Mention an agent, tag the output you want, then write your instruction in plain language.
## Syntax
Every prompt follows one canonical form:
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool instruction
```
| Component | Required | Description |
| ------------- | -------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `@agent` | Yes | Routes the request to a specific agent. Mention several agents for cross-domain work. |
| `#tool` | No | Output format or capability. Place it immediately after the mention; combine tags for multiple outputs. |
| `instruction` | Yes | What you want, in your own words — include scope, timeframe, thresholds, and constraints inline. |
## Agent mentions
| Mention | Role | Best for |
| --------- | ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `@alex` | Cloud Engineer | Cost analysis, resource optimization, multi-cloud infrastructure |
| `@oliver` | Security Engineer | Audits, vulnerability scans, IAM, compliance |
| `@tony` | Database Engineer | Query optimization, performance tuning, backups |
| `@kai` | Kubernetes Engineer | Cluster management, pod optimization, scaling |
| `@anna` | General Manager | Multi-agent coordination, executive reporting |
See the [agent reference](/guide/agents) for each agent's full capabilities.
## Tool tags
| Tag | Output | Example |
| ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| `#dashboard` | Interactive visualizations for monitoring and presentations | `@alex #dashboard monthly cost trends with forecast` |
| `#report` | Detailed analysis documents with findings and evidence | `@oliver #report SOC 2 compliance assessment` |
| `#recommend` | Prioritized, actionable recommendations with implementation steps | `@tony #recommend index changes for slow queries` |
| `#alert` | Monitoring notifications on the conditions you define | `@kai #alert on pod OOMKilled events` |
| `#chart` | Standalone data visualizations | `@alex #chart spending by service` |
| `#kb` | Knowledge base search across your organization's docs | `@alex #kb cloud governance policies` |
Combine tags when you want more than one output: `@alex #dashboard #recommend cost optimization opportunities`.
## Context modifiers
Add context inside the instruction to narrow scope and improve accuracy.
| Type | Examples |
| --------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Timeframe | `over the last 30 days`, `since January`, `in the last 24 hours` |
| Scope | `in us-east-1`, `on the production cluster`, `on the orders database` |
| Threshold | `with CPU below 15%`, `costing over $1,000/month`, `P95 above 500ms` |
| Exclusion | `excluding production-tagged resources`, `except backup buckets` |
| Priority | `prioritizing quick wins`, `critical severity first` |
## Prompt patterns
| Pattern | Form | Example |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Analyze | `@agent #tool analyze ` | `@alex analyze EC2 spending by instance family over the last quarter` |
| Audit | `@agent #tool audit for ` | `@oliver audit S3 buckets for public access and encryption` |
| Optimize | `@agent #recommend ` | `@kai #recommend HPA policies for variable workloads` |
| Investigate | `@agent investigate ` | `@tony investigate slow query performance on the orders table` |
| Coordinate | `@anna coordinate with ` | `@anna coordinate quarterly review with @alex @oliver @tony @kai` |
In Slack, the same syntax works with a bot prefix: `@CloudThinker alex what's our AWS spend this week?` — see [Slack integration](/guide/slack-integration).
## Examples
Direct requests — pick the agent, tag the output, state the target:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard AWS spending by service and region
@oliver #report SOC 2 compliance assessment with evidence
@tony #recommend index changes for queries slower than 500ms
```
Stack context modifiers to make results precise and safe to act on:
```text theme={null}
@alex #recommend right-sizing for EC2 instances in us-east-1 with CPU below 15% over the last 30 days, excluding production-tagged resources
```
Mention multiple agents for cross-domain problems:
```text theme={null}
@alex @tony investigate the cost spike on database infrastructure last week
@anna coordinate security remediation with @oliver leading and @alex @kai supporting
```
Refine progressively — start broad, then drill into what the agent finds:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard cloud spending trends
@alex #chart November cost spike broken down by service
@alex #recommend RDS optimization prioritizing underutilized instances
```
Be specific. `@alex #recommend right-sizing for EC2 in us-east-1 with CPU below 15%` gets an actionable answer; `@alex check our servers` gets a clarifying question.
## Related
Each agent's expertise, capabilities, and prompt patterns in depth
What #dashboard, #report, #recommend, and other tool tags produce
Pre-built operations ready to run with this syntax
Use the same syntax in Slack with the @CloudThinker prefix
# Operations Hub
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/operations-hub
Browse and run pre-built cloud operations across cost, security, performance, and Kubernetes categories.
The Operations Hub provides pre-built operation patterns organized by category. Each operation pairs an agent, a tool tag, and a tested instruction — ready to run without writing prompts from scratch.
## Invocation format
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool instruction
```
| Part | Description |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `@agent` | The agent responsible for the operation (Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai, or Anna) |
| `#tool` | Output type: `#dashboard`, `#report`, `#recommend`, `#alert`, `#chart` |
| `instruction` | Natural-language task description — scope, timeframe, and filters go here |
See [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) for full syntax reference.
## Operation categories
| Category | Focus | Primary agent |
| ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------- |
| Cost optimization | Right-sizing, reserved instances, unused resources, spending analysis | Alex |
| Security | Audits, compliance checks, vulnerability scans, IAM reviews | Oliver |
| Performance | Bottleneck detection, query optimization, scaling analysis | Alex, Tony |
| Operational | Backup verification, patch compliance, maintenance tasks | Alex |
| Scalability | Auto-scaling, load balancing, capacity planning | Alex |
| Kubernetes | Cluster health, pod optimization, RBAC audits | Kai |
## Sample operations
### Cost optimization
| Operation | Agent | Example prompt |
| --------------------------- | ---------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| EC2 instance right-sizing | Alex | `@alex #recommend right-size EC2 instances in us-east-1 over past 30 days` |
| Reserved instance coverage | Alex | `@alex #report reserved instance coverage vs on-demand spend` |
| Unused EBS volume detection | Alex | `@alex #report unused EBS volumes across all regions` |
| RDS cost optimization | Alex, Tony | `@alex @tony #recommend RDS cost reduction for production databases` |
### Security
| Operation | Agent | Example prompt |
| --------------------------- | ------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Security group audit | Oliver | `@oliver #report open security groups exposing public internet access` |
| IAM permission review | Oliver | `@oliver #recommend least-privilege IAM policy changes` |
| S3 public access check | Oliver | `@oliver #report S3 buckets with public read or write access` |
| SOC 2 compliance assessment | Oliver | `@oliver #report SOC 2 control gaps across AWS account` |
### Performance
| Operation | Agent | Example prompt |
| ------------------------------- | ----- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Slow query analysis | Tony | `@tony #report top slow queries in production RDS over past 7 days` |
| Database performance dashboard | Tony | `@tony #dashboard database performance metrics for all RDS instances` |
| Auto scaling group optimization | Alex | `@alex #recommend auto scaling policy changes for web tier` |
| EKS resource utilization | Kai | `@kai #report pod resource utilization across production cluster` |
## Custom operations
Combine any agent, tool tag, and instruction to build operations beyond the catalog:
```text theme={null}
@alex #recommend cost optimization for EC2 instances
in us-east-1
with <20% CPU utilization
over past 30 days
excluding production-critical
```
```text theme={null}
@anna coordinate security review:
@oliver audit security groups and IAM
@alex check for public resources
@kai review Kubernetes RBAC
```
See [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) for multi-agent syntax and all available tool tags.
## Scheduling
To run operations on a recurring schedule, use [Tasks](/guide/automation/tasks). Tasks let you configure frequency, scope, and notification preferences for any operation.
## Related
Complete syntax for creating custom operations
Understand which agent to use for each operation type
# Organizations
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/organization
Manage your CloudThinker organization settings, members, and billing
Organizations are the top-level entity in CloudThinker that groups your [workspaces](/guide/workspaces), team members, and billing under a single account. Every user automatically gets a personal organization when they sign up.
## Overview
Organizations in CloudThinker provide:
* **Centralized Billing**: Single subscription and usage quota shared across all workspaces
* **Team Management**: Invite members and assign roles across your organization
* **Workspace Container**: Create multiple workspaces within your organization
* **[BYOK](/guide/byok) Support**: Configure your own AWS Bedrock credentials at the organization level
Every CloudThinker user automatically receives a personal organization upon
signup. This organization is named after you (e.g., "John's Organization") and
serves as your default workspace container.
***
## Organization structure
🏢
Organization
— top-level entity, auto-created at signup
Workspaces
Default
Auto-created · ready to use
Additional
Per team · env · cloud provider
Each contains: Agents · Connections · Knowledge Base · Operations
### Relationship with workspaces
| Aspect | Organization | Workspace |
| ------------------ | ------------------------ | --------------------------------- |
| **Creation** | Auto-created at signup | Created manually |
| **Billing** | Centralized subscription | Inherits from organization |
| **Members** | All team members | Subset with workspace access |
| **Cloud Provider** | N/A | Single provider per workspace |
| **Resources** | Shared quota pool | Isolated agents, connections, KBs |
Create and manage workspaces within your organization
***
## Accessing organization settings
Navigate to **Admin Settings** from the user menu in the top-right corner. The Admin Settings sidebar provides access to all organization management pages:
| Page | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Organization** | Edit organization name, view stats, and manage members |
| **Workspaces** | Create and manage workspaces |
| **Billing** | View subscription and usage (Owner only) |
| **Usage** | Monitor credit usage and quotas (Owner only) |
| **BYOK** | Configure AWS Bedrock credentials (Owner only) |
| **Identity and access** | Domain verification, SSO, and provisioning |
Admin Settings is only visible to organization Owners and Admins.
***
## Organization settings
### General settings
Edit your organization's basic information:
| Field | Guidelines |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Organization Name** | Choose a clear, descriptive name. Include a team or company identifier. Examples: "Acme Corp", "Platform Team", "My Projects" |
| **Description** | Describe the organization's purpose. Note the primary team or use case. Keep it concise and informative |
Only organization Owners and Admins can edit organization settings.
***
## Organization members
Invite team members to collaborate within your organization. Members can be assigned to specific workspaces with role-based access control.
### Adding members
Go to **Admin Settings > Organization** and scroll to the Members section
Click the **Invite Members** button in the members section
Add one or more email addresses (up to 10 at a time)
Choose the appropriate organization role for the invitees
Select which workspaces the new members should have access to
Click **Send Invites** to send invitation emails
### Organization roles
| Role | Permissions |
| ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Owner** | **Full control** — manage all organization settings, handle billing and subscription, manage all members and roles, access all workspaces (implicit), configure BYOK settings, transfer ownership |
| **Admin** | **Administrative access** — manage organization members, create and delete workspaces, access all workspaces (implicit); cannot manage billing or BYOK |
| **Developer** | **Standard access** — access assigned workspaces only, use agents and run operations, view and use workspace resources; cannot create workspaces |
| **Viewer** | **Read-only access** — view assigned workspaces only, cannot modify resources, cannot run operations; observation and audit purposes |
### Role permissions summary
| Permission | Owner | Admin | Developer | Viewer |
| --------------------------- | :---: | :---: | :-------: | :----: |
| Edit organization settings | ✓ | ✓ | - | - |
| Manage billing/subscription | ✓ | - | - | - |
| Configure BYOK | ✓ | - | - | - |
| Invite/remove members | ✓ | ✓ | - | - |
| Change member roles | ✓ | ✓ | - | - |
| Create workspaces | ✓ | ✓ | - | - |
| Access all workspaces | ✓ | ✓ | - | - |
| Access assigned workspaces | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Run operations | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | - |
### Managing members
| Action | How To |
| ------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Change Role** | Click the role dropdown next to a member and select a new role |
| **Edit Workspace Access** | Click the grid icon to manage which workspaces a Developer/Viewer can access |
| **Remove Member** | Click the trash icon and confirm removal |
| **Resend Invitation** | For pending invitations, click the refresh icon |
| **Cancel Invitation** | For pending invitations, click the X icon |
When editing workspace access for Developers or Viewers, you can also set a
role override per workspace. This allows a Viewer to have Developer access in
specific workspaces, or a Developer to have Admin access where needed.
Removing a member from the organization removes them from all workspaces
within that organization.
***
## Subscription & billing
Organization Owners can manage subscription and view usage from the Subscription tab.
### Subscription features
| Feature | What you can do |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Plan Overview** | Current plan and features, billing cycle information, payment method management, upgrade/downgrade options |
| **Usage Tracking** | Credit usage across all workspaces, member count vs. limit, workspace count vs. limit, usage trends over time |
### Seats and members
Your subscription plan uses **per-seat billing** — each seat you purchase grants a credit allocation and allows one active member. You can also pre-purchase additional seats to increase your credit pool before adding members.
Minimum seats vary by plan — see [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing) for the current per-plan seat ranges and credit allocations.
Only active members count toward seat usage — pending invitations do not consume seats.
***
## BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
Organization Owners can configure AWS Bedrock credentials to use their own LLM quota instead of CloudThinker's shared pool.
**[Bring Your Own Key](/guide/byok)** allows you to:
* Use your own AWS Bedrock account for LLM calls
* Bypass CloudThinker's credit system for LLM usage
* Have unlimited LLM operations (based on your AWS quota)
* Maintain data residency in your own AWS account
BYOK is configured at the organization level and applies to all workspaces.
Learn how to set up your AWS Bedrock credentials
***
## Best practices
### Team structure
**Role assignment (principle of least privilege):**
* Assign Owner role sparingly (1-2 people)
* Use Admin for team leads who need workspace management
* Use Developer for most team members
* Use Viewer for stakeholders who need visibility only
**Workspace access (organized access):**
* Admins/Owners see all workspaces automatically
* Explicitly assign Developers to relevant workspaces
* Use role overrides for fine-grained control per workspace
* Regular access reviews for compliance
### Common patterns
**Simple Structure:** - 1 Owner (team lead or account holder) - 1-2 Admins
(senior engineers) - Remaining as Developers - Single workspace or dev/prod
split
**Structured Approach:** - 1 Owner (engineering manager) - 2-3 Admins (tech
leads) - Developers assigned to relevant workspaces - Viewers for product
managers or stakeholders - Multiple workspaces by environment or team
**Governance Focus:** - 1-2 Owners (platform team leads) - Admins per team or
department - Developers with workspace-specific access - Viewers for audit and
compliance - Workspaces by team, environment, and project - Consider [BYOK](/guide/byok) for
cost control
***
## Next steps
Set up workspaces for your teams and projects
Set up AI agents for your cloud operations
# Pulse Analysis
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/pulse/analytics
Measure how efficiently Pulse correlates Signals, suppresses noise, and resolves Clusters across connected sources.
Open **DRE → Insights → Pulse analysis** to measure the Detect stage. Use the results to find noisy sources, weak correlation, and Clusters that remain open too long.
## Core metrics
| Metric | What it tells you |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Correlation yield | The share of Signals whose Cluster reached Routed or Resolved. It counts Signals that went somewhere, not Clusters. |
| Cluster MTTR | The median time from the Cluster's first Signal to its resolution. |
| Signals ingested | The total operational events Pulse received in the selected period. |
| Noise suppressed | The share of Signals removed by the suppression chain. |
The **Top noisy sources** list ranks up to 10 raw source streams by Signal volume. Each row also shows its suppression rate and the share whose Cluster reached Routed or Resolved. One integration can appear as several source streams.
Use Pulse analysis to compare ingestion, correlation, suppression, and resolution.
Noisy-source analysis identifies integrations that need attention.
## Interpret the results
* A low correlation yield means that many Signals did not reach a Routed or Resolved Cluster. Inspect those Signals before you change correlation fields.
* A rising Cluster MTTR can mean that ownership, routing, or resolution is delayed.
* High ingestion with low actionable volume can reveal a noisy source.
* A sudden suppression change can indicate a new event pattern or an overly broad rule.
Treat these metrics as operational indicators. Review the underlying Clusters and Signals before you change a source or suppression rule.
## Related
Review the lifecycle and the eight suppression layers.
Verify that integrations deliver useful operational Signals.
Review reliability, accuracy, Pulse, and runbook results together.
Follow an actionable Cluster into RCA.
# Signal Clusters
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/pulse/clusters
Understand how Pulse groups related provider events into Signals and moves operational problems through a clear lifecycle.
A Cluster groups related surviving raw events into one candidate Signal. It gives operators one place to assess impact, ownership, timing, and whether the problem should become an Incident.
## Cluster lifecycle
```mermaid theme={null}
stateDiagram-v2
[*] --> Forming
Forming --> Active
Forming --> Routed
Active --> Routed
Forming --> Resolved
Active --> Resolved
Routed --> Resolved
```
| State | Meaning |
| -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Forming | Pulse is collecting related raw events and updating the Cluster. |
| Active | The Cluster represents a current operational problem. |
| Routed | The Cluster has an open Incident. New matching Signals still join this Cluster rather than starting a new one. |
| Resolved | The operational problem is closed. Only this state is terminal. |
A single-signal Cluster can route straight from **Forming**, without waiting for correlation. A critical-severity signal takes this path.
Resolving an Incident does not close its Cluster. A later matching Signal opens a successor Incident, and the Cluster follows it.
The Pulse lanes add an attention view on top of this lifecycle. **Needs you** shows unacknowledged high or critical forming Clusters without an owner. **All** shows Clusters across every visible state.
## Noise suppression
Before a Signal contributes to a Cluster, Pulse applies eight suppression layers:
| Layer | What it prevents |
| ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Deduplication | Exact repeated events inside the deduplication window. |
| Rate limit | Excessive events from one source or pattern. |
| Snooze | Signals covered by an active operator snooze. |
| Verdict | Repeated events that match a stable-noise verdict recorded by Pulse Memory. |
| Noise signature | Known non-actionable event patterns. |
| Flapping | Rapid state changes that do not represent separate problems. |
| Cascade | Downstream symptoms already explained by a parent problem. |
| Severity normalization | Source-specific severity differences that would distort routing. |
A Cluster the classifier judges non-actionable is also suppressed, and appears as **Not Actionable** in the suppression breakdown.
Suppression analysis helps identify which sources create the most avoidable noise.
## Review a Cluster
Open a Cluster to inspect its event history, severity, source, timestamps, and routing state.
Cluster detail keeps the evidence for one operational problem together.
Use the available actions to move the work forward:
| Action | Result |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------- |
| Acknowledge | Mark the Cluster as seen. |
| Assign | Give the Cluster an owner. |
| Escalate | Route the problem into an Incident. |
| Resolve | Close the Cluster. |
| Snooze | Temporarily suppress matching Signals. |
When you snooze a Cluster, choose the duration. Pulse uses resource scope when the Signal has a resource ID; otherwise it uses the source and event-type pattern.
## Related
Add webhook, polling, or chat signal paths.
Review correlation yield, suppression, volume, and Cluster MTTR.
Follow a routed Cluster into RCA.
Control automatic RCA and re-investigation sensitivity.
# Pulse Overview
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/pulse/overview
See how Pulse suppresses raw provider events, correlates survivors into Signals, and routes actionable problems.
Pulse is the Detect stage of the [Deep Response Engine](/guide/incident/overview). It receives raw provider events, removes known noise, groups related survivors into Clusters, and classifies each Cluster into a Signal that can route into an Incident.
```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
A["Raw provider event"] --> B["Suppression"]
B --> C["Cluster"]
C --> D["Signal classification"]
D --> E{"Actionable?"}
E -->|Yes| F["Incident"]
E -->|Not yet| G["Continue forming"]
```
## What Pulse does
| Step | Result |
| --------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Ingest | Accept raw provider events from webhook, polling, and chat sources. |
| Suppress | Apply deduplication, rate limits, snoozes, prior verdicts, noise patterns, flapping checks, cascade suppression, and severity normalization. |
| Correlate | Group related surviving events into a Cluster that represents one candidate Signal. |
| Route | Classify the Cluster into a Signal and create an Incident when severity or the actionable assessment qualifies it. |
Pulse creates the Incident before RCA begins. Turning **DRE auto-investigates** off pauses automatic analysis; it does not stop detection or Incident creation.
## Work from the queue
Pulse organizes Clusters into these lanes:
| Lane | Use it for |
| --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Needs you | Unacknowledged high or critical forming Clusters that have no owner. |
| Active | Current Clusters that still need monitoring or work. This is the default lane. |
| Forming | Clusters still collecting related raw events. |
| Routed | Clusters with an open Incident. New matching Signals still join them. |
| Resolved | Closed Clusters. |
| All | Every visible Cluster across the lifecycle. |
Open a Cluster to inspect its Signals, source, severity, timing, and routing state. From the Cluster you can **Acknowledge**, **Assign**, **Escalate**, or **Resolve**.
Pulse keeps related operational signals together so you can review the problem as one unit.
## Connect a source
Open **DRE → Integrations** to connect a platform and configure how DRE listens for Signals. A source is ready after at least one webhook, polling, or chat path succeeds.
## Related
Follow the Cluster lifecycle and review suppression behavior.
Configure a platform to send or expose operational Signals.
Measure correlation yield, suppression, volume, and Cluster MTTR.
See each platform's connections, signal paths, and outcomes.
# Connect Pulse Sources
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/pulse/setup
Connect a monitoring platform and verify that webhook, polling, or chat events reach Pulse as operational Signals.
Pulse receives operational events through platform integrations. Configure sources from **DRE → Integrations**, where each platform groups its connections, signal paths, and outcomes.
## Connect a source
Go to **DRE → Integrations** and select the platform that produces the operational events you need.
Authenticate the account or workspace that DRE should read. The required fields depend on the platform.
Enable a webhook, polling, or chat path. For a webhook, map the incoming fields and severity values before you activate it.
Send or retrieve a test event and confirm that it appears in Pulse as a Signal.
Configure the event source, then verify one real Signal before relying on it.
## Understand readiness
The integration surface reports whether each platform is ready or still needs work. A platform can be ready, need a connection, need setup, be partially configured, have an error, need review, or remain unconfigured.
At least one signal path must succeed before the platform is a working Pulse source. A valid connection alone does not prove that DRE receives events.
## Decide when RCA starts
A source sends raw events. Pulse suppresses known noise, groups related survivors into a Cluster, classifies the Cluster into a Signal, and decides whether it should create an Incident.
For supported webhooks, automatic RCA is on by default with a minimum severity of **Medium**. The workspace-level **DRE auto-investigates** setting still controls whether eligible Incidents start RCA automatically.
## Related
Map third-party events into Pulse Signals and test delivery.
See how related events become one Signal and operational problem.
Review connections, signal paths, and operational outcomes.
Control automatic RCA and re-investigation sensitivity.
# App Pentesting
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/security/pentest
Set up an app, attach a login and your source code, then let Oliver test it for security problems and show you the proof.
Oliver hunts for real security problems in your app and shows you the proof for each one. You set the boundaries once — what to test, what's off-limits, and what to sign in as — and Oliver tests as deeply as those allow.
App Pentesting is in beta. Find it under **App Pentesting** in the navigation menu.
## Prerequisites
* A domain you own, and the ability to add a DNS record for it.
* Optional: a connected Git provider, if you want Oliver to read your source code.
## Register your app
Go to **App Pentesting** from the navigation menu, then click **Register your first app**. If you already have apps, click **New app** instead.
Enter an **App name** and a **Target** — a domain like `example.com` or an API base URL like `https://api.example.com/v1`. CloudThinker suggests an **OWASP framework** from the target: **OWASP Web** for a site, **OWASP API** for an API URL. Change it if the suggestion is wrong.
Click **Create app**.
**Success state:** the app overview opens and shows **No pentests yet**, with a **Verify domain** button. Verify the domain next — you can't run a pentest until you do.
## Verify the domain
CloudThinker only tests sites you can prove you own. You do this once per domain, and every app on that domain reuses the proof.
Open **App Pentesting → Settings**. Under **Verified domains**, click **Add domain** — or **Manage domains** if you have verified one before — and enter the host in the **Domain** field.
Copy the **TXT name** and **TXT value**, add them at your DNS provider, then click **Check DNS**. DNS propagation can take a few minutes, so retry if the first check fails.
**Success state:** the domain badge reads **Verified**.
## Set the boundaries
Open the app's **Settings** tab. What you set here decides how much Oliver can find. Everything saves as you type — there's no save button.
| Section | What to do | Why it matters |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Scope** | Click **Manage scope**. Add the paths Oliver may test under **Include paths** (`/api/**`), and anything off-limits under **Exclude paths** (`/admin/**`). Type a path and press Enter. | Your fence. Oliver never touches anything outside it. |
| **Test identities** | Click **Add authentication** and attach a login. | Lets Oliver test behind the sign-in page instead of only the public pages. |
| **Repositories** | Click **Add repository**, pick a provider, then a repo and branch. | Lets Oliver read your code, so findings point at the exact line that caused them. |
| **Context files** | Click **Attach context** to add an API spec, Postman collection, diagram, or docs — up to 24 MB each, or paste text inline. | Helps Oliver find things faster. Doesn't change how deep it tests. |
| **Default intensity** | Pick how aggressive new runs start out. | A starting point only — you can change it on any run. |
### Attach a login
Attach two logins and Oliver can prove the most valuable thing of all: that one customer cannot read another's data. Name them something like `victim` and `attacker`, and describe what each is allowed to see — their role, their team, the records they own. That description is how Oliver knows which access is a bug.
Best for web apps. Sign in, open your browser's developer tools, find any request on the **Network** tab, copy it as cURL, and paste it in. Click **Verify and attach** — CloudThinker replays it to confirm the login works before saving.
Best for APIs. Add the header your API expects — usually `Authorization` set to `Bearer ...` — then click **Attach token**. Durable tokens are schedule-safe, but CloudThinker revalidates them before every run.
**Success state:** the identity shows a **Ready for testing** chip.
## How deep Oliver goes
The more you attach, the more Oliver can reach. You don't choose this — Oliver takes the deepest level available and shows it as an **Access level** badge in the run dialog.
| What you attached | Access level | What Oliver can test |
| ----------------- | ------------ | ----------------------------------------- |
| Nothing | Black-box | Only what a stranger on the internet sees |
| A login | Gray-box | Everything a signed-in user sees |
| A repository | White-box | The running app plus the code behind it |
CloudThinker revalidates every stored identity before each run. If the requested credential for a gray-box or white-box run fails, that run fails instead of silently falling back to black-box. The schedule stays active and can use a fresh durable credential at its next occurrence.
## Run the pentest
Click **Run pentest**. Everything lives in one dialog. **Setup** at the top repeats your target, framework, and scope so you can catch a mistake before anything is sent — **Edit setup ›** takes you back to fix it. Most runs finish in a few minutes. A pentest run has a three-hour execution deadline.
**Intensity** decides how far Oliver goes — and how much it can change:
| Intensity | What Oliver does | Your data |
| -------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| **Safe** | Only reads pages and data | Never changed. Safe to run on production. |
| **Aggressive** | Submits forms and creates test data, to reach bugs reading alone can't find | Added and edited, never deleted |
| **Full** | Everything above, plus deletion attempts | Can be permanently removed |
Narrow **Scope** before running Full against anything you care about.
**Access level** shows how deep this run goes; **Go deeper** tells you what to add to unlock more. If you attached a repository, you also pick a **Scan scope**: **Incremental** prioritizes changes since your last successful run while retaining the whole App scope. **Full** is a deep sweep of the whole worktree. Your first run is always Full.
Then finish one of two ways:
* **Run now** starts immediately and opens the workbench.
* **Schedule** repeats it — **Daily**, **Weekly**, **Monthly**, **No Repeat**, or **Custom** — at a time you set, with an optional end date. Times use your local time and keep the same clock time year-round, so a run can land an hour off across a daylight saving change.
## Read the results
Watch the run happen. The **Timeline** in the middle narrates each step as Oliver works. Confirmed findings appear on the right. Leads that still need proof are labeled **Needs verification**. Past runs sit in **Run history** on the left. The full **Report** arrives when the run finishes.
Four tabs hold the results:
| Tab | What it shows |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Overview** | Your OWASP Top 10 coverage and how many findings sit at each severity |
| **Surface** | Everything Oliver found reachable — badged **Documented** if your specs mentioned it, **Shadow** if they didn't |
| **Runs** | Every past run and what it added, fixed, or left open |
| **Findings** | The full list, filterable by severity and status |
Open a confirmed finding to see the proof. **Summary** says what's wrong, **Attack path** shows exactly how Oliver got in, **Safe PoC** is the request you can replay yourself, and **Remediation** says how to fix it — **Create PR with agent** turns that fix into a pull request.
A **Needs verification** lead is not yet a confirmed finding. Click **Flag for retest** so a later scan can prove or reject it.
A progress bar tracks a confirmed finding from **Needs triage** to **Verified fixed**. That last step isn't yours to click: the next scan re-tests it and confirms the fix for you.
## Troubleshooting
The credential failed revalidation. Click **Update login**, remove the one marked **Needs refresh**, and add a fresh durable credential. The schedule stays active for its next run.
Your TXT record is missing, or DNS hasn't caught up yet. Compare the record at your DNS provider against the **TXT name** and **TXT value** in the verify dialog, wait a few minutes, then click **Check DNS** again.
No Git provider is connected to your workspace yet. Click **Connect provider**, finish connecting, then reopen the dialog.
Incremental prioritizes changes since your last successful run without narrowing your App scope. You need one successful run first. Run a Full scan, and Incremental becomes available after it.
## Next steps
Meet the Security Engineer agent that runs your pentests and triages the findings
Catch the same classes of vulnerability on every pull request, before they ship
Harden workspace access itself with MFA, SSO, and single-purpose API keys
Connect the Git provider that unlocks white-box testing against your source
# Custom Skills
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/skills/custom-skills
Create, enable, and attach workspace skills to Chat, Code Review, Incident, and Assessment
Custom skills are workspace-private instruction packages that encode your team's knowledge — review checklists, runbooks, naming conventions, compliance rules — for agents to use on attached product surfaces. A skill is eligible only when it is enabled and attached; eligibility does not load its body on every task.
## What skills encode
Agents arrive knowing what good looks like in general, not what good looks like in your codebase, your runbooks, or your review standards. A skill externalizes that context so nobody retypes it into every conversation, and senior expertise becomes a team-wide artifact instead of tacit knowledge held by one engineer.
| Domain | Examples |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Code review | Naming conventions, API design rules, security review checklists, performance hot-spot patterns |
| Incident response | Escalation policies, runbook selection rules, service-specific debugging order |
| Cloud operations | Account-tag conventions, environment promotion rules, cost-attribution policies, compliance constraints |
| Documentation | Style guide, terminology, voice rules |
If you find yourself typing the same instruction into more than two prompts, that instruction belongs in a skill.
## Prerequisites
* A CloudThinker workspace
* The workspace-settings edit permission — without it the **New Skill** control is hidden
* Familiarity with the [SKILL.md format](/guide/skills/skill-format) if you plan to write skills manually
## Create a skill
Navigate to **Skills** from the sidebar, or open **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) and select **Skills** under **Agent Configuration**. This page lists every skill in the workspace with its enable toggle and feature assignments.
Choose a creation method from the dropdown.
Describe what you need in plain language and let the skill creation agent draft it.
1. Click **Create with CloudThinker** to open a chat session.
2. Describe one concrete rule your team applies — a naming convention, a review checklist item, a deprecation warning.
3. The agent generates a SKILL.md with frontmatter and structured instructions.
4. Review the draft and click **Save**.
This is the fastest path for a first skill. You can refine it later with AI editing.
Author the skill manually using the form.
1. Click **Write skill instructions**.
2. Fill in **Name** (letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens, such as `api_review-standards`), optional **Description**, and **Instructions** (the full skill content in Markdown).
3. Click **Save**.
See [Skill format](/guide/skills/skill-format) for the SKILL.md structure and a complete example.
Upload a `.zip` package, up to 5 MB. The package must contain `SKILL.md` and can include permitted `scripts/`, `schemas/`, and `references/` directories.
A package without `name` frontmatter takes the name of the folder containing `SKILL.md`. See [Skill format](/guide/skills/skill-format) for package and metadata rules.
Opens the public skills catalog in a new tab, where you can review skills the community and CloudThinker publish.
**Success state:** the new skill appears as an enabled card attached to Chat.
## Enable and attach a skill
A skill is eligible only when it is enabled and attached to a supported surface. New workspace skills start enabled and Chat-attached; the other surfaces require an attachment.
Use the switch on the skill card. A disabled skill stays saved but is hidden from every surface, which is useful while you draft changes.
Check the surfaces where the skill applies. A skill can belong to several surfaces at once:
* **Chat** — the default attachment for a new workspace skill
* **Code Review** — used during pull request analysis
* **Incident** — used during incident investigation and root cause analysis
* **Assessment** — used during infrastructure assessments
Attach the skill only where it belongs. Clear all attachments to hide it everywhere.
Trigger work where the rule should change the result. In Chat, Incident, and Assessment, eligible skills appear in the workspace catalog and agents use `load_skill` to read them. Code Review currently preloads attached bodies under a bounded policy.
**Success state:** a result that needs the rule reflects it without you restating the instruction. If it does not, rewrite the skill with concrete examples and retest.
## Manage skills
### View details
Click a skill card to open the detail view: file tree on the left, rendered markdown on the right. Read the instructions end to end — a rule that is ambiguous to you will be ambiguous to the agent.
### Edit with AI
From the detail view, click **Edit with AI** to refine the skill through conversation — add examples, remove ambiguity, restructure sections. The agent reads the existing content before making changes.
When you manually edit `SKILL.md`, its `name` frontmatter must match the selected skill name. The edit is rejected if the name is missing or different.
### Delete
Remove a skill permanently from the detail view.
Deleting a skill cannot be undone. Disable it instead if you may need it again.
## Troubleshooting
Another skill in the workspace has that name. Pick a different name.
The name matches a skill CloudThinker ships in its public catalog, which would wrongly give yours an **Official** badge. Pick a different name.
The Skills page uploads `.zip` packages only. Put your `SKILL.md` in a folder and zip that folder.
## Writing effective skills
* **Be specific.** Concrete rules with examples beat vague guidelines — "use kebab-case for multi-word paths" outperforms "follow our naming style".
* **One domain per skill.** Separate security rules from performance guidelines so you can assign them independently.
* **Lead with examples.** Agents follow demonstrated patterns more reliably than abstract explanations.
* **Test on one surface first.** Keep a new skill attached only to Chat, review a few real results, then attach it more broadly.
* **Iterate.** Use **Edit with AI** to sharpen skills based on review results and team feedback.
## Next steps
Learn the SKILL.md file structure, frontmatter reference, and best practices for writing effective instructions.
Understand how skills fit into the CloudThinker platform and agent workflow.
# Skills
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/skills/overview
Extend AI agents with domain-specific knowledge, custom workflows, and organization-specific procedures
Skills are workspace instruction packages that turn general-purpose agents into experts on your environment. Enablement and a feature attachment make a skill eligible for a product surface; eligibility does not load every skill body on every task.
## Official and custom skills
CloudThinker ships a public catalog of skills that every workspace can use. A shipped skill carries an **Official** badge and its name is reserved, so a workspace skill cannot take it. The Skills page manages your workspace's own custom skills.
## How it works
1. **Create** — write a skill manually, describe it in plain language for CloudThinker to generate, or upload a `.zip` package.
2. **Enable** — toggle the skill on in your workspace. New workspace skills start enabled; disabled skills stay saved but are not eligible anywhere.
3. **Attach** — choose the surfaces where it applies: Chat, Code Review, Incident, Assessment, or a combination. New skills start attached to Chat; clearing all attachments hides a skill everywhere.
4. **Use** — Chat, Incident, and Assessment list eligible skills in the workspace catalog for `load_skill`. Code Review currently preloads attached skill bodies under a bounded policy.
The Skills page lists every skill with its enable toggle and feature assignments
## What you can do
| Capability | Description | Learn more |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| Create custom skills | Build workspace-private skills manually, generate them with CloudThinker, or upload a `.zip` package | [Custom skills](/guide/skills/custom-skills) |
| Attach to surfaces | Make an enabled skill eligible for Chat, Code Review, Incident, Assessment, or a combination | [Custom skills](/guide/skills/custom-skills) |
| Edit with AI | Refine an existing skill through conversation — add examples, remove ambiguity, restructure sections | [Custom skills](/guide/skills/custom-skills) |
| Write effective SKILL.md files | Learn the frontmatter fields, instruction styles, and patterns agents follow most reliably | [Skill format](/guide/skills/skill-format) |
## Skills vs the knowledge base
Skills tell agents how to act; the [knowledge base](/guide/knowledge) gives agents information to look up. They complement each other — a skill can direct an agent to consult specific documents.
| | Skills | Knowledge base |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Content | Rules and procedures agents follow | Documents and websites agents reference |
| Examples | Review checklists, naming conventions, escalation policies | Runbooks, architecture docs, compliance documents |
| How agents use it | Chat, Incident, and Assessment show eligible skills in the workspace catalog for `load_skill`; Code Review preloads attached bodies under a bounded policy | The agent receives a workspace inventory, then uses `search_knowledge_base` for one `id` or all knowledge bases |
| Format | A required `SKILL.md` entrypoint, uploaded in a `.zip` package | Uploaded files or crawled websites |
| Best for | Changing agent behavior | Adding facts and context |
Rule of thumb: use a skill for rules or workflows. Use the knowledge base for facts and documents the agent can retrieve when relevant.
## Get started
Create, enable, and attach your first workspace skill
Learn the SKILL.md structure with a complete worked example
Give agents documents and websites to reference alongside skills
Connect a repository and use a Code Review-attached skill on a pull request
# Skill Format
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/skills/skill-format
Write SKILL.md files agents follow reliably — file structure, frontmatter fields, and instruction patterns
A skill has a required `SKILL.md` entrypoint with a Markdown instruction body. You can create it in CloudThinker or upload a `.zip` package with permitted supporting files.
## File structure
`SKILL.md` can start with YAML frontmatter, followed by instruction sections as Markdown headings:
```markdown theme={null}
---
name: security_review-checklist # letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens
description: Enforce OWASP checks in code review # optional card summary
---
## SQL injection # one H2 per rule group
- Flag raw string concatenation in SQL queries
- Require parameterized queries or ORM methods
## Secrets handling
- Flag hardcoded credentials, tokens, and API keys
- Require secrets to come from a secrets manager or environment variables
```
| Part | Required | Purpose |
| --------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `SKILL.md` entrypoint | Yes | The instruction file CloudThinker stores and agents read when the skill is loaded |
| Frontmatter block | Optional for a new standalone upload; required when editing an existing skill | Provides metadata such as `name` and `description` |
| Instruction body | Yes | Markdown the agent loads verbatim when the skill runs |
| H2 rule groups | Recommended | One heading per domain keeps rules scannable for you and the agent |
| Inline examples | Recommended | Concrete good/bad examples that anchor each rule |
## Upload formats
The Skills page accepts `.zip` only. A non-zip file is rejected with "Only .zip files are accepted".
| Upload | Requirements and behavior |
| -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `.zip` package | The package must contain `SKILL.md`. It can include permitted `scripts/`, `schemas/`, and `references/` directories. Maximum 5 MB. If frontmatter has no `name`, CloudThinker uses the name of the folder containing `SKILL.md`. |
## Limits
| Field | Limit |
| ------------ | ----------------- |
| Instructions | 50,000 characters |
| Description | 2,000 characters |
| Skill name | 255 characters |
| Upload size | 5 MB |
## Frontmatter fields
| Field | Required | Description |
| --------------- | ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `name` | Conditional | A manual edit of an existing `SKILL.md` must include the selected skill name. A `.zip` upload can omit it and take the containing folder's name instead. Names start with a letter or digit and can contain letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens. |
| `description` | No | Optional short summary shown on the skill card. |
| `argument_hint` | No | Optional hint describing the arguments the skill expects. |
## Writing effective instructions
### Every token counts
Agents process skill instructions alongside their own system prompt and task context. Keep instructions concise — write only what the agent doesn't already know.
```markdown theme={null}
When reviewing code, you should always check for SQL injection
vulnerabilities. SQL injection is a type of security vulnerability
where an attacker can execute arbitrary SQL commands through
user input that is not properly sanitized...
## SQL Injection
- Flag raw string concatenation in SQL queries
- Require parameterized queries or ORM methods
- Check for `execute()` calls with f-strings or `.format()`
```
### Degrees of freedom
Match your instruction style to how much flexibility the agent should have:
| Freedom | Style | Use case |
| ---------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **High** | Guidelines and principles | Creative tasks, architectural advice, exploratory reviews |
| **Medium** | Checklists with examples | Standard code reviews, security audits, compliance checks |
| **Low** | Exact templates and rules | Regulatory compliance, formatting standards, mandatory fields |
### Examples beat explanations
Agents follow concrete examples more reliably than abstract rules. When possible, show the expected behavior instead of describing it.
```markdown theme={null}
## Naming conventions
Use descriptive variable names that reveal intent.
### Good
- `remaining_retries` not `r`
- `is_authenticated` not `auth`
- `max_connection_pool_size` not `pool`
### Bad
- Single-letter variables outside loop iterators
- Abbreviations that aren't universally understood
- Boolean variables without `is_`, `has_`, or `should_` prefix
```
## Complete example
A realistic skill for enforcing PR review standards:
````markdown theme={null}
---
name: pr-review-standards
description: Enforce team PR review standards including size limits, test coverage, and documentation requirements
---
## PR Size
- Flag PRs with more than 500 lines changed as "needs splitting"
- Warn on PRs with more than 10 files changed
- Suggest logical split points when flagging oversized PRs
- Auto-generated files (migrations, lockfiles) do not count toward limits
## Test Coverage
- Require test files for any new public function or method
- Flag removed tests without corresponding feature removal
- Check that edge cases are covered, not just happy paths
## Documentation
- Require JSDoc/docstring for exported functions with more than 3 parameters
- Flag breaking API changes without migration guide updates
- Check that README is updated when adding new environment variables
## Review Comment Format
Use this structure for review comments:
```
**[severity]** Brief title
Description of the issue.
**Suggestion:** How to fix it.
```
Severity levels: `critical`, `warning`, `suggestion`, `nitpick`
````
## Troubleshooting
The `name` field must start with a letter or digit. It can contain letters, digits, underscores, and hyphens. It cannot contain spaces or other special characters.
* `security-checklist` — valid
* `security_checklist` — valid
* `Security Checklist` — invalid
An existing `SKILL.md` must include frontmatter with a `name` that exactly matches the selected skill. Restore the matching name before you save the edit.
* Verify the skill is **enabled** (toggle is on)
* Verify the skill is attached to the correct surface
* In Chat, Incident, and Assessment, eligible skills appear in the workspace catalog for `load_skill`
* In Code Review, attached bodies currently preload under a bounded policy
* Check that instructions are specific and actionable — vague guidance is often deprioritized
* Shorter, focused skills are applied more reliably than long, broad ones
If your skill exceeds a few hundred lines, consider splitting it into multiple focused skills. Agents handle several short skills better than one massive skill.
Split by domain: separate security rules, performance guidelines, and style conventions into individual skills.
## Related
Create, upload, enable, and attach skills in your workspace.
Understand how skills fit into the CloudThinker platform and agent workflow.
# Slack Integration
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/slack-integration
Run CloudThinker AI operations directly from Slack — manage infrastructure, review costs, and investigate incidents without leaving your workspace
Use Slack to start and continue CloudThinker conversations, route work to specialists, and receive configured notifications.
ChatOps uses [AgenticOps](/guide/tutorial/agenticops) in Slack or Teams. The same `@agent #tool` syntax works in the CloudThinker web app and chat.
## Prerequisites
* A CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan.
* A Slack Workspace Owner or app manager when the workspace requires App Approval. This provider approval is separate from CloudThinker organization access.
## Setup
Sign in as a CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan.
Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations) and find **Slack**
Click **Add to Slack** and authorize via Slack's OAuth flow.
If your workspace has **App Approval** enabled, a Slack Workspace Owner or app manager must approve CloudThinker. This approval does not replace CloudThinker organization authorization.
Select which Slack workspace to install CloudThinker into and confirm the
OAuth scopes. The app will appear in your workspace's app directory.
Map Slack channels to CloudThinker workspaces. The mapping controls where ordinary Slack messages run.
Configure destinations for each notification type in the [notification matrix](/guide/notifications), such as cost alerts, security findings, and incident updates.
Start a conversation with `@CloudThinker @alex show AWS costs`. The platform bot mention starts a CloudThinker thread. Reply in that thread without mentioning `@CloudThinker` again.
***
## Syntax
In Slack, use `@CloudThinker` to start a CloudThinker thread. Reply in an existing CloudThinker thread without mentioning the bot again. To route a request to a specialist, mention the agent's literal alias.
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex analyze EC2 spending trends
@CloudThinker @oliver audit security groups for public access
@CloudThinker @tony check database performance
@CloudThinker @kai review EKS cluster health
```
All [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) syntax works in Slack. Start a new thread with the platform bot mention, then use literal agent aliases for specialist routing.
***
## Examples
### Quick queries
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex what's our AWS spending this week?
@CloudThinker @oliver any critical security findings?
@CloudThinker @tony why are queries slow on production?
@CloudThinker @kai check pod status in payment namespace
```
### With tools
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex #dashboard cost trends by service
@CloudThinker @oliver #report weekly security summary
@CloudThinker @tony #recommend index optimizations
@CloudThinker @kai #alert on pod OOMKilled events
```
### Multi-agent
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @anna coordinate investigation of latency spike
@CloudThinker @alex @tony analyze database infrastructure costs
```
***
## Alerts
Configure alert notification destinations in the [notification matrix](/guide/notifications). A `#alert` request and a plain request can raise alerts, but neither can inline-route an alert to a `#channel`.
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex #alert daily spend exceeds $5,000
@CloudThinker @oliver #alert security group changes
@CloudThinker @kai #alert pod failures in production
```
***
## Code review notifications
When an AI code review completes on a connected repository, CloudThinker can send a summary notification to your Slack channels. These notifications use Block Kit formatting with:
* **Severity indicators** — color-coded emoji for each severity level (🔴 Critical, 🟠 High, 🟡 Medium, 🟢 Low)
* **Severity breakdown** — count of findings by severity
* **Finding details** — up to 5 unresolved findings with title, file path, and line number
* **Resolved count** — number of previously identified findings that have been resolved
* **View Code Review** button — direct link to the review dashboard
* **Clean pass** — when no issues are found, a simple "No issues found" message
Configure code review destinations and severity thresholds in the notification matrix at **Notifications > Code Review / Pipeline Monitoring**. See [Notifications Center](/guide/notifications) for details.
## Troubleshooting
* Check if CloudThinker app is added to the channel
* Start a new conversation with `@CloudThinker` and use a literal alias such as `@alex` for specialist routing
* Reply in an existing CloudThinker thread without repeating `@CloudThinker`
* Confirm agents are configured in the CloudThinker console
* Check Slack workspace admin consent status
* Check alert configuration in CloudThinker Settings
* Verify the Slack destination in the notification matrix
* Ensure the bot has permission to post in the target channel
* **"Missing required scopes"** — The app may have been installed without all required OAuth scopes. Remove the app from the workspace and reinstall it from CloudThinker's Integrations page.
* **Connection appears successful but bot doesn't respond** — This can happen if the OAuth flow did not complete fully. Try removing and reinstalling the app.
* **"not\_allowed\_token\_type" or scope errors** — Your Slack workspace may have App Approval enabled. Ask your Workspace Owner or app manager to approve CloudThinker in Slack's admin dashboard under **Manage Apps**.
* For any other permission errors, confirm the channel-to-workspace mapping and try removing and re-adding the app to the channel.
A CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan starts the setup. If Slack App Approval is enabled, a Slack Workspace Owner or app manager completes the provider approval. These can be different people.
1. Sign in to CloudThinker as an organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan
2. Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations → Slack**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations)
3. Click **Add to Slack** and complete the Slack OAuth flow
4. Approve the app in Slack's **Manage Apps** dashboard
After configuration, start a new CloudThinker thread with `@CloudThinker`. Replies in that thread do not need another bot mention.
***
## Permissions
### Slack OAuth permissions
Slack App Approval governs whether the Slack installation can proceed. It is separate from the CloudThinker organization owner or administrator and messaging-eligible plan required to start setup.
### CloudThinker permissions
A channel mapping selects a workspace. Currently, an unmapped Slack channel falls back to the organization's oldest workspace; restrict bot access accordingly. Ordinary Slack messages do not use a per-sender CloudThinker role check. A War Room input performs a linked-sender permission check.
***
## Related
Complete syntax reference for all commands
Set up CloudThinker in Microsoft Teams
# Microsoft Teams Integration
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/teams-integration
Run cloud operations from Microsoft Teams by interacting with CloudThinker agents, receiving Adaptive Card alerts, and coordinating incidents.
Use Microsoft Teams to start and continue CloudThinker conversations, route work to specialists, and receive configured notifications.
***
## Prerequisites
Setup starts with a CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan. A Global Administrator or Teams Administrator completes Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent separately. The same person can hold both roles, or they can coordinate the two steps.
### Required Azure AD permissions
During the OAuth flow, CloudThinker requests the following Microsoft Graph API permissions:
| Permission | Type | Purpose |
| ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| `User.Read` | User consent | Read the signed-in user's profile |
| `Channel.ReadBasic.All` | User consent | List channels in teams |
| `Team.ReadBasic.All` | User consent | List teams the user belongs to |
| `TeamsAppInstallation.ReadWriteForTeam` | **Admin consent** | Install the bot into teams |
| `TeamsAppInstallation.ReadWriteAndConsentForTeam` | **Admin consent** | Install the bot and grant resource-specific consent |
| `TeamsAppInstallation.ReadWriteSelfForTeam` | **Admin consent** | Manage the bot's own installation |
| `AppCatalog.ReadWrite.All` | **Admin consent** | Publish the bot to the organization's app catalog |
| `Organization.Read.All` | **Admin consent** | Read organization information |
Permissions marked **Admin consent** can only be granted by a Global Administrator or Teams Administrator. During the OAuth flow, admins will see a **"Consent on behalf of your organization"** checkbox:
* **Checked** — permissions are granted tenant-wide for all users in the Azure AD tenant. Other admins who connect later won't need to re-consent.
* **Unchecked** — permissions are granted only for the admin's own account. This is sufficient to complete the setup since the admin personally has the required role to publish the bot.
### Who should perform each step?
| Responsibility | Required role |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Start CloudThinker setup | CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan |
| Complete Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent | Global Administrator or Teams Administrator |
***
## Setup
Sign in as a CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan.
Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations) and find **Microsoft Teams**
Click **Connect with Teams** and authenticate via Microsoft OAuth.
A Global Administrator or Teams Administrator completes Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent. This provider-side step is separate from CloudThinker organization authorization.
Select which Teams to add the CloudThinker bot to and confirm the installation. The bot is published to your organization's Teams app catalog — this is a one-time action.
Map Microsoft Teams to CloudThinker workspaces. The mapping controls where ordinary Teams messages run.
Configure destinations for each notification type in the [notification matrix](/guide/notifications), such as cost alerts, security findings, and incident updates.
Start a conversation with `@CloudThinker @alex show AWS costs`. The platform bot mention starts a CloudThinker thread. Reply in that thread without mentioning `@CloudThinker` again.
***
## Syntax
In Teams, use `@CloudThinker` to start a CloudThinker thread. Reply in an existing CloudThinker thread without mentioning the bot again. To route a request to a specialist, mention the agent's literal alias.
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex analyze EC2 spending trends
@CloudThinker @oliver audit security groups for public access
@CloudThinker @tony check database performance
@CloudThinker @kai review EKS cluster health
```
All [CloudThinker Language](/guide/language) syntax works in Teams. Start a new thread with the platform bot mention, then use literal agent aliases for specialist routing.
***
## Examples
### Quick queries
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex what's our AWS spending this week?
@CloudThinker @oliver any critical security findings?
@CloudThinker @tony why are queries slow on production?
@CloudThinker @kai check pod status in payment namespace
```
### With tools
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex #dashboard cost trends by service
@CloudThinker @oliver #report weekly security summary
@CloudThinker @tony #recommend index optimizations
@CloudThinker @kai #alert on pod OOMKilled events
```
### Multi-agent
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @anna coordinate investigation of latency spike
@CloudThinker @alex @tony analyze database infrastructure costs
```
***
## Alerts
Configure alert notification destinations in the [notification matrix](/guide/notifications). A `#alert` request and a plain request can raise alerts, but neither can inline-route an alert to a `#channel`.
```text theme={null}
@CloudThinker @alex #alert daily spend exceeds $5,000
@CloudThinker @oliver #alert security group changes
@CloudThinker @kai #alert pod failures in production
```
***
## Code review notifications
When an AI code review completes, CloudThinker sends an Adaptive Card notification to your configured Teams channel. The card includes:
* **Severity FactSet** — structured table showing counts by severity level (🔴 Critical, 🟠 High, 🟡 Medium, 🟢 Low)
* **Finding details** — up to 5 unresolved findings with title, severity label, file path, and line number
* **Resolved count** — number of previously identified findings that have been resolved
* **View Code Review** button — direct link to the review dashboard
* **Clean pass** — when no issues are found, a simple "No issues found" message
Configure code review destinations and severity thresholds in the notification matrix at **Notifications > Code Review / Pipeline Monitoring**. See [Notifications Center](/guide/notifications) for details.
## Troubleshooting
* Check if the CloudThinker bot is installed in the team
* Start a new conversation with `@CloudThinker` and use a literal alias such as `@alex` for specialist routing
* Reply in an existing CloudThinker thread without repeating `@CloudThinker`
* Confirm agents are configured in the CloudThinker console
* Check Azure AD admin consent status
* Check alert configuration in CloudThinker Settings
* Verify the Teams destination in the notification matrix
* Ensure the bot has permission to post in the target channel
* **"Missing required permissions"** — A Global Administrator or Teams Administrator must complete Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent. This is separate from the CloudThinker organization owner or administrator who starts setup.
* **"Consent on behalf of your organization"** — During OAuth, an administrator can select this option to grant permissions tenant-wide. See the [Required Azure AD permissions](#required-azure-ad-permissions) table for the requested scopes.
* **Connection appears successful but bot doesn't work** — Confirm the bot is installed in the team, the team is mapped to the expected workspace, and Microsoft provider approval completed.
* For any other permission errors, confirm the team-to-workspace mapping or try removing and re-adding the bot to the team.
A CloudThinker organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan starts setup. A Global Administrator or Teams Administrator completes Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent. These can be different people.
1. Sign in to CloudThinker as an organization owner or administrator on a messaging-eligible plan
2. Go to [**Admin Settings → Integrations → Microsoft Teams**](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/integrations)
3. Click **Connect with Teams** and have a Global Administrator or Teams Administrator complete the Microsoft OAuth flow
4. The bot will be published to your organization's Teams app catalog
After configuration, start a new CloudThinker thread with `@CloudThinker`. Replies in that thread do not need another bot mention.
***
## Permissions
### Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent
Global Administrator and Teams Administrator roles govern Microsoft provider approval and Entra consent. They do not replace the CloudThinker organization owner or administrator and messaging-eligible plan required to start setup.
During OAuth, the administrator can select **"Consent on behalf of your organization"** to grant permissions tenant-wide. See the [Required Azure AD permissions](#required-azure-ad-permissions) table above for the requested scopes.
### CloudThinker permissions
Team-to-workspace mappings control where ordinary Teams messages run. Ordinary Teams messages do not use a per-sender CloudThinker role check. A War Room input performs a linked-sender permission check.
***
## Related
Complete syntax reference for all commands
Set up CloudThinker in Slack
# First Prompts by Role
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/tutorial/agenticops
Find your role, copy a prompt, and get a real result from your own cloud environment in about 10 minutes.
By the end of this tutorial you will have run one role-specific prompt against your live environment and refined it with follow-ups. Allow **\~10 minutes**.
**What you'll need:** a workspace with at least one cloud connection — agents can't return real results without one. If you haven't set that up, complete the [quickstart](/quickstart) first.
## The syntax
Talk to agents in plain language. The full pattern is:
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool your request
```
* **`@agent`** — who does the work: `@alex` (cloud), `@oliver` (security), `@tony` (database), `@kai` (Kubernetes), `@anna` (coordination).
* **`#tool`** *(optional)* — the output you want: `#dashboard`, `#report`, `#recommend`, `#alert`, `#chart`, `#kb`.
* **Your request** — what you need, in your own words. Add any context inline.
See the [CloudThinker Language reference](/guide/language) for the full syntax.
Sign in at [app.cloudthinker.io](https://app.cloudthinker.io) and click **New chat** in the left sidebar.
**Success state:** an empty conversation panel opens and typing `@` shows the agent picker.
Pick the tab that matches your role, paste the quick win, then try the follow-ups once you see the shape of the output.
**Goal:** Stop paying for cloud you don't use. See where waste lives in under a minute.
**You need:** [AWS](/guide/connections/aws), [Azure](/guide/connections/azure), or [GCP](/guide/connections/gcp) connection. Agent: [@alex](/guide/agents/alex).
**Quick win — find idle and oversized resources:**
```text theme={null}
@alex find EC2 instances with <20% CPU utilization over the last 30 days, plus any unattached EBS volumes and unused Elastic IPs
```
Alex queries the cloud APIs, joins with utilization metrics, and returns a ranked list with projected monthly savings.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@alex #recommend right-sizing for the top 5 by waste
@alex #dashboard cost trend by service for this quarter
@alex draft a reserved-instance plan for the stable workloads above
```
**Goal:** Find the highest-risk misconfigurations before an auditor or attacker does.
**You need:** AWS, Azure, or GCP connection. Agent: [@oliver](/guide/agents/oliver).
**Quick win — surface public exposure on sensitive ports:**
```text theme={null}
@oliver list security groups with 0.0.0.0/0 access on database, SSH, or RDP ports across all regions
```
Oliver returns the offending rules with resource owner, region, and severity ranking.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@oliver #report SOC 2 compliance status with prioritized remediation
@oliver audit IAM policies for privilege-escalation paths
@oliver check for IMDSv1 instances or unencrypted EBS volumes
```
**Goal:** Find the queries that are actually hurting you, not the ones you assume are slow.
**You need:** [PostgreSQL](/guide/connections/postgresql) or [MySQL](/guide/connections/mysql) connection. Agent: [@tony](/guide/agents/tony).
**Quick win — slowest queries in the last 24 hours:**
```text theme={null}
@tony show the top 10 queries by total time over the last 24 hours on production PostgreSQL, with execution count and P95 latency
```
Tony pulls from `pg_stat_statements` (or the equivalent), ranks by impact, and shows where the cost is concentrated.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@tony #recommend indexes for the top 3 queries above
@tony explain why query #2 isn't using the existing index
@tony #dashboard query latency P95 trends by endpoint
```
**Goal:** See where pods are oversized, undersized, or imbalanced — before the next OOMKill or budget review.
**You need:** [Kubernetes connection](/guide/connections/kubernetes). Agent: [@kai](/guide/agents/kai).
**Quick win — pod resource waste across the cluster:**
```text theme={null}
@kai analyze pod resource usage vs requests across all namespaces, surface the largest over- and under-provisioned workloads
```
Kai joins requests/limits with actual usage and ranks the deltas by node-cost impact.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@kai #recommend HPA policies for the variable workloads above
@kai find nodes with <30% utilization for consolidation
@kai check for pods without resource limits or liveness probes
```
**Goal:** Cut the time from alert to root cause. Get a structured investigation, not raw logs.
**You need:** [Pulse](/guide/pulse/overview) configured, plus the connections for the systems you operate. Agent: [@anna](/guide/agents/anna) to coordinate.
**Quick win — investigate an active alert:**
```text theme={null}
@anna investigate the current incident: pull related metrics, recent deploys, and topology, then propose the top 3 likely causes ranked by evidence
```
Anna delegates to the relevant specialists, gathers evidence in parallel, and returns a hypothesis ladder you can act on.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@anna #report draft a postmortem from this conversation
@anna pull the matching runbook and walk through the approval gates
@anna check whether this pattern matches any past incident in memory
```
**Goal:** Get a coordinated view across cost, security, performance, and reliability without scheduling four meetings.
**You need:** Connections in place for the domains you want covered. Agent: [@anna](/guide/agents/anna).
**Quick win — multi-agent quarterly review:**
```text theme={null}
@anna coordinate a quarterly infrastructure review:
- @alex top cost optimization opportunities and savings
- @oliver security posture and compliance gaps
- @tony database performance hotspots
- @kai Kubernetes utilization and risk
Consolidate into an executive summary with prioritized actions.
```
Anna delegates, collects, deduplicates, and returns a single executive brief instead of four tabs.
**Follow up:**
```text theme={null}
@anna #report quarterly business review in slide-deck format
@anna track the open actions from last quarter — what shipped, what slipped
@anna draft a roadmap that aligns cost reduction with reliability work
```
**Success state:** the agent replies within \~30 seconds naming resources, queries, or rules you recognize from your own environment — not generic best practices.
Agents keep conversation context, so build on the result instead of starting over:
* **Be specific upfront.** "EC2 costs in us-east-1 for the last 30 days" beats "show me costs".
* **Refine, don't restart.** "Drill into RDS for the items above" works.
* **Combine tools.** Use `#dashboard` first to see the shape, then `#recommend` for the action on the same topic.
* **Let [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) coordinate.** For anything that touches more than one domain, start with `@anna` and name the specialists.
**Success state:** a follow-up prompt returns an answer that references items from earlier in the conversation without you repeating them.
## You're done when…
* [x] Your role's quick win returned results naming resources or queries you recognize
* [x] At least one follow-up prompt built on the first answer without restating it
* [x] You can predict what shape of output `#dashboard`, `#report`, and `#recommend` will produce
## Next steps
Every prompt you just ran is one pass of the Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate loop described in [How CloudThinker works](/#how-cloudthinker-works) — the modules below run that loop continuously. Set up your first module:
Connect a repository and get review comments from @cloudthinker-ai on the next pull request.
Turn on CloudKeepers to monitor spend continuously and surface savings as findings.
Route alerts into Pulse so agents investigate before you open a terminal.
Teach agents your team's procedures so they run them your way.
# Workspace Branding
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/workspace-branding
Apply your company logo, name, and chart color palette to artifact PDF exports and in-app charts
Configure branding once at the workspace level and every future [artifact](/guide/artifacts/overview) export picks it up automatically — your logo in the PDF header, your company name in the footer, your 6-color palette across every chart. Workspaces without branding still produce clean PDFs with CloudThinker defaults.
## Prerequisites
* A **Scale**, **Scale +**, or **Enterprise** plan — see [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing).
* **Workspace owner** or **org admin** role. Workspace members see the Branding page in view-only mode: inputs are disabled and the Save button is hidden.
* Your logo file: PNG, JPEG, WebP, or SVG, under 5 MB. A horizontal layout with transparency, at least 400 px wide for raster formats, renders best.
## Set up branding
Click your **workspace name** in the top navigation bar, choose **Workspace Settings**, then select the **Branding** tab (palette icon). The page opens with the editor on the left and a live PDF preview on the right — the preview redraws as you type, so you never need a test export to check your work.
Full Branding page layout — editor and live preview side by side
Drag your file onto the upload zone, or click **Upload Logo** and pick a file. When the upload finishes, your logo appears on a checkerboard background so you can verify transparency, and a **Remove** button appears.
To replace a logo, upload a new file — the old one is deleted from storage automatically.
Logo uploads commit immediately — they don't wait for the Save button. **Save Brand Settings** covers only the company name and colors.
Type your name into the **Company Name** input (max 255 characters). It replaces "CloudThinker" in the footer of every PDF page, as *"Generated by \"*. Special characters are escaped safely.
Each of the six slots — Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Accent 1–3 — has a color swatch that opens your system color picker and a synchronized hex input (`#RRGGBB`). Paste hex codes from your brand guidelines, or eyedrop them from your logo with the OS picker.
If you only care about one brand color, set **Primary** and leave the other five at defaults — the defaults are designed to harmonize. **Reset to defaults** reverts all six slots (you still need to save).
Click **Save Brand Settings**. Only changed fields are sent.
**Success state:** a green toast reads *"Workspace updated successfully."* On failure, a red toast states the reason and your form values are preserved for retry.
Open any artifact and click **Download**. The PDF shows your logo top-left in the header on every page (up to 160 px wide), charts in your six colors, and *"Generated by \"* in the footer.
Before and after: a default CloudThinker PDF (left) versus a fully branded export with custom logo, company name, and palette (right)
To reset everything later: click **Remove** next to the logo, clear the company name, click **Reset to defaults** under Chart Colors, then save.
## Picking a 6-color palette
Chart libraries cycle through your slots in order — a 4-series bar chart uses Primary through Accent 1; an 8-slice pie chart wraps back to Primary for slices 7 and 8. A few rules of thumb:
* **Start with your primary brand color** in the Primary slot — it becomes the default series color.
* **Vary hue, not just brightness.** Six shades of blue make multi-series charts unreadable.
* **Keep contrast against white.** PDFs render on white; very pale colors disappear on bar and line charts.
* **Mind color-blind viewers.** Avoid placing red and green next to each other.
* **Iterate in the live preview.** Edit a color, check the sample bar and pie charts, adjust.
## Reference: limits and validation
### Logo
| Property | Value |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Accepted formats | PNG, JPEG, WebP, SVG |
| Max file size | 5 MB |
| Rendered width in PDF | Up to 160 px (aspect ratio preserved) |
| Recommended source width | 400 px+ for raster formats; SVG scales at any size |
| SVG handling | Sanitized: scripts and unsafe attributes stripped before storage |
| File validation | MIME type and magic bytes both checked; mislabeled files rejected |
| Storage | Workspace-scoped path in secure cloud storage; uploaded via one-time presigned URL |
| Cache | Embedded base64 cached \~10 minutes per workspace; replacing the logo invalidates it |
| Auto-cleanup | Old logo deleted when you upload a new one |
### Company name
| Property | Value |
| ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| Type | Plain text, max 255 characters |
| Default | "CloudThinker" |
| Escaping | HTML-escaped — `&`, `<`, quotes, and accents are safe |
| Appears in | PDF footer only |
### Chart colors
| Property | Value |
| ---------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Slots | Exactly 6: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, Accent 1–3 |
| Format | `#RRGGBB` hex, case-insensitive |
| Rejected | 3-digit shorthand (`#fff`), missing `#`, non-hex characters |
| Applied to | Bar, line, area, step-area, pie, radar, gauge, and scatter charts |
| Cycling | Charts with more than 6 series wrap back to slot 1 |
Default palette (every new workspace):
| Slot | Hex | Color |
| --------- | --------- | ----------- |
| Primary | `#0d9488` | teal |
| Secondary | `#0369a1` | sky blue |
| Tertiary | `#15803d` | green |
| Accent 1 | `#60a5fa` | light blue |
| Accent 2 | `#5eead4` | light teal |
| Accent 3 | `#86efac` | light green |
### Where branding applies
| Element | In-app charts | PDF exports |
| --------------- | ------------- | ---------------------- |
| 6-color palette | ✓ | ✓ |
| Logo | — | ✓ Header on every page |
| Company name | — | ✓ Footer on every page |
### Plans and roles
| Plan | View | Edit |
| -------------------------- | ---- | -------------------- |
| Free, Team | ✓ | — (upgrade required) |
| Scale, Scale +, Enterprise | ✓ | ✓ |
| Workspace role | View | Edit |
| --------------------- | ---- | ---- |
| Member | ✓ | — |
| Owner | ✓ | ✓ |
| Org admin / org owner | ✓ | ✓ |
## FAQ
The embedded logo is cached for up to 10 minutes per workspace, but replacing a logo invalidates the cache, so new exports should pick it up right away. If the old logo persists after a few minutes, refresh the workspace page and export again; if it continues, contact support with your workspace ID.
Blurry: your source image is smaller than the 160 px render width and gets upscaled — re-export at 400 px wide or more, or use SVG. White square: your file has no transparency — export with a transparent canvas (PNG with alpha, or SVG). If an SVG renders differently than in your design tool, it likely relied on scripts or animations that sanitization strips; export a static PNG instead.
Expected. Each PDF is generated at export time with the branding active at that moment, and existing artifacts have no cached PDF — re-download any artifact to get a fresh PDF with current branding.
Yes. Branding is scoped to each workspace, not the organization, so an org with one workspace per customer, environment, or business unit can brand each independently.
Not currently — every export uses the active branding. As a workaround, remove the logo and clear the company name, export, then restore your branding.
Yes. Logos live under a workspace-scoped storage path and are served via short-lived presigned URLs; members of other workspaces cannot access them. Artifacts you share publicly via share links do include your logo and colors.
## Next steps
Generate the dashboards and reports your branding applies to
Create and manage workspaces within your organization
Configure organization settings, billing, and enterprise features
See which plans include workspace branding
# Workspace Members
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/workspace-users
Manage member access and roles within your CloudThinker workspace
Manage who has access to each workspace and what they can do. Workspace members are organization members who have been granted access to a specific workspace.
## Overview
Workspace member management lets you:
* **Control access** — decide which organization members can see and use a workspace
* **Assign workspace roles** — set per-workspace roles that can differ from organization roles
* **Monitor membership** — view member count and quota usage per workspace
Members must first belong to your organization before they can be added to a workspace. To invite someone to your organization, go to **Admin Settings > Organization**.
***
## Adding members to a workspace
There are two ways to grant workspace access:
### From the workspace
1. Open the workspace you want to manage
2. In the Members section, click **Add Member**
3. Select an organization member from the dropdown (only Developers and Viewers are shown — Owners and Admins already have implicit access)
4. Choose a workspace role (pre-filled based on their organization role)
### From admin settings
1. Go to **Admin Settings > Organization**
2. Find the member in the Members section
3. Click the grid icon next to their name to open workspace access settings
4. Toggle access for each workspace and set a role per workspace
Organization Owners and Admins automatically have access to all workspaces — you don't need to add them manually.
***
## Workspace roles
Each member can have a workspace-specific role that overrides their organization role for that workspace. This lets you give a Viewer organization-level member Developer access in a specific workspace, for example.
| Role | Capabilities |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Admin** | Manage workspace members, configure agents and connections, manage knowledge bases, run operations |
| **Developer** | Use agents, run operations, access connections and knowledge bases |
| **Viewer** | View workspace resources (read-only) |
When managing workspace access from **Admin Settings > Organization** (via the grid icon), you can choose per workspace:
* **Inherit from Org** — uses their organization role
* **Admin / Developer / Viewer** — overrides with a workspace-specific role
***
## Managing workspace members
The workspace members table shows:
| Column | Description |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Member** | Avatar, display name, and email address |
| **Organization Role** | The member's role at the organization level |
| **Workspace Role** | The member's role in this specific workspace (editable) |
| **Actions** | Remove member from workspace |
### Changing a member's role
Click the workspace role dropdown next to a member to change their role. Only workspace admins and organization admins/owners can change roles. Implicit members (organization Owners and Admins) cannot have their workspace role changed.
### Removing a member
Remove a member from a workspace to revoke their access. This does not remove them from the organization — they can be re-added later.
Removing a member from the organization (via **Admin Settings > Organization**) automatically removes them from all workspaces.
***
## Provisioning and SSO
If your organization uses SSO with JIT or SCIM provisioning, new members are automatically added to the **default workspaces** configured in your provisioning settings. See [SSO setup](/guide/security/sso) for details.
***
## Next steps
Workspace creation and management
Organization-level member management and roles
# Workspaces
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/workspaces
Create workspaces to isolate agents, connections, and knowledge for each team, project, or environment
A workspace is an isolated environment inside your [organization](/guide/organization) that holds its own agents, [connections](/guide/connections/overview), and [knowledge bases](/guide/knowledge). Every account gets a default organization and workspace at signup; billing and member management happen at the organization level.
## Why workspaces
* **Isolation** — separate environments (dev, staging, production), teams, or projects each get their own agents, credentials, and settings.
* **Multi-cloud structure** — each workspace targets one primary cloud provider, so you can run AWS, GCP, and Azure operations side by side in separate workspaces.
* **Access control** — grant members access per workspace, with optional role overrides for fine-grained permissions.
* **Organized resources** — agents, connections, knowledge bases, and operation history stay scoped to the workspace where they belong.
## Create a workspace
Only organization Owners and Admins can create workspaces.
Go to the Organizations page and find your organization.
Click **New workspace** on your organization card.
Choose the primary cloud infrastructure provider for this workspace.
Provide a clear, descriptive name (for example "Production AWS" or "Dev Team GCP") and a description of the workspace purpose, then create the workspace.
The cloud provider selection cannot be changed after workspace creation. Choose based on your primary infrastructure.
### Provider options
| Provider | Example services agents work with |
| ------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
|
**Amazon Web Services** | EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda |
|
**Google Cloud Platform** | Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Kubernetes Engine |
|
**Microsoft Azure** | Virtual Machines, Blob Storage, SQL Database, Container Instances |
## What lives in a workspace
Each workspace maintains its own set of resources:
| Resource | Scope |
| ------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [Agents](/guide/agents) | Agent customizations, instructions, and workspace-specific knowledge |
| [Connections](/guide/connections/overview) | Cloud provider, database, and service credentials |
| [Knowledge bases](/guide/knowledge) | Documentation, procedures, and references agents draw on |
| Operations | Pre-built and custom operations, plus their run history |
Switch between workspaces with the workspace selector; each workspace keeps its own agents, connections, and settings, so nothing leaks between environments.
## Where workspace settings live
Most workspace configuration opens from **Chat Settings**: the gear icon in the chat prompt box, immediately to the right of the **+** button. The **+** button itself is **Add to your message**, which attaches context rather than opening settings.
Chat Settings groups its tabs into four sections:
| Group | Tabs |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Workspace | General, Members, Branding |
| Agent Configuration | [Connections](/guide/connections/overview), [Skills](/guide/skills/overview), [Agents](/guide/configuration), [Knowledge](/guide/knowledge) |
| Workflow | Commands, [Approval](/guide/approval), [Scheduled](/guide/automation/tasks) |
| Integrations | [Notifications](/guide/notifications), [Webhooks](/guide/webhooks/overview) |
Several of these also have a standalone page in the sidebar. **Webhooks** appears only when you have permission to view it.
Chat Settings is workspace scope. Organization-wide controls such as billing, SSO, and the audit log live in **Admin Settings** from the user menu. See [Organization](/guide/organization).
## Workspace access
Access is managed through your organization role:
| Organization role | Default workspace access | Can override per workspace? |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **Owner** | Admin on all workspaces (implicit) | No — always Admin |
| **Admin** | Admin on all workspaces (implicit) | No — always Admin |
| **Developer** | Developer on assigned workspaces only | Yes |
| **Viewer** | Viewer on assigned workspaces only | Yes |
Owners and Admins see every workspace automatically. Developers and Viewers must be assigned to specific workspaces, and each assignment can either inherit their organization role or use an Admin, Developer, or Viewer override for that workspace only.
### Grant workspace access
Go to **Admin Settings → Organization** and scroll to the Members section.
Find the Developer or Viewer, then click the grid icon next to their name to open workspace access settings.
Check or uncheck workspaces to grant or revoke access.
For each workspace, keep **Inherit from Org** or choose a role override, then click **Save**.
Role overrides allow fine-grained control. For example, an organization Viewer can be given Developer access to one workspace where they need to run operations. To invite new members, see [organization members](/guide/organization#organization-members).
## Common workspace patterns
| Pattern | How to split | Typical use |
| --------------------- | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Environment-based** | Dev → Staging → Production | Separate cloud accounts, stricter access and incident-response knowledge in production |
| **Team-based** | Platform, feature, and security teams | Each team gets agents and knowledge bases tuned to its focus |
| **Provider-based** | One workspace per cloud provider | Keep AWS, GCP, and Azure credentials and operations apart |
Whichever pattern you choose, use consistent naming across workspaces, follow least privilege when assigning access, and clean up workspaces you no longer use.
## Related
Configure organization settings, billing, and member management
Set up AI agents for your workspace operations
# CloudThinker
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/index
Meet the AI agents that manage infrastructure, review code, resolve incidents, and optimize costs across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes.
CloudThinker is an Autonomous Cloud Operations (AgenticOps) platform: specialized AI agents manage infrastructure, review code, resolve incidents, and optimize costs across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes.
## Start here
Three first tasks, each 5–10 minutes with a result you can verify. New workspace? [Connect AWS](/guide/connections/aws) first — the [quickstart](/quickstart) walks you through it.
Find idle resources, oversized instances, and unused commitments — with projected monthly savings
Connect a Git repository and get AI review comments on the next pull request
Wire Pulse to your monitoring and let agents form hypotheses, gather evidence, and propose remediation
## Choose your goal
Pick the outcome you want next. Each goal maps to a guided path.
**CostOps** — continuous spend audit across AWS, Azure, and GCP with rightsizing recommendations and approval-gated remediation
**Code Review** — every PR reviewed with context from running infrastructure, past incidents, and your team's conventions
**Deep Response Engine** — Pulse strips noise from monitoring; agents investigate the rest and run approved runbooks
**Assessment** — Well-Architected analysis across resources and pillars, on demand
**Autonomous agents + skills** — encode your runbooks, conventions, and policies so the loop runs without restating them
**Tutorial** — run your role's first prompts against your live environment, then follow the chain into your first module setup
## How CloudThinker works
Every module runs the same agentic loop: **Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate**.
| Phase | What happens |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Detect** | Agents watch signals from your connections — metrics, cost data, pull requests, alerts. |
| **Analyze** | The agent correlates the signal with topology, history, and [team knowledge](/guide/knowledge) to form a plan. |
| **Resolve** | The plan executes under your autonomy mode — [Manual or Auto](/guide/auto-mode) — with [approvals](/guide/approval) gating sensitive actions. |
| **Validate** | The agent verifies the outcome and writes the result back into memory for the next iteration. |
You stay on the loop, not in every step: set the goal, choose the autonomy mode, and intervene when judgment matters. The [AgenticOps field guide](/learn/aio/introduction) covers the reference architecture and governance discipline behind the loop.
## The six modules
AI review on every PR with context from running infrastructure, [past incidents](/guide/incident/incident-memory), and [team conventions](/guide/code-review/convention-rules). Inline comments, reproduction steps, suggested patches.
[Pulse](/guide/pulse/overview) suppresses monitoring noise. When something escalates, agents form hypotheses, gather evidence, and run approved [runbooks](/guide/incident/runbooks).
Continuous spend audit across [AWS](/guide/connections/aws), [Azure](/guide/connections/azure), and [GCP](/guide/connections/gcp). Idle resources, oversized instances, unused commitments — surfaced with projected savings and approval-gated remediation.
Research Preview
Continuous configuration assessment and vulnerability scans across cloud, container, and IaC layers. Findings ranked by exploitability; fixes opened as pull requests.
Agents operate inside Slack, [Microsoft Teams](/guide/teams-integration), and the CLI. Query infrastructure, approve actions, and review changes without leaving your workflow.
Reusable packages of runbooks, conventions, and policies that agents load automatically — your team's expertise compounds instead of leaving with the engineer who wrote it.
## Why CloudThinker
Cloud operations is spread across disconnected consoles — Cost Explorer, Datadog, GitHub, and more — none of which share state, so every incident, cost review, and security fix starts with a human reassembling context. CloudThinker replaces that with a team of agents that already hold the context: they watch your environment continuously, act inside the guardrails you define, and record what they learn so the next run starts smarter. You get the leverage of a larger operations team without the tool sprawl, and every action stays auditable and approval-gated. Start with the [quickstart](/quickstart), or read the [AgenticOps field guide](/learn/aio/introduction) for the architecture and adoption discipline behind the platform.
# Quick Start
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/quickstart
Register, connect AWS, verify the connection, and run your first AI-powered cost analysis — with a clear success state for every step.
This quickstart takes you from zero to a real result you can verify: a list of your idle EC2 instances with projected monthly savings, returned by an AI agent reading your actual AWS account. Allow **\~10 minutes**, mostly spent waiting for AWS to grant model access and CloudThinker to inventory your resources.
**What you'll need:** an email address, an AWS account with admin (or sufficient IAM) permissions to create a role, and a few minutes to read what the agent returns.
***
## The 30-second syntax
Talk to agents in plain language. The full pattern is:
```text theme={null}
@agent #tool your request
```
* **`@agent`** — who does the work: `@alex` (cloud), `@oliver` (security), `@tony` (database), `@kai` (Kubernetes), `@anna` (coordination).
* **`#tool`** *(optional)* — the output you want: `#dashboard`, `#report`, `#recommend`, `#alert`, `#chart`, `#kb`.
* **Your request** — what you need, in your own words. Add any context inline.
See the [CloudThinker Language reference](/guide/language) for the full syntax.
***
Sign up at [app.cloudthinker.io](https://app.cloudthinker.io/auth/register).
1. Enter name, work email, and password
2. Click the verification link in your inbox
3. Confirm your profile
**Success state:** You land in your personal organization with a default workspace ready. The left sidebar shows **New chat**, **Skills**, and **Artifacts** at the top, and an empty conversation panel on the right.
Free 14-day trial — no charge until day 15. See [Pricing](/guide/billing/pricing) for plan limits.
Go to **Settings → Connections → New Connection → AWS**, then pick an authentication method:
| Method | When to use it | Required |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| **IAM Role** *(recommended)* | Production accounts; safer than long-lived keys | Trust policy + permission policy on a role you create |
| **Access Key** | Quick demo or sandbox account | IAM user with programmatic access; access key ID + secret |
For the IAM Role path, CloudThinker shows you the **External ID** to paste into the trust policy and the [minimum permissions](/guide/connections/aws#required-permissions) to attach. The full AWS Console walkthrough — with CloudShell commands and trust-policy JSON — is in the [AWS connection guide](/guide/connections/aws).
**Safe by default:** the recommended starter policy is read-only. Write actions (rightsizing, instance termination, security-group changes) require a separate policy *and* run under your [approval workflow](/guide/approval) — no agent ever pushes a change without your sign-off on the first runs.
**Success state:** the connection card flips to **Connected** with a green dot. Discovery starts automatically; within \~2 minutes you'll see a non-zero resource count (instances, RDS, S3, etc.) on the card. If discovery stays at zero, jump to [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting) below.
Open the **Infrastructure** tab in the left sidebar.
You should see:
* A list of regions with non-zero resource counts
* At least one of: EC2 instances, S3 buckets, RDS databases, Lambda functions
* A topology view (click the graph icon) showing service relationships
**Success state:** The resource count matches roughly what you expect for the account. If you connected a sandbox with five EC2s and you see five — you're done. If you see zero or your numbers look wrong, see [Troubleshooting](#troubleshooting).
Click **New chat** and paste:
```text theme={null}
@alex give me a summary of my AWS resources — count by service, top regions, and any obviously idle instances
```
Alex queries CloudWatch utilization metrics, joins them with the resource inventory, and returns a structured summary.
**Expected output:** a response within \~30 seconds containing:
* **Resource counts** — EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, etc. by region
* **Idle candidates** — instances with sustained `<20%` CPU over the last 30 days
* **Projected savings** — monthly dollars at risk if you keep paying for idle resources
* **Inline reasoning** — *"I checked CloudWatch's `CPUUtilization` metric for the last 30 days and filtered instances where the 95th percentile stayed below 20%"*
You can drill into any line: click an instance to see its tags, region, owner, and the full metric history Alex consulted.
For richer output shapes, prefix the prompt with a `#tool`:
```text theme={null}
@alex #dashboard EC2 cost breakdown by instance type over the last 30 days
```
Alex returns an interactive dashboard (charts you can sort/filter) instead of a text answer.
Other tools worth trying once you're connected:
```text theme={null}
@alex #recommend right-sizing options for the over-provisioned instances above
@alex #report monthly AWS cost narrative I can share with finance
```
**Success state:** the dashboard renders inline; recommendations include both the change and the projected monthly delta.
***
## You're done when…
* [x] You can see your AWS resource count in the Infrastructure tab and it matches reality
* [x] `@alex` returned a summary that named specific instances or services you recognize
* [x] You can explain to a teammate what Alex did to find the idle resources (read the inline reasoning back)
If all three are true, you've completed the first-success flow.
***
## Troubleshooting
**Likely cause:** trust policy missing the External ID, or the role's permission policy is too narrow.
**Check:**
1. In the AWS Console → IAM → Roles → your role → Trust relationships, confirm the `sts:ExternalId` condition exactly matches what CloudThinker showed you (no extra whitespace).
2. The role's permission policy includes at minimum `ec2:Describe*`, `rds:Describe*`, `s3:List*`, `cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics`. Full list: [AWS connection minimum permissions](/guide/connections/aws#required-permissions).
3. The role's max-session-duration is ≥ 1 hour.
**Fix:** correct the trust policy / permissions, then click **Reconnect** on the connection card. Discovery restarts automatically.
**Likely cause:** the role can be assumed but lacks `Describe` permissions on the regions/services your account actually uses, or the account is in a region you haven't enabled.
**Check:**
* Go to **Connection details → Discovery log**. Each region attempted shows its result. `AccessDenied` errors tell you exactly which API call was rejected.
* Confirm the account actually has resources in at least one region the role can see.
**Fix:** widen the permission policy to cover the failing API, or enable the relevant region under the connection's region scope.
**Likely cause:** the connection isn't bound to the current workspace. Each connection lives in one workspace; you might be chatting in a different one.
**Fix:** confirm the workspace selector (top of sidebar) shows the same workspace where you added AWS. Switch workspaces, or re-add the connection in the workspace you're chatting in.
**Likely cause:** Alex couldn't reach a tool (CloudWatch, Cost Explorer) — usually a permission gap. Generic answers are the fallback when concrete data isn't available.
**Check:** scroll to the bottom of Alex's reply; the **Tools used** section lists every API call attempted, with success/failure. Failed calls show the AWS error.
**Fix:** add the missing permission to the role (CloudWatch read for utilization, Cost Explorer read for spend), reconnect, then retry the prompt.
**Likely cause:** initial discovery still running — Alex is waiting for the inventory to finish before reasoning over it. Subsequent prompts are much faster.
**Fix:** wait until the Infrastructure tab shows non-zero resource counts, then re-run the prompt. Discovery typically completes in 2–5 minutes for an account with under 500 resources.
***
## Next steps
Find your role, copy a prompt, get a real result in under a minute
Bring in Datadog, GitHub, Kubernetes, Postgres, Slack — agents activate as connections appear
Add teammates with Owner, Admin, Developer, or Viewer roles and assign workspace access
Add seats and move up from the trial when your team is ready — per-seat billing, upgrade any time
# API
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/api/overview
Access CloudThinker programmatically to manage workspaces, agents, recommendations, and incidents via authenticated HTTPS endpoints
**Preview** — The CloudThinker REST API is in early access. Endpoints, payloads, and authentication flows may change before general availability. [Contact us](https://cloudthinker.io/contact) to join the preview.
The CloudThinker API exposes the same operations available in the web console as authenticated HTTPS endpoints. Use it to embed cloud operations into your own products, automate workflows, or integrate CloudThinker with internal tooling.
***
## What you can do
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Trigger Conversations | Start agent conversations programmatically with `@agent #tool` prompts and stream responses back to your app |
| Query Resources | Fetch the unified inventory of cloud resources, costs, and topology across AWS, GCP, and Azure |
| Manage Recommendations | List, accept, dismiss, or comment on cost, security, and reliability recommendations |
| Drive Incidents | Create incidents, attach signals, request RCA, and read investigation results |
***
## Authentication
The API uses workspace-scoped API keys passed via a bearer token header.
```bash theme={null}
curl https://api.cloudthinker.io/v1/workspaces/{workspace_id}/resources \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDTHINKER_API_KEY"
```
| Field | Description |
| --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Scope** | Each key is bound to a single workspace |
| **Permissions** | Inherits the role of the issuing member |
| **Rotation** | Keys can be revoked at any time from workspace settings |
***
## Endpoint surface
| Resource | Purpose |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| `/v1/workspaces` | Workspace metadata and members |
| `/v1/conversations` | Start, list, and resume agent conversations |
| `/v1/resources` | Discovered cloud resource inventory |
| `/v1/recommendations` | Cost, security, and reliability recommendations |
| `/v1/incidents` | Incident lifecycle and RCA results |
| `/v1/dashboards` | Built-in and custom dashboard data |
| `/v1/skills` | Workspace skills and execution |
| `/v1/connections` | Cloud and SaaS [connections](/guide/connections/overview) |
***
## Versioning
The API is versioned in the URL path (`/v1/`). Breaking changes ship under a new version; additive changes ship in place. Deprecated versions remain available for at least 12 months after a successor is released.
***
## Related
Use CloudThinker tools from MCP-compatible AI clients
Run CloudThinker operations from your terminal
Let external systems start agent work with one POST
Connect cloud providers and SaaS systems
# Pricing
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/billing/pricing
Compare CloudThinker's per-seat plans from the free daily tier to Enterprise and understand what each includes.
CloudThinker offers flexible per-seat plans — from a free daily tier for individuals to enterprise teams managing multi-cloud environments. Start free, then scale as you grow.
Start free with **100 credits every day** — for the Light model and chat,
enough to explore the platform at no cost, no credit card needed.
## Choose your plan
| | **Free** | **Team** ⭐ | **Scale** | **Scale +** | **Enterprise** |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| **Monthly** | Free | \$25/seat | \$100/seat | \$200/seat | \$100/seat + usage |
| **Annual** | Free | \$20/seat | \$80/seat | \$160/seat | Custom |
| **Credits** | 100 / day | 200 / seat | 800 / seat | 1,600 / seat | Metered (PAYG) |
| **Seats** | 1 | 1–5 | 5–100 | 5–100 | 20+ |
| **Workspaces** | 1 | 1 | 5 | 10 | Unlimited |
| **Models** | Light only | All models | All models | All models | All models |
| **SSO & Audit log** | — | — | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| **Support** | Community | Email | 99.9% · email | 99.9% · priority | 24×7 · 1h · TAM |
| | [Start free](https://app.cloudthinker.io/auth/register) | [Try free for 14 days](https://app.cloudthinker.io/auth/register) | [Get started](https://app.cloudthinker.io/auth/register) | [Get started](https://app.cloudthinker.io/auth/register) | [Contact us](https://cloudthinker.io/contact) |
Save **\~20%** with annual billing on any paid plan (seat price only). The Team plan includes a **14-day free trial** — no charge until day 15.
Credits are a single pool shared across all workspaces in your org. Scale caps
at 100 seats — beyond 100, move to Enterprise.
***
## AI features by plan
| Feature | Free | Team | Scale | Scale + | Enterprise |
| ------------------- | :--: | :--: | :---: | :-----: | :--------: |
| Code Review | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Incident RCA | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Prompt Hub Query | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CloudKeepers action | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Slack Integration | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pay-As-You-Go | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cloud Assessment | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Jira Integration | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SSO & Audit Log | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| BYOK | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SCIM Provisioning | — | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
***
## Next steps
How credits work, the order they're consumed, and metered top-up
Upgrade, add seats, and manage invoices and payments
# Subscription
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/billing/subscription
View your plan, upgrade or downgrade, add team members, and track usage and quotas
## Managing your subscription
### View current plan
1. Navigate to **Admin Settings > Billing**
2. View your current plan, usage, and billing cycle
3. See upcoming charges and invoice history
### Upgrade or downgrade
To change your plan:
1. Go to **Admin Settings > Billing**
2. Click **Change Plan**
3. Select your new plan
4. Review the changes and confirm
Plan changes take effect immediately. Upgrades are prorated for the current billing period. Downgrades take effect at the next billing cycle.
### Add team members
For seat-based plans:
1. Navigate to **Admin Settings > Organization**
2. Click **Invite Members**
3. Enter email addresses
4. Select roles and workspace access
5. Additional seats are billed automatically
### How seats work
A **seat** is a paid slot on your subscription. Each seat grants its full credit allocation immediately upon purchase.
* **Only active members use seats.** Pending invitations don't count toward your seat usage.
* **Pre-purchase seats for more credits.** Buy extra seats to boost your organization's credit pool, even before team members join.
* **Mid-cycle additions.** When a new member exceeds your seat count, a seat is added automatically with prorated billing.
* **Member departures.** Credits stay intact for the current cycle. Seat count adjusts at next renewal.
***
## Invoices & payments
### Payment methods
Supported payment methods:
* Credit/debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, Amex)
* ACH bank transfer (US)
* Wire transfer (Enterprise)
* Invoice billing (Enterprise)
### Managing payment methods
1. Go to **Admin Settings > Billing**
2. Add or update payment methods
3. Set default payment method
4. View payment history
### Invoices
Access your invoice history:
1. Navigate to **Admin Settings > Billing**
2. View and download invoices
3. Filter by date range
4. Export for accounting
### Billing cycle
* Monthly plans: Billed on subscription start date
* Annual plans: Billed yearly with discount
* Usage overage: Billed at end of billing period
## Next steps
How credits work, the order they're consumed, and metered top-up
Compare plans and credit allocations
# Usage
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/billing/usage
Track daily, bonus, and premium credit consumption and configure Pay-As-You-Go top-up to keep agent operations running.
Credits are the currency for AI agent operations. Each interaction with an agent consumes credits based on complexity.
## How credits work
Credits are included with your plan and apply to all agent conversations and API usage:
* Every plan gets **100 free daily credits** that refresh every day, for the **Light model and chat only**.
* **Premium credits** (your plan's per-seat allocation) unlock **all models and all features** — Light, Pro, and Ultra model tiers across every app capability (agents, code review, incident RCA, dashboards, integrations, and API usage).
## Consumption order
When you use credits, they are consumed in this order:
100 free credits that reset every day, for the **Light model and chat
only**. Available on all plans.
Promotional credits from referrals or special offers. They work with **all
models** and **never expire**.
Your plan's per-seat credit allocation, reset each billing cycle. Unlike
daily credits, premium credits work with **all models** (Light, Pro, Ultra)
and **every app feature** — no model or feature restrictions.
Automatic top-up when all other credits are exhausted. Charged at
\$0.10/credit. Only if [PAYG](#pay-as-you-go) is enabled.
Monitor your balance, current-period usage, historical trends, and transaction history in real-time from **Admin Settings > Usage**.
***
## Pay-As-You-Go
Never run out of credits during critical operations. Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) automatically kicks in when all your other credits are exhausted.
| | Details |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Rate** | \$0.10 per credit |
| **Availability** | Team, Scale, Scale +, and Enterprise plans |
| **Spending cap** | Set your own monthly limit — minimum \$100; maximum depends on your plan tier |
| **Billing** | Metered — you only pay for what you use at the end of each billing cycle |
| **Control** | Enable or disable anytime from your subscription settings |
PAYG is not available on the Free plan, and is locked during the trial period.
Upgrade to Team or above to enable it.
### Enable or disable PAYG
1. Navigate to **Admin Settings > Billing**
2. Open **Pay-As-You-Go**
3. Toggle PAYG on (or off)
4. Confirm — the change takes effect immediately
### Set your spending cap
The monthly cap limits how much PAYG can charge in a single billing cycle. Once the cap is reached, PAYG stops until the next cycle.
1. In **Admin Settings > Billing > Pay-As-You-Go**, set your **monthly cap**
2. The minimum cap is **\$100/month**; the maximum depends on your plan tier, and your plan's default cap is pre-filled
3. Save — usage above the cap is blocked until the next billing cycle
Caps are per billing cycle and reset each cycle. Lowering the cap mid-cycle
does not refund usage already incurred.
## Next steps
Change plan, add seats, and review usage and quotas
Compare plans and credit allocations
# Bring Your Own Key (BYOK)
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/byok
Route LLM inference through your own AWS Bedrock account for unlimited usage, cost control, and data residency
Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) lets workspaces on Scale and above plans run LLM inference through their own AWS Bedrock credentials instead of platform credits. Usage bills to your AWS account, and you choose which regions serve inference.
***
## Why BYOK
* **Unlimited usage** — your own Bedrock quotas apply, not platform credit limits.
* **Cost control** — charges land on your AWS bill, where you already have budgets and cost allocation tags.
* **Data residency** — route inference through US-only, EU-only, or APAC-only [inference profiles](#inference-profiles).
* **Compliance** — you control where inference happens and who can audit it.
* **No model management** — CloudThinker selects Claude Sonnet 4.5 or Opus 4.5 automatically per task.
***
## Prerequisites
* **Scale, Scale +, or Enterprise plan** — see [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing)
* **AWS account** with Amazon Bedrock access enabled
* **IAM credentials** (access key ID and secret access key) with Bedrock invoke permissions
* **Model access** for both Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Opus 4.5 in your AWS account
CloudThinker authenticates with AWS IAM credentials: an access key ID, a secret access key, and an optional session token for temporary credentials. Direct Bedrock API keys are planned but not yet supported.
Long-term credentials (AKIA prefix) support automatic session token refresh. Temporary credentials (ASIA prefix) cannot be refreshed — reconfigure when they expire.
***
## Request Claude model access
Claude models require a one-time use case form in the Bedrock console before you can invoke them. See the [AWS Bedrock model access documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/model-access.html) for details.
Log in to the [AWS Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/), open [Amazon Bedrock](https://console.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/), and click **Model access** in the left navigation.
Click **Modify model access** and enable both:
* **Claude Sonnet 4.5** (`anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0`)
* **Claude Opus 4.5** (`anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0`)
Complete the form with your use case description, expected usage patterns, and compliance requirements if applicable.
**Success state:** the Model access page shows both models as access granted — typically immediately after submission.
Request access to **both** Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.5. CloudThinker switches between them based on task requirements.
***
## Create IAM credentials
Your IAM user needs permission to invoke both models. Create one with the AWS CLI, or via the [AWS Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com/iam/).
```bash theme={null}
aws iam create-user --user-name bedrock-byok-user
```
```bash theme={null}
cat > bedrock-policy.json << 'EOF'
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"bedrock:InvokeModel",
"bedrock:InvokeModelWithResponseStream"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:bedrock:*::foundation-model/anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*::foundation-model/anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/global.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/global.anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/us.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/eu.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/eu.anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/apac.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0",
"arn:aws:bedrock:*:*:inference-profile/apac.anthropic.claude-opus-4-5-20251101-v1:0"
]
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": ["sts:GetSessionToken"],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}
EOF
```
```bash theme={null}
aws iam put-user-policy \
--user-name bedrock-byok-user \
--policy-name BedrockInvokePolicy \
--policy-document file://bedrock-policy.json
```
```bash theme={null}
aws iam create-access-key --user-name bedrock-byok-user
```
Save the `AccessKeyId` and `SecretAccessKey` from the output — you'll enter these in CloudThinker.
```bash theme={null}
aws configure --profile bedrock-byok-user
aws sts get-caller-identity --profile bedrock-byok-user
```
**Success state:** `get-caller-identity` returns the `bedrock-byok-user` ARN.
These commands require an AWS profile with IAM administrative permissions (`iam:CreateUser`, `iam:PutUserPolicy`, `iam:CreateAccessKey`).
***
## Connect Bedrock in CloudThinker
Go to **Settings → BYOK Settings** and choose **AWS Bedrock** as the provider.
Provide your **Access Key ID** (AKIA or ASIA prefix), **Secret Access Key**, and — only for temporary credentials — a **Session Token**.
Pick **Global**, **US**, **EU**, or **APAC** depending on your [data residency needs](#inference-profiles).
Click **Test Connection** to confirm the credentials are valid and both models are reachable, then click **Save**.
**Success state:** the test passes for both Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.5.
Credentials are encrypted at rest and never exposed in API responses or logs.
***
## Inference profiles
Bedrock inference profiles control which AWS regions can serve your requests. For region coverage, see the [AWS inference profile documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/inference-profiles-support.html).
| Profile | Routing | Typical use |
| ---------- | ------------------------- | ----------------------- |
| **Global** | Any commercial AWS region | Maximum throughput |
| **US** | US regions only | US data residency |
| **EU** | EU regions only | GDPR compliance |
| **APAC** | APAC regions only | Regional data residency |
***
## How it works
* **Model selection** — CloudThinker picks the appropriate Claude model per task; you never select models manually. See the [supported foundation models list](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock/latest/userguide/models-supported.html).
* **Workspace inheritance** — the workspace owner configures BYOK once; every member inherits it. All member LLM usage routes through the owner's AWS account, and the owner manages the credentials centrally.
***
## Fallback behavior
CloudThinker can retry a failed BYOK call on platform-managed Bedrock credentials, but this is **opt-in per workspace** and **disabled by default for Enterprise and BYOC plans**. With fallback off, a failed call surfaces the error — no request leaves your credential boundary.
### When fallback triggers (if enabled)
A BYOK call falls back to the platform path only when **all three** are true:
1. The error is retryable — credential expiration, throttling, transient 5xx — not a content or policy violation.
2. The operation is marked **fallback-eligible** (most read operations; never autonomous write actions in production).
3. The workspace's fallback policy is **Allow**.
A fallback re-sends the request to the platform-managed Bedrock account in **the same region** as the original call — never a different jurisdiction. Every fallback emits an audit event (original error code, serving endpoint, user, workspace, model, token count) in **Admin Settings → Audit log**.
### Set the fallback policy
Go to **Admin Settings → BYOK → Fallback policy**.
| Policy | Behavior on BYOK failure | Typical use |
| ------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Allow** | Retry on platform credentials in-region | Dev / sandbox tenants |
| **Warn** | Retry in-region, but require user re-confirmation next session | Mixed workloads |
| **Strict** *(default and recommended for Enterprise / BYOC)* | Surface the error; never retry on different credentials | Regulated environments |
Toggle **Enforce across all workspaces** so workspace admins can't change the policy locally. Only org owners with the `byok:admin` permission can flip this toggle.
**Strict mode trade-off:** if BYOK credentials are misconfigured or revoked, agent operations fail until you fix them. Plan for credential rotation and quota management, and set up [notifications](/guide/notifications) on BYOK health.
### What inference calls send
Regardless of policy, each BYOK call sends the agent's system prompt and tool definitions, the relevant conversation history, and any retrieved context (topology, memory, runbooks). It never sends raw cloud credentials, other workspaces' data, or — when tokenization is configured in **Admin Settings → Data Protection** — customer PII.
***
## Troubleshooting
* Verify you submitted the use case form in the Bedrock console
* Check that both Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.5 are enabled on the **Model access** page
* Wait a few minutes after submission for access to propagate
* Verify the policy includes `bedrock:InvokeModel` and `bedrock:InvokeModelWithResponseStream`
* Check the model and inference-profile ARNs match the models and profile you use
* Test the permissions directly in the AWS Console
* Verify the access key ID and secret access key are correct and not rotated or revoked
* For temporary credentials, confirm the session token hasn't expired
* Test with `aws sts get-caller-identity`
* Verify both Sonnet 4.5 and Opus 4.5 are accessible and covered by your IAM policy
* Ensure Bedrock is enabled in your AWS account
* Check the region selection matches your model access
* Verify the workspace owner has configured BYOK and it's enabled in settings
* Confirm the owner's plan is Scale, Scale +, or Enterprise
* Check the owner's credentials are still valid
* Long-term credentials (AKIA) refresh automatically
* Temporary credentials (ASIA) can't be refreshed — reconfigure with new credentials
* Check the `session_token_expires_at` timestamp in the configuration
***
## Related
Which plans include BYOK and what each tier covers
Track credit and LLM usage across your workspace
Alert on BYOK credential health before it blocks work
# CLI
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/cli/overview
Run CloudThinker agent conversations, query resources, and manage operations directly from your terminal
**Preview** — The CloudThinker CLI is in early access. Command names, flags, and config formats may change before general availability. [Contact us](https://cloudthinker.io/contact) to join the preview.
The `cloudthinker` CLI brings agent conversations, resource queries, and operations management to the terminal — useful for shell scripting, CI pipelines, and engineers who prefer keyboards over consoles.
***
## What you can do
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Chat With Agents | Open an interactive session with Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai, or Anna from the terminal |
| One-Shot Prompts | Run a single `@agent #tool ...` prompt and pipe the result into other tools |
| Script Operations | Wrap recurring cloud-ops tasks in shell scripts and run them in CI |
| Manage Resources | Inspect connections, resources, recommendations, and incidents |
***
## Installation
| Platform | Method |
| ----------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **macOS** | `brew install cloudthinker/tap/cloudthinker` |
| **Linux** | `curl -fsSL https://install.cloudthinker.io \| sh` |
| **Windows** | `winget install CloudThinker.CLI` |
| **Docker** | `docker run cloudthinker/cli` |
***
## Authentication
```bash theme={null}
cloudthinker login
```
The CLI uses the same workspace [API keys](/guide/api/overview) as the REST API. Keys are stored in your OS keychain — never written to plaintext config.
***
## Command surface
| Command | Purpose |
| ------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| `cloudthinker chat` | Open an interactive agent conversation |
| `cloudthinker ask "@alex #cost ..."` | One-shot prompt, prints the response |
| `cloudthinker resources list` | Query the unified resource inventory |
| `cloudthinker recommendations list` | List active cost, security, and reliability recommendations |
| `cloudthinker incidents create` | Open an incident from the terminal |
| `cloudthinker skills run ` | Execute a [workspace skill](/guide/skills/overview) |
| `cloudthinker connections list` | View configured [connections](/guide/connections/overview) |
***
## Output formats
| Flag | Format |
| --------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| `--format text` | Default — human-readable for terminals |
| `--format json` | Machine-readable for piping into `jq`, scripts, or CI |
| `--format yaml` | Configuration-friendly output |
***
## Related
Same operations over HTTPS endpoints
Use CloudThinker from MCP-compatible AI clients
Schedule recurring operations
Run the same operations from Slack
# AppDynamics
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/appdynamics
Connect AppDynamics (Cisco) APM to CloudThinker for application health monitoring, health-rule violation triage, and metric review
Connect your AppDynamics (Cisco) APM platform to enable CloudThinker agents to list applications, tiers, nodes, and business transactions, pull performance metrics, and review active health-rule violations and error events across your monitored environment.
AppDynamics authenticates with an **API client** (OAuth2 client credentials) scoped to a Controller account. The connection is read-only — agents query the Controller REST API but never mutate AppDynamics resources.
***
## Prerequisites
* An **AppDynamics Controller** (SaaS or on-premises) with the applications you want to monitor.
* An **API client** created under your account, with its **Client Name** and **Client Secret**.
* Your **Controller URL** and **account name**.
Grant the API client a read-only role. CloudThinker only reads application health, metrics, violations, and events — it never modifies AppDynamics configuration.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your AppDynamics Controller as an administrator. Your Controller URL follows the format `https://.saas.appdynamics.com` for SaaS, or your on-premises host.
Go to **Settings → Administration → API Clients** and click **Create**:
* **Client Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Description**: `Read-only access for CloudThinker agents`
* **Roles**: assign a read-only role with access to the applications you want CloudThinker to monitor
Copy the generated **Client Secret** immediately — it is shown only once.
Your account name appears under **Settings → License** or as the subdomain of your Controller URL (e.g. `myaccount` in `https://myaccount.saas.appdynamics.com`).
Navigate to **Connections → AppDynamics** and enter:
* **Controller URL**: your Controller base URL
* **Account Name**: your AppDynamics account name
* **Client Name**: the API client name (e.g. `cloudthinker@myaccount`)
* **Client Secret**: the secret you copied
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the Client Secret immediately after creating the API client. AppDynamics shows it only once — if it's lost, you'll need to regenerate the secret.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------- |
| **APPD\_CONTROLLER\_URL** | Your AppDynamics Controller base URL | `https://myaccount.saas.appdynamics.com` |
| **APPD\_ACCOUNT\_NAME** | Your AppDynamics account name | `myaccount` |
| **APPD\_CLIENT\_NAME** | The API client name | `cloudthinker@myaccount` |
| **APPD\_CLIENT\_SECRET** | The API client secret | — |
All four fields are required together — AppDynamics OAuth2 client-credentials authentication needs the Controller URL, account, client name, and secret to obtain an access token.
***
## Required permissions
Assign the API client a **read-only role** with access to the applications CloudThinker should monitor. Read access covers applications, tiers, nodes, business transactions, metrics, health-rule violations, and events.
Follow least privilege: a read-only role is enough for monitoring and triage. Keep configuration and administration permissions off the client CloudThinker uses.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your AppDynamics APM data.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Discovery** | Summarize the environment — applications, tiers, nodes, and recent health signals |
| **Application health** | List applications and flag health-rule violations or degraded business transactions |
| **Violation triage** | List and inspect active health-rule violations, ordered by severity |
| **Metric review** | Pull response time, calls per minute, and error rate for applications and business transactions |
| **Event analysis** | Retrieve recent error events and summarize top error types by affected tier |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run AppDynamics discovery and summarize applications, tiers, and any active Health Rule violations
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list all AppDynamics applications and flag any with a Health Rule violation or degraded Business Transaction error rate
@alex list all active Health Rule violations across AppDynamics applications ordered by severity and #recommend remediation steps
@alex pull the average response time and error rate for the top business transactions in the checkout application over the last hour
```
For large environments, scope requests to a named application and a short time window so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The client name or secret is wrong, or the API client lacks the required role. Verify the **Client Name** and **Client Secret**, confirm the client has a read-only role assigned, and reconnect.
The Controller URL is unreachable from CloudThinker. Verify the **Controller URL** is correct and accessible, and that on-premises Controllers allow inbound connections.
The account name doesn't match the Controller. Check **Settings → License** or your Controller subdomain and update **APPD\_ACCOUNT\_NAME**.
The API client's role has no access to the applications, or the account has no matching data. Confirm the role grants read access to the target applications, then retry with a known application name.
Unbounded application or metric queries return too much data. Scope requests to a named application and a short time window so results stay focused.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **HTTPS Controller URL** — always use an HTTPS Controller URL to protect credentials in transit.
- **Dedicated API client** — create a client used only by CloudThinker so you can revoke it independently without affecting other integrations.
***
## Related
APM, metrics, and monitoring
Traces, metrics, and logs in one place
# ArgoCD
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/argocd
Connect ArgoCD to CloudThinker for GitOps operations and application management
Connect your ArgoCD instances to enable [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) (Kubernetes Engineer) to analyze deployments, manage applications, and troubleshoot GitOps workflows. ArgoCD authenticates with an **API token** — the setup varies between self-hosted instances and the Akuity Platform.
***
## Prerequisites
* An ArgoCD instance accessible from CloudThinker: self-hosted (default port `8888`) or managed via [Akuity Platform](https://akuity.cloud).
* **ArgoCD CLI** installed (`brew install argocd`); Akuity Platform also requires the [Akuity CLI](https://docs.akuity.io/akuity-platform/akuity-cli).
* Admin access to ArgoCD to enable the `apiKey` capability and generate a token.
***
## Setup
Select your ArgoCD platform:
Ensure ArgoCD is running and accessible. Get your host IP address:
```bash theme={null}
hostname -I | awk '{print $1}'
```
Enable the `apiKey` capability and generate a token for the admin account:
```bash theme={null}
kubectl -n argocd patch configmap argocd-cm --type merge -p '{"data":{"accounts.admin":"apiKey, login"}}'
argocd login :8888 --username admin --password '' --insecure
argocd account generate-token --account admin --insecure
```
Navigate to **Connections → ArgoCD** and enter:
* **Base URL**: `https://:8888`
* **API Token**: token from the previous step
* **TLS Verification**: Disable
* **Read-only Mode**: Enable
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Install ArgoCD CLI:
```bash theme={null}
brew install argocd
```
Install Akuity CLI:
```bash theme={null}
curl -sSL -o /tmp/akuity \
"https://dl.akuity.io/akuity-cli/$(curl -sL https://dl.akuity.io/akuity-cli/stable.txt)/$(uname)/$(uname -m)/akuity"
chmod +x /tmp/akuity
sudo mv /tmp/akuity /usr/local/bin/akuity
```
In the [Akuity Portal](https://akuity.cloud):
1. Navigate to **Organization** → **API Keys** → click **Create API Key** (role: Owner).
2. Under your ArgoCD instance → **Settings** → **System Accounts**.
3. Click **Add Account** → name: `admin`.
4. Enable both **login** and **apiKey** capabilities and set a password.
Log in and generate a token:
```bash theme={null}
argocd login .cd.akuity.cloud --grpc-web \
--username admin --password ''
argocd account generate-token --account admin --grpc-web
```
Navigate to **Connections → ArgoCD** and enter:
* **Base URL**: `https://.cd.akuity.cloud`
* **API Token**: token from the previous step
* **TLS Verification**: Enable
* **Read-only Mode**: Enable
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Base URL** | ArgoCD server address | `https://192.168.1.100:8888` (self-hosted); `https://.cd.akuity.cloud` (Akuity) |
| **API Token** | Token generated for the ArgoCD admin account | — |
| **TLS Verification** | Enable for Akuity; disable for self-hosted with a self-signed certificate | — |
| **Read-only Mode** | Enable to prevent unsanctioned writes | — |
***
## Required permissions
Apply the following RBAC policy in ArgoCD to grant CloudThinker read-only access:
```yaml theme={null}
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: argocd-rbac-cm
namespace: argocd
data:
policy.default: role:readonly
policy.csv: |
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, applications, get, */*, allow
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, applications, list, */*, allow
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, repositories, get, *, allow
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, repositories, list, *, allow
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, clusters, get, *, allow
p, role:cloudthinker-readonly, clusters, list, *, allow
g, cloudthinker-readonly, role:cloudthinker-readonly
```
```bash theme={null}
kubectl apply -f argocd-rbac.yaml
```
Follow least privilege: grant only `get` and `list` actions on applications, repositories, and clusters.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Kai can investigate and act on your ArgoCD applications.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **Application status** | View sync status, health state, and last sync time |
| **Deployment analysis** | Identify out-of-sync and failed deployments |
| **Repository insights** | Analyze Git repository state and commits |
| **Health monitoring** | Track application health across all apps |
| **Sync operations** | Trigger manual syncs — **requires approval** |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@kai list all ArgoCD applications and show their sync and health status
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@kai show all out-of-sync ArgoCD applications and #report the details
@kai analyze deployment failures for the payment service and #recommend fixes
@kai check the health status of all applications in production
```
***
## Troubleshooting
For self-hosted instances, use the host IP address (not `localhost`) in the Base URL. If the server is behind a port-forward, run `kubectl port-forward svc/argocd-server -n argocd 8888:443 --address 0.0.0.0`. Check firewall rules if the host remains unreachable.
Verify the API token is correct and that the admin account has both `login` and `apiKey` capabilities enabled. For self-hosted, confirm `argocd-cm` was patched; for Akuity, check the System Account capabilities in the portal.
The `apiKey` capability is not enabled for the account. Run `argocd account get` to inspect the account's capabilities, then enable `apiKey` and retry.
For self-hosted instances, disable TLS verification in the connection settings (equivalent to the `--insecure` CLI flag). For Akuity, TLS verification should remain enabled.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Read-only RBAC** — apply the `role:cloudthinker-readonly` policy in `argocd-rbac-cm` and enable read-only mode in the connection to prevent unsanctioned writes.
- **Token rotation** — rotate the ArgoCD API token periodically and update it in CloudThinker.
***
## Related
Kubernetes and GitOps agent
Connect Kubernetes clusters
# Asana
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/asana
Connect Asana to review project health, investigate workload, and manage tasks after explicit approval
Connect Asana to let [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) review projects, workloads, due dates, and delivery status. Anna can also create, update, or delete one task after you approve the action.
Asana uses **OAuth** through its official hosted MCP server and an OAuth app that your workspace administrator creates. The selected workspace and authorizing user define what CloudThinker can reach.
## Prerequisites
* An **Asana account** with access to the workspace, teams, projects, and tasks you want CloudThinker to use.
* Permission to create an OAuth app in the [Asana developer console](https://app.asana.com/0/my-apps), or its client ID and client secret from an administrator.
* A CloudThinker workspace where Asana is not already connected.
Asana does not support dynamic client registration for its MCP server. Each CloudThinker workspace supplies its own OAuth app credentials.
## Setup
In CloudThinker, navigate to **Connections → Asana**, then click **Connect**. Copy the redirect URL shown in step 1 and keep the dialog open.
In step 2, click **Open Asana developer console**. Select **Create new app**, enter a name, choose **MCP app**, and create the app.
Open **OAuth** in the Asana app, add the copied redirect URL, and save it. Then open **Manage distribution** and allow the workspaces that may authorize the app.
Return to CloudThinker and click **Mark as Configured**.
In step 3, copy the app's **Client ID** and **Client secret** from Asana into CloudThinker, then click **Connect**.
Sign in to Asana, select the workspace CloudThinker should use, and approve access. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
| Field | Description |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Client ID** | Identifies the Asana MCP app created for your CloudThinker workspace |
| **Client secret** | Authenticates that app during the server-side token exchange; CloudThinker keeps it encrypted during OAuth, stores it with the encrypted connection, and never displays it after connection |
| **OAuth tokens** | Issued by Asana and stored automatically |
| **Selected workspace** | The Asana workspace whose visible teams, projects, people, and tasks the connection can reach |
## Required permissions
Asana MCP access is user-based inside the selected workspace. Actions appear as the authorizing user, and CloudThinker can only reach projects and tasks that user can access.
* **Read operations** cover people, teams, projects, tasks, workload, due dates, and project status.
* **Write operations** cover task creation, task updates, and task deletion. Each operation requires explicit [approval](/guide/approval).
* **Excluded operations** include creating projects, adding comments, and posting project status updates.
Authorize with an Asana user whose access matches the projects CloudThinker needs in the selected workspace.
## Agent capabilities
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Workspace discovery** | Identify the connected user, visible teams, projects, and assigned tasks |
| **Project health** | Review open work, ownership gaps, due dates, and delivery pressure for one project |
| **Workload review** | Find overdue, upcoming, and undated tasks assigned to the connected user |
| **Task investigation** | Inspect one current task and its project, assignee, dates, notes, and completion state |
| **Status review** | Compare Asana status across visible projects that match a name or keyword |
| **Task management** | Create, rename, reassign, reschedule, complete, or delete one task after approval |
Deleting an Asana task through the MCP tool is permanent and cannot be undone. It also deletes subtasks unless a subtask belongs to another project. CloudThinker shows the task record and asks for approval first.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@anna #report discover my Asana workspace and summarize visible teams, projects, assigned tasks, and safe next actions
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@anna #report review the Generative model launch project and flag overdue or unassigned work
@anna #recommend review my Asana workload and rank the tasks that need attention this week
@anna create a task named Prepare launch checklist in the Generative model launch project
```
## Troubleshooting
Copy the client ID and client secret again from the same Asana app. Confirm that neither value contains spaces added during copying, then retry.
Open the Asana connection dialog again. Copy the complete redirect URL into the app's **Redirect URLs** setting and save the app. Return to CloudThinker, click **Mark as Configured**, then retry.
Open **Manage distribution** for the Asana app. Allow all workspaces or select the intended workspace. A specific-workspace policy with no selected workspace blocks authorization.
The authorizing user may lack access, or another workspace may have been selected during OAuth. Confirm the user can open the resource in Asana, or reconnect and select the correct workspace.
The task may be deleted, unavailable to the authorizing user, or from another workspace. Ask Anna to discover the current workspace and resolve the project or task again.
Task creation, updates, and deletion require approval. Approve the exact action in CloudThinker, then retry with a task and project from the current connection.
For a rate limit, wait for the time Asana requests before retrying. For another temporary error, retry the same request once and keep the error visible if it repeats.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **OAuth app credentials** — keep the client secret out of source control. CloudThinker encrypts it during OAuth and in the saved connection environment.
- **Workspace scope** — limit app distribution and user access to the Asana workspaces and projects CloudThinker needs.
## Related
Browse every service CloudThinker agents can use.
See how CloudThinker asks before an agent changes connected services.
# Atlassian
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/atlassian
Connect Atlassian Jira and Confluence to CloudThinker for issue tracking, knowledge base, and project management
Connect your Atlassian organization to enable CloudThinker agents to track Jira issues, search Confluence knowledge, and pull ticket context during incident response and code review. CloudThinker connects via Atlassian's **Rovo MCP server** using domain allowlisting.
***
## Prerequisites
* An **Atlassian Cloud** organization on any plan (Free, Standard, Premium, or Enterprise).
* **Organization Admin** role to add the CloudThinker domain in Atlassian Administration.
Only an Organization Admin can add domains in Atlassian AI settings. Once added, all workspace members can use the integration within their existing permissions.
***
## Setup
Go to [admin.atlassian.com](https://admin.atlassian.com) → **Apps → AI settings → Rovo MCP server**.
Click **Add domain** and enter:
```
https://app.cloudthinker.io/**
```
Click **Save**.
Atlassian AI settings — Rovo MCP server domain allowlist
If your organization enforces IP allowlisting, configure the allowlist under **Atlassian Administration** (not in AI settings). Requests must come from allowed IPs even for trusted domains.
After saving, CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status for the Atlassian integration.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Value |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| **Allowed domain** | CloudThinker domain added to the Rovo MCP server allowlist | `https://app.cloudthinker.io/**` |
| **Connection type** | Authentication mechanism | Rovo MCP server domain allowlist |
***
## Required permissions
* **Organization Admin** role is required to add the domain during setup.
* Once connected, agents act with the **existing permissions of the authorizing user** — CloudThinker cannot access Jira projects or Confluence spaces the user cannot see.
Follow least privilege: authorize the connection from a user account whose Atlassian permissions match exactly what CloudThinker needs.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can access Jira and Confluence data within the authorizing user's permissions.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Jira issue search** | Find and retrieve issues across projects and sprints |
| **Jira issue management** | Create, update, and comment on issues |
| **Confluence search** | Search and read pages and spaces |
| **Project & sprint context** | Pull ticket context during incident response and code review |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list open Jira issues from the PLATFORM project and summarize blockers
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex find all open Jira issues blocking the current sprint and #report priority and assignee
@alex search Confluence for the incident response runbook
@oliver find all open Jira security issues and summarize the critical ones
```
***
## Troubleshooting
CloudThinker cannot connect because the domain was not saved. Return to admin.atlassian.com → Apps → AI settings → Rovo MCP server and confirm `https://app.cloudthinker.io/**` appears in the list.
Users on blocked IPs see a permission error even when the domain is allowlisted. Add CloudThinker's IPs under Atlassian Administration (not in AI settings) and ensure requests originate from allowed addresses.
CloudThinker acts with the authorizing user's permissions. Ensure the authorizing user has access to the Jira projects and Confluence spaces you want agents to reach.
Domain allowlist changes can take a few minutes to propagate. Wait briefly, then refresh the CloudThinker Connections page.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Organization Admin only** — only an Organization Admin can add or remove the CloudThinker domain; audit this permission list regularly.
- **User-bounded access** — CloudThinker actions are bounded by the authorizing user's Atlassian permissions; always authorize from a least-privilege account.
***
## Related
Track secret incidents as Jira issues
ITSM incident management
# AWX
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/awx
Connect Ansible AWX to CloudThinker to launch job templates, monitor jobs, manage inventories, and orchestrate automation workflows
Connect your Ansible AWX server to enable CloudThinker agents to launch job templates, monitor jobs, manage inventories and hosts, sync projects, and orchestrate automation workflows. AWX authenticates with a **user access token** scoped to read or write operations.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **self-hosted AWX or Ansible Automation Platform** (Controller/Tower) instance reachable from CloudThinker over HTTPS.
* An **AWX user** with access to the organizations and inventories CloudThinker should reach.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your AWX web interface. Use a dedicated user scoped to only the organizations and inventories CloudThinker needs.
Go to **Access → Users**, open your user, select the **Tokens** tab, and click **Add**:
* **Application**: leave empty
* **Scope**: **Write** for full operations, or **Read** for monitoring only
Copy the token — AWX shows it only once.
Navigate to **Connections → AWX** and enter:
* **TOWER\_HOST**: your AWX address, e.g. `https://awx.your-domain.com`
* **TOWER\_OAUTH\_TOKEN**: the token from the previous step
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| **TOWER\_HOST** | Base URL of your AWX instance | `https://awx.your-domain.com` |
| **TOWER\_OAUTH\_TOKEN** | AWX user access token | — |
***
## Required permissions
What agents can do depends on the token scope.
* **Read** — list jobs, inspect inventories, check project status, review schedules, and view configuration.
* **Write** — all read operations plus launching jobs, running ad-hoc commands, controlling running jobs, syncing projects, and managing hosts, groups, and schedules.
Use a Read-scoped token for monitoring only; add Write scope when agents need to launch or modify resources, and keep those actions approval-gated in CloudThinker.
***
## Agent capabilities
What agents can do depends on the token's scope.
**Read — monitoring & inspection:**
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Monitor jobs** | List jobs and workflow runs, check status, and read output |
| **Inspect inventories** | View inventories, hosts, and groups; spot unreachable or disabled hosts |
| **Check project status** | Review sync status and source-control state |
| **Review schedules** | List schedules and upcoming runs |
| **Inspect configuration** | View job templates, workflow templates, inventory sources, and credential types |
**Write — adds operations (requires approval):**
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Launch jobs** | Run job templates with extra variables and monitor to completion |
| **Run ad-hoc commands** | Execute one-off commands against hosts without a template |
| **Control running jobs** | Cancel in-flight jobs and relaunch failed ones |
| **Sync projects & inventory** | Pull project updates from source control and refresh dynamic inventory |
| **Manage hosts, groups & schedules** | Add, update, or remove them and toggle host enablement |
| **Orchestrate workflows** | Launch workflow job templates and approve or deny approval nodes |
Administrative resources (organizations, teams, users, and RBAC) are out of scope for agent operations.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all AWX inventories and show any unreachable hosts
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@kai list failed AWX jobs in the last 24 hours and #report their output
@kai launch the deploy-production job template with version=2.1.0 and monitor it
@alex check all AWX projects for sync failures and #recommend updates
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the AWX URL is reachable from CloudThinker over HTTPS. Confirm the token has not expired or been revoked — create a new token if needed and reconnect.
The token's scope does not allow the requested action. Use a Write-scoped token for launch, sync, or management operations, and confirm the user has access to the target organization or inventory.
The token's user lacks visibility into the requested resources. Grant access to the relevant organizations and inventories in AWX, then retry.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Write scope only when needed** — use a Read-scoped token for monitoring; only enable Write scope when agents need to launch or modify resources.
- **HTTPS only** — always use an HTTPS AWX URL; plaintext connections expose the access token.
***
## Related
GitOps operations and application management
CI/CD pipeline monitoring and job operations
# Backlog
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/backlog
Connect Backlog by Nulab to CloudThinker for issue tracking, milestone planning, wiki, and pull-request context
Connect your Backlog space to enable CloudThinker agents to track issues, plan milestones, read wikis, and pull ticket context during code review. Backlog authenticates with a **space-scoped API key** that inherits the issuing user's project access.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Backlog space** with access to the projects you want to work in.
* A **space-scoped API key**, created from the issuing user's **Personal Settings → API** tab.
* For create/update actions: the key's user needs the matching **project permission**.
Read-only tracking works with any key whose user can see the target projects. Creating or updating issues, wikis, and pull requests additionally requires that user to have write permission on the project. If your space restricts API access, a space administrator must enable it before keys can be issued.
***
## Setup
In Backlog, open your profile menu and go to **Personal Settings → API**. Enter a memo (e.g. `cloudthinker`) and click **Submit** to generate the key, then copy it.
Navigate to **Connections → Backlog** and enter:
* **Domain**: your full Backlog domain, e.g. `.backlog.com` — the full host, not just the space key
* **API Key**: the key you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API key when you create it and store it securely. Treat it like a password — anyone with the key has the issuing user's access to the space.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- |
| **BACKLOG\_DOMAIN** | Full Backlog domain for your space, not just the space key | `.backlog.com` |
| **BACKLOG\_API\_KEY** | Space-scoped API key used to authenticate the connection | — |
***
## Required permissions
The API key inherits the access of the user who issued it. Read operations work with any key whose user can see the target projects. Create, update, and delete operations additionally require the user to have **write permission** on the project **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: issue the key under a user with only the project access CloudThinker needs, and keep write actions approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Backlog projects, issues, wikis, and repositories, plus a set of approval-gated write operations.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Project & space discovery** | List projects, categories, custom fields, priorities, and recent space activity |
| **Issue tracking** | Search, read, and count issues; create and update issues, change status, and add comments — **writes require approval** |
| **Milestones & releases** | List milestones/versions and plan releases; create or update them — **writes require approval** |
| **Wiki & documents** | Read project wikis and documents; create or update wiki pages — **writes require approval** |
| **Git & pull requests** | Inspect repositories and pull requests, pull ticket context during code review, and comment on PRs — **writes require approval** |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Backlog projects and show the open issues in one of them
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex summarize the open Backlog issues for the PLATFORM project and #report anything overdue
@alex this PR references PROJ-123 — pull the Backlog ticket and #recommend whether the change matches it
@alex list the milestones for my main project and their completion status
```
For spaces with many projects, scope requests to a single project or milestone so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The API key is missing, expired, or revoked — or API access is not enabled for the space. Issue a fresh key under **Personal Settings → API**, confirm the space allows API access, and reconnect.
**BACKLOG\_DOMAIN** is set to just the space key instead of the full domain. Use the complete host, e.g. `.backlog.com`, and reconnect.
The key's user is not a member of any project, or lacks visibility on the ones you expect. Add the user to the target project in Backlog, then re-run discovery.
The key's user lacks write permission on the project. Re-issue the key under a user with the right project role, and approve the action when prompted.
Very large responses are trimmed to keep replies focused. Scope the request to a single project, milestone, or status, or ask for a count first and then drill in.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Least-privilege user** — issue the API key under a user with only the project access CloudThinker needs.
- **Correct domain** — store the full domain (`.backlog.com`), not just the space key.
***
## Related
Jira and Confluence issue tracking and knowledge base
How approval-gated actions work
# Better Stack
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/betterstack
Connect Better Stack to CloudThinker for uptime monitoring, incident triage, on-call visibility, and log search across your observability stack
Connect your Better Stack account to enable CloudThinker agents to monitor uptime, triage incidents, view on-call schedules, and search logs. Better Stack uses **OAuth** — you authorize CloudThinker once from inside Better Stack, scoped to the team you choose.
## Prerequisites
* A **Better Stack account** with access to the team you want to connect.
* Permission to authorize third-party apps for that team.
OAuth scopes the connection to what your Better Stack user can already see. Connect with the least-privileged user that works.
## Setup
Navigate to **Connections → Better Stack** in your CloudThinker workspace.
Click **Connect** to open Better Stack's authorization page.
Sign in, choose the team to connect, and approve access.
You're redirected back. The connection shows a **Connected** status.
To switch teams or revoke access, disconnect in CloudThinker and reconnect, or remove the authorization in Better Stack's app settings.
## Connection details
Better Stack uses OAuth — there are no credential fields to store. CloudThinker holds the authorization token issued by Better Stack after you approve access.
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits the authorizing user's visibility within the connected team.
* **Read operations** (monitors, incidents, on-call, logs, metrics) work with standard member access.
* **Write operations** (acknowledging incidents, publishing reports, editing dashboards or alerts) need matching Better Stack permissions **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to two Better Stack surfaces and approval-gated write access.
**Uptime**
| Category | What the agent can do |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Monitors** | List monitors, inspect availability % and response times over a window |
| **Heartbeats** | Inspect cron/scheduled-job heartbeats and hit-rate |
| **Incidents** | List and inspect incidents, timelines, comments, and escalation options |
| **On-Call** | View on-call schedules, current rotations, and shift events |
| **Escalations** | Inspect escalation policies and severity definitions |
| **Status Pages** | List status pages, tracked components, and past reports |
**Telemetry**
| Category | What the agent can do |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Logs** | Search logs scoped to a source, inspect source fields and config |
| **Metrics** | Query metrics and inspect cardinality |
| **Dashboards & Charts** | List and inspect dashboards, charts, and templates |
| **Alerts** | List and inspect chart alerts |
| **Errors** | List recent errors and inspect error groups |
**Write operations (approval-gated)**
| Category | What the agent can do |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Incidents** | Acknowledge, resolve, reopen, escalate, comment, or create incidents |
| **Status Pages** | Publish status page reports and updates |
| **Dashboards & Charts** | Create, edit, rename, or remove dashboards and charts |
| **Alerts** | Create, edit, delete, or pause chart alerts |
| **Errors** | Update error state (resolve / ignore) |
Writes change live monitoring and incident state. CloudThinker requires explicit [approval](/guide/approval), naming the resource, before any write runs.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list open Better Stack incidents and #alert on anything hitting production
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex summarize Better Stack incidents from the last 24h and #recommend follow-ups
@alex search api-gateway logs for 5xx in the last hour and #chart by status code
@alex report 24h availability for production monitors
```
Log search is **scoped per source**, so there's no global search. Name the source (e.g. `api-gateway`) so the agent can resolve it before querying.
## Troubleshooting
The OAuth token expired or access is insufficient. Disconnect and reconnect.
The resource belongs to a different team or was deleted. Re-list it in the connected team to get current IDs.
You've hit Better Stack's rate limit. Agents back off and retry automatically.
Better Stack uses Live Tail syntax. Ask the agent to load the query instructions for the source, then refine.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Least-privilege user** — authorize with only the access CloudThinker needs; limit the authorizing user's team membership to what CloudThinker should see.
- **Revoke when unused** — remove the authorization in Better Stack's app settings if you stop using the connection.
## Related
Observability and monitoring
Incident alerting and on-call
# Buildkite
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/buildkite
Connect Buildkite to CloudThinker for pipeline health monitoring, failed-build triage from logs and annotations, and approval-gated build controls
Connect your Buildkite organization to enable CloudThinker agents to track pipeline health, triage failed builds from logs and annotations, check agent and cluster capacity, and run approval-gated controls like retrying a job or unblocking a deploy gate.
Buildkite authenticates with an **API access token** through Buildkite's hosted MCP server. The token's scopes decide which operations succeed, so the scopes you grant are the hard limit on what an agent can reach.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Buildkite account** with access to the organization you want to monitor.
* An **API access token** with the read scopes listed under [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
* For the approval-gated controls, the same token needs the **`write_builds`** scope.
Monitoring and triage work with read scopes only. Retry, unblock, rebuild, and cancel additionally need `write_builds` on the token.
***
## Setup
In Buildkite, go to **Personal Settings → API Access Tokens → New API Access Token** ([buildkite.com/user/api-access-tokens/new](https://buildkite.com/user/api-access-tokens/new)):
* **Description**: `cloudthinker`
* **Organization access**: select the organization CloudThinker should reach
* **REST API scopes**: `read_organizations`, `read_pipelines`, `read_builds`, `read_build_logs`, `read_artifacts`, `read_agents`, `read_clusters`, `read_user` — add `write_builds` only if you want the build controls
* **Expiry**: choose a lifetime and plan to rotate
Copy the token immediately — Buildkite shows it only once.
Navigate to **Connections → Buildkite** and enter:
* **Token**: the API access token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API access token immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new token if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| **BUILDKITE\_API\_TOKEN** | API access token used to authenticate the connection | — |
CloudThinker resolves your organization from the token, so there is no org slug to configure. The connection uses Buildkite's hosted MCP server at `https://mcp.buildkite.com/direct`, which passes your token straight through to the Buildkite REST API.
***
## Required permissions
Grant only the scopes for the work you want the agents to do.
| Scope | Enables |
| -------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `read_organizations` | Resolving the organization the token can reach |
| `read_pipelines` | Pipeline inventory and pipeline details |
| `read_builds` | Builds, jobs, annotations, and failure summaries |
| `read_build_logs` | Reading, searching, and tailing job logs |
| `read_artifacts` | Build and job artifacts |
| `read_agents` | Agent connection state and capacity |
| `read_clusters` | Clusters and cluster queues |
| `read_user` | The `current_user` account lookup |
| `write_builds` | Retry a job, unblock a job, rebuild, and cancel — each still [approval](/guide/approval)-gated in CloudThinker |
Follow least privilege: leave `write_builds` off for a monitoring-only connection. Agents keep every read capability, and the four control operations simply fail at Buildkite instead of relying on the approval gate alone.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Buildkite pipelines, builds, logs, artifacts, and agents.
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Organization discovery** | Resolve the organization and list its pipelines, recent builds, agents, and clusters |
| **Pipeline health** | Pass rate, failure streaks, and builds stuck longer than a threshold |
| **Failed-build triage** | Cross-reference the failure summary with job logs, annotations, and failed tests |
| **Logs & artifacts** | Read, search, and tail a job's log; list build and job artifacts |
| **Capacity** | Agent connection state, clusters, and cluster queues |
| **Build controls** | Retry a job, unblock a job, rebuild a build, and cancel a build — **requires approval** |
A build parked on a manual gate reports `passed` in the Buildkite API. CloudThinker marks that build as awaiting a gate, names the block step, and keeps it out of the pass rate, so a held deploy is never reported as a green pipeline.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Buildkite pipelines and show the latest build status for each
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex which Buildkite pipelines are failing right now and #report their failure streaks
@alex build 42 of the web pipeline failed — pull the logs and annotations, find the cause, and #recommend a fix
@alex show Buildkite agent capacity and any builds stuck for more than an hour #dashboard
```
For organizations with many pipelines, scope requests to a single pipeline so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is invalid, expired, or revoked. The MCP handshake succeeds even with a bad token and only fails when a tool runs, so a green connection status does not prove the token works. Create a fresh API access token and reconnect.
The token is missing a scope. Reads need `read_organizations`, `read_pipelines`, `read_builds`, `read_build_logs`, `read_artifacts`, `read_agents`, and `read_clusters`. Edit the token's scopes in Buildkite — you do not need to create a new one.
The token lacks `write_builds`. Add that scope to the token in Buildkite, or keep the connection read-only and run the action in Buildkite yourself.
That is the manual gate, and it is handled. The newest build is excluded from the pass rate whenever it is gated. If the agent reports the gate state as **unknown**, the gate check itself failed — usually a rate limit — and the build is excluded then too. Unknown never means ungated.
A pipeline name was used where Buildkite expects the slug. Ask the agent to list your pipelines and use the slug from that output.
Too many pipelines or builds in one request. Scope the question to a single pipeline, or ask for fewer recent builds.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Approval for build controls** — keep retry, unblock, rebuild, and cancel approval-gated. Unblocking releases a gate a person added on purpose, usually a deploy gate.
- **Scope the token, not just the approval** — token scopes are enforced by Buildkite. A token without `write_builds` cannot change CI state at all.
***
## Related
Pipeline status, build log triage, and approval-gated controls
How approval-gated actions work
# CircleCI
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/circleci
Connect CircleCI to CloudThinker for pipeline status monitoring, workflow and job analysis, build log triage, and approval-gated pipeline controls
Connect your CircleCI account to enable CloudThinker agents to monitor pipeline status, inspect workflows and jobs, triage failing builds and tests from logs, and run approval-gated controls like rerunning a workflow, triggering a pipeline, or rolling back a deployment.
CircleCI authenticates with a **Personal API Token**. The token inherits the permissions of the user who created it, so what the agent can reach matches that user's project access.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **CircleCI account** with access to the organization and projects you want to investigate.
* A **Personal API Token**.
* For the approval-gated controls, the token's user needs **trigger/pipeline permission** on the target project.
Read-only analysis works with a standard Personal API Token. The approval-gated controls additionally require the token's user to have trigger permission on the target project.
***
## Setup
In CircleCI, go to your **user avatar → User Settings → Personal API Tokens** ([app.circleci.com/settings/user/tokens](https://app.circleci.com/settings/user/tokens)) and click **Create New Token**:
* **Token name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Expiry date**: choose a lifetime and plan to rotate
Copy the token immediately — CircleCI shows it only once.
Navigate to **Connections → CircleCI** and enter:
* **Token**: the Personal API Token you just created
* **Base URL**: `https://circleci.com` for CircleCI cloud, or your install URL for self-hosted Server or Standalone
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the Personal API Token immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new token if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **CIRCLECI\_TOKEN** | Personal API Token used to authenticate the connection | — |
| **CIRCLECI\_BASE\_URL** | `https://circleci.com` for cloud, or your Server or Standalone install URL | `https://circleci.com` |
CloudThinker resolves your organization and followed projects from the token, so no manual org or project ID configuration is required on CircleCI cloud.
***
## Required permissions
The Personal API Token inherits the access of the user who created it. Read operations work with any token whose user can see the target projects. The control operations additionally require the token's user to have **trigger/pipeline permission** on the project **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: create the token under a user with only the project access CloudThinker needs, and keep control operations approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your CircleCI projects, pipelines, and logs.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Project discovery** | List followed projects and resolve the active organization |
| **Pipeline status** | Inspect the latest pipeline status for a project |
| **Workflows & jobs** | Review workflows and their jobs for a pipeline |
| **Build & test logs** | Fetch build and test output for failure triage |
| **Pipeline controls** | Run pipelines, rerun workflows, run evaluation tests, roll back deployments, and create prompt templates — **requires approval** |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my followed CircleCI projects and show the latest pipeline status for one of them
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex check the latest CircleCI pipeline status for my main project and #report any failures
@alex the latest workflow failed — pull the build and test logs, find the error, and #recommend a fix
@alex list my followed CircleCI projects and their most recent pipeline status #dashboard
```
For organizations with many projects, scope requests to a single project so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is missing, expired, or revoked. Create a fresh Personal API Token and reconnect the CircleCI connection.
The token's user follows no projects, or the resolved organization is wrong. Follow at least one project in CircleCI, then re-run discovery.
The token lacks trigger/pipeline permission on the project. Regenerate the token under a user who has trigger rights on that project and reconnect.
The usage API is paid-plan only, and component versions are Server or Standalone only. Confirm your plan tier — these are tier-gated, not a configuration error.
**CIRCLECI\_BASE\_URL** is still set to `https://circleci.com`. Set it to your Server or Standalone install URL and reconnect.
Rolling back a deployment is production-destructive, approval-gated, and available only on Server or Standalone — not cloud-only organizations. Approve the action when prompted, and confirm your install supports it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Approval for controls** — keep pipeline, rerun, rollback, and other write actions approval-gated rather than removing the guardrail.
- **Correct base URL** — use `https://circleci.com` for cloud, or your install URL for self-hosted Server or Standalone.
***
## Related
Build pipeline monitoring and job analysis
How approval-gated actions work
# ClickUp
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/clickup
Connect ClickUp to CloudThinker with OAuth for workspace discovery, task triage, workload review, and approved task changes
Connect ClickUp to let [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) discover workspace structure, triage work, review workload, and investigate tasks, comments, documents, and chat. ClickUp uses **OAuth** through its hosted MCP server, so you do not paste an API token into CloudThinker.
## Prerequisites
* A **ClickUp account** with access to the workspace you want CloudThinker to use.
* Permission to authorize CloudThinker through ClickUp's OAuth flow.
* A CloudThinker workspace where ClickUp is not already connected.
Authorize exactly one ClickUp workspace. The ClickUp tools cannot switch workspaces after authorization, and a connection authorized for multiple workspaces cannot complete requests.
## Setup
In your CloudThinker workspace, go to **Settings → Connections**, select **Builtin Connections**, and choose **ClickUp**.
Click **Connect** to open ClickUp's authorization page.
Sign in to the ClickUp account that can access your work, select exactly one ClickUp workspace, and approve access.
CloudThinker stores the OAuth authorization and the connection shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
ClickUp uses OAuth, so there are no credential fields to enter manually.
| Field | Description |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **OAuth authorization** | Issued by ClickUp and stored automatically after you approve access |
| **ClickUp workspace** | The single workspace selected during authorization |
| **MCP endpoint** | ClickUp's hosted server at `mcp.clickup.com/mcp`; fixed and not configurable |
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits the authorizing user's ClickUp access.
* **Read operations** cover workspace structure, tasks, comments, custom fields, workload, time entries, documents, and chat channels the user can view.
* **Write operations** cover tasks, comments, tags, and document pages. They need matching ClickUp access **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Authorize a ClickUp user that can access only the spaces and lists CloudThinker needs. CloudThinker cannot read or change resources that user cannot access.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Anna can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Workspace discovery** | List spaces, folders, lists, and recent work |
| **Task triage** | Find overdue, unassigned, and unscheduled tasks in one list |
| **Workload review** | Compare open work by assignee and status, then measure status age when ClickUp provides it |
| **Task investigation** | Read task details, custom fields, comments, and threaded discussions |
| **Documents and chat** | Read document pages and chat channel messages available to the connected user |
| **Task changes** | Create, update, move, or delete tasks after approval |
| **Comments, tags, and documents** | Add comments, change tags, or update document pages after approval |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@anna #report show the ClickUp workspace structure and summarize what needs attention in Project 1
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@anna #report list overdue, unassigned, and unscheduled ClickUp tasks in Project 1
@anna #report compare open ClickUp work by assignee and status age in Team Space
@anna #recommend review the comments on the oldest overdue ClickUp task and suggest the next action
```
## Troubleshooting
Your browser may be signed in to the wrong ClickUp account. Sign in to the account that can access the intended workspace, then start **Connect** again.
The connection was authorized for more than one ClickUp workspace. Disconnect ClickUp, reconnect, and select exactly one workspace during authorization.
The ClickUp access token is invalid or expired. ClickUp may not issue a refresh token for this connection, so disconnect and authorize ClickUp again.
The authorizing user may not have access, or the resource may have moved. Confirm the user's ClickUp access, then ask the agent to discover the workspace again.
Enable the **Total time in Status** ClickApp in ClickUp workspace settings. Task and workload reads still work when this measurement is disabled.
The ClickUp account reached its provider quota. Wait for the ClickUp rate-limit window to reset, then retry with the same scope.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Use one workspace**: authorize only the ClickUp workspace CloudThinker should reach.
- **Use least privilege**: connect a ClickUp user whose spaces and lists match the work CloudThinker should see and change.
## Related
Review how CloudThinker gates ClickUp changes
Coordinate project work and cross-service operations
# Coralogix
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/coralogix
Connect Coralogix to CloudThinker for log search, metrics, traces, incident triage, and pipeline health investigation
Connect your Coralogix account to enable CloudThinker agents to search logs, query metrics and traces, triage incidents, and inspect data pipeline health across your observability stack.
Coralogix authenticates with an **API key** scoped to a **region**. CloudThinker resolves the right Coralogix endpoint from the region, so the same setup works across all US, EU, and AP data centers.
***
## Supported regions
Pick the region that matches your Coralogix team login domain.
| Data center | Regions |
| ------------ | ------------------- |
| US | `us1`, `us2`, `us3` |
| Europe | `eu1`, `eu2` |
| Asia Pacific | `ap1`, `ap2`, `ap3` |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Coralogix account** with access to the team you want to investigate.
* An **API key** with the read permissions for the observability data CloudThinker should reach.
* The **region** of your Coralogix team.
Use an API key with the least permissions needed for read-only investigation. CloudThinker's setup verification only reads data — it never mutates Coralogix resources.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your Coralogix account. Your login URL follows the format `https://.app..coralogix.com` — the `` segment is your region.
Go to **Settings → Users and Teams → API Keys** and click **Add key**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Type**: pick **Team Key** — it's shared and stays valid even if the creating user's access expires, unlike a Personal Key, which is tied to an individual and meant for testing
* **Permissions**: grant the read permissions for the data CloudThinker should access
Copy the key immediately — it may not be shown again.
Navigate to **Connections → Coralogix** and enter:
* **API Key**: the key you just created
* **Region**: the region from your login URL (e.g. `eu2`)
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API key immediately after creation. You'll need to create a new key if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ------- |
| **CORALOGIX\_API\_KEY** | Coralogix API key | — |
| **CORALOGIX\_REGION** | Region from your team login domain | `us2` |
CloudThinker derives the Coralogix API endpoint from the region, so no manual URL configuration is required.
***
## Required permissions
Grant the API key the **read** permissions for the observability data CloudThinker investigates — logs, metrics, traces, incidents, alerts, connectors, parsing rules, presets, and dashboards.
Follow least privilege: a read-only key is enough for investigation. Keep mutating permissions off the key CloudThinker uses unless a write workflow specifically requires them.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Coralogix observability data.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Discovery** | Summarize account health — active incidents, connector count, disabled parsing rules, and metric no-match handling |
| **Incident triage** | List and inspect active incidents and their context |
| **Logs** | Search and analyze logs over a time window |
| **Metrics** | Query metrics and inspect the metric catalog |
| **Traces** | Inspect distributed traces |
| **Pipeline health** | Review connectors, parsing rules, and presets for misconfiguration |
| **Alerts & dashboards** | Inspect alert definitions and dashboards |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run Coralogix discovery and summarize active incidents, connector count, disabled parsing rule count, and whether metric no-match handling is healthy
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex triage active Coralogix incidents and #report anything affecting production
@alex search Coralogix logs for 5xx errors in the api-gateway over the last hour
@alex check Coralogix pipeline health and list any disabled parsing rules
```
For large or noisy catalogs, scope requests with short time windows and a known metric or log query so the agent returns focused results.
***
## Troubleshooting
The API key is missing, expired, or lacks the required permissions. Create a new Coralogix API key with the needed read permissions and reconnect.
The API key belongs to a different Coralogix region. Check your team login domain and update **CORALOGIX\_REGION** to match.
The metric catalog has no matching metric, or the account has no metric data. Treat it as an empty result, then try a known metric name or continue with incidents and logs.
One or more Coralogix list calls returned an error. Check the API key permissions and region, then rerun discovery.
Unbounded catalog or query usage returns too much data. Scope requests with short time windows and specific queries so results stay focused.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Correct region** — match the API key's region to the Coralogix team login domain; mismatched regions cause 404 failures.
***
## Related
Log search, metrics, and monitoring
Uptime, incidents, and log search
# Datadog
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/datadog
Connect Datadog to CloudThinker for log search, metric queries, infrastructure monitoring, and incident investigation
Connect your Datadog account to enable CloudThinker agents to search logs, query metrics, monitor infrastructure, and investigate incidents across your entire stack. Datadog authenticates with an **API key** and a **scoped Application key** pair.
***
## Supported platforms
| Site | URL |
| ------- | ------------------- |
| **US1** | `app.datadoghq.com` |
| **US3** | `us3.datadoghq.com` |
| **US5** | `us5.datadoghq.com` |
| **EU1** | `app.datadoghq.eu` |
| **AP1** | `ap1.datadoghq.com` |
| **AP2** | `ap2.datadoghq.com` |
GovCloud (US1-FED) is not supported by the Datadog MCP server.
***
## Prerequisites
You need a **Datadog API key** and a **scoped Application key**.
**Create an API key:**
1. Go to **Organization Settings → API Keys** in your Datadog account.
2. Click **+ New Key**, name it (e.g., `CloudThinker`), and save.
3. Copy the key value.
**Create a scoped Application key:**
1. Go to **Organization Settings → Application Keys**.
2. Click **+ New Key**, name it (e.g., `CloudThinker`).
3. Under **Scopes**, select the permissions listed in [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
4. Save and copy the key value.
Always use scoped Application keys instead of unscoped ones. An unscoped key inherits all permissions from the user who created it.
***
## Setup
Navigate to **Connections → Datadog** in your CloudThinker workspace.
Choose the Datadog site that matches your account (e.g., US1 for `datadoghq.com`, EU1 for `datadoghq.eu`).
Paste your Datadog **API key**.
Paste your Datadog **Application key**.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | --------------------- |
| **Site** | Datadog site matching your account | `US1 (datadoghq.com)` |
| **API Key** | Datadog API key | — |
| **Application Key** | Datadog Application key with explicit scopes | — |
***
## Required permissions
Select these scopes when creating your Application key. Read scopes cover all investigation tools; `notebooks_write` is optional and enables notebook creation.
| Scope | What it enables |
| ---------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| `logs_read_data`, `logs_read_index_data` | Search and analyze logs |
| `metrics_read`, `timeseries_query` | Query metrics and time-series data |
| `monitors_read` | Search monitors by status and tag |
| `incidents_read` | Search incidents and get details |
| `dashboards_read` | Inspect dashboard configurations |
| `hosts_read` | List and inspect infrastructure hosts |
| `apm_read` | Retrieve traces and search APM spans |
| `apm_service_catalog_read` | List services and map dependencies |
| `events_read` | Search platform and custom events |
| `notebooks_read` | Search and retrieve investigation notebooks |
| `rum_apps_read` | Search Real User Monitoring data |
| `notebooks_write` | Create and edit investigation notebooks (optional) |
Start with read scopes only. Add `notebooks_write` only for workflows where agents need to create investigation notebooks.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can perform read and write operations across your Datadog environment.
| Capability | What the agent can do |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Logs** | Search logs across services and environments, analyze patterns and trends |
| **Metrics** | Search available metrics, query time-series data, retrieve metric metadata |
| **Monitors** | Find monitors by status, name, or tag |
| **Incidents** | Search active and resolved incidents, get full incident details |
| **Dashboards** | Search and inspect dashboard configurations |
| **Infrastructure** | List and inspect hosts across your infrastructure |
| **APM** | Retrieve distributed traces, search spans for latency analysis |
| **Service catalog** | List services and map service dependency relationships |
| **Events** | Search platform and custom events |
| **Notebooks** | Search, retrieve, create, and edit investigation notebooks |
| **RUM** | Search Real User Monitoring data |
| **Connection health** | Validate that the Datadog connection is working |
Notebook write operations require user approval before execution.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run the Datadog connection health check and summarize active monitors and host count
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex search for error logs in the production environment from the last 15 minutes
@alex check for active Datadog incidents and investigate root causes
@alex analyze APM traces for the checkout service and identify latency bottlenecks
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify your API key is valid and not revoked. Confirm your Application key has the required scopes and that both keys belong to the same Datadog organization.
Check that your Application key scopes include the data type you are querying (e.g., `logs_read_data` for logs). Verify your Datadog retention settings and confirm the service or host is actively sending data.
If queries return empty results, you may have selected the wrong site. Check your Datadog URL — `app.datadoghq.com` is US1, `us3.datadoghq.com` is US3, `app.datadoghq.eu` is EU1. Disconnect and reconnect with the correct site.
Both keys are required and serve different roles. The **API key** authenticates requests. The **Application key** controls which Datadog features and data the agent can access. One alone is not sufficient.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Scoped Application keys** — always specify explicit scopes; an unscoped key inherits the creating user's full permissions.
- **Separate keys per integration** — create dedicated API and Application keys for CloudThinker so you can revoke them independently.
***
## Related
Alternative metrics and dashboards
Incident alerting and on-call
# Docker Hub
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/dockerhub
Connect Docker Hub to CloudThinker to review namespaces, repositories, pull demand, tag metadata, and repository descriptions
Connect your Docker Hub account so agents can inventory accessible namespaces, review repository visibility and lifetime pulls, inspect tag metadata, and update repository descriptions with approval.
Docker Hub authenticates with your account username and a **personal access token (PAT)**.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Docker account** with access to the personal and organization repositories you want to inspect.
* Your **Docker Hub username**. Use the account name, not an email address or organization name.
* A **personal access token** with the permissions described below.
Use a dedicated, expiring PAT for CloudThinker. A Read-only PAT covers every inventory and tag inspection capability.
***
## Setup
Sign in to Docker Home, then select **your avatar → Account settings → Personal access tokens → Generate new token**. Docker documents this flow in its [personal access token guide](https://docs.docker.com/security/access-tokens/).
Configure the token:
* **Description**: `cloudthinker`
* **Expiration date**: choose a lifetime that matches your security policy
* **Access permissions**: select **Read-only** for inventory, or **Read, Write & Delete** if you also need repository description updates
Select **Generate**, then copy the token immediately.
Navigate to **Connections → Docker Hub** and enter:
* **Docker Hub username**: the account that created the PAT
* **Personal access token**: the PAT you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and personal namespace, then shows a **Connected** status.
Docker shows a new PAT only once. Store it securely before you leave the page, or generate a replacement.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------- |
| **DOCKERHUB\_USERNAME** | Docker Hub account username that owns the PAT; not an email address or organization name | `myuser` |
| **DOCKERHUB\_PAT** | Personal access token created in Docker account settings | — |
***
## Required permissions
| PAT permission | What it enables |
| ------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Read-only** | Namespace discovery, repository inventory, visibility, lifetime pull counts, stars, push recency, and tag inspection |
| **Read, Write & Delete** | All reads plus repository short-description and overview updates |
Docker Hub rejects repository description updates from a **Read & Write** PAT. Use **Read, Write & Delete** only when you need that capability. The connection cannot delete repositories or images, even with this PAT.
CloudThinker's write permission ships as **Never allow**. To enable description updates, open the connected Docker Hub account, expand **Tool permissions → Write/delete tools**, and select **Needs approval**. Each update then requires [approval](/guide/approval).
Start with a Read-only PAT. Grant the broader PAT permission and enable the write permission only for workspaces that need repository text updates.
***
## Agent capabilities
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account discovery** | Identify the personal namespace and organization namespaces that Docker Hub returns for the credential |
| **Repository inventory** | Review repositories by namespace with visibility, lifetime pulls, stars, last-push age, and Docker Hub status |
| **Tag inspection** | Inspect tag counts, compressed image sizes, platforms, push dates, pull dates, and status |
| **Repository text** | Read a repository's short description, then update its short description or overview with approval |
Pull counts are lifetime totals, not rates. Reported sizes are compressed image sizes, not storage usage or runtime footprint.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report discover my Docker Hub account and summarize the returned namespace and repository inventory
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list repositories in the acme namespace by lifetime pulls, including visibility and last-push age
@alex #report inspect tags for acme/api and show compressed size, platforms, and push and pull dates
@alex #recommend propose a clearer short description for acme/api, then ask for approval before updating it
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Enter the Docker Hub account name that created the PAT. Do not enter an email address or an organization namespace.
The PAT is wrong, expired, deactivated, or deleted. Generate a new PAT, then reconnect with the same Docker Hub username.
Docker Hub may refuse organization listing for a PAT. This does not prove that the account has no organizations. Ask the agent to inspect the known organization namespace directly, and confirm that the PAT's account is a member.
Confirm the namespace and repository name. The account that created the PAT must also have permission to read that private repository.
The PAT does not have **Read, Write & Delete** permission. Docker Hub also rejects this update from a **Read & Write** PAT. Generate a replacement PAT with the required permission and reconnect.
Open the Docker Hub connection and check **Tool permissions → Write/delete tools**. Set the write permission to **Needs approval**, then approve the update when CloudThinker asks.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Prefer Read-only**: use **Read, Write & Delete** only when agents must update repository text. The connection still cannot push, delete, rename, or change repository visibility.
- **Rotate and revoke**: set an expiration, review last-used dates, and deactivate or delete unused PATs under **Account settings → Personal access tokens**.
***
## Related
Monitor pipelines, workflows, jobs, and build logs
Control actions that require human confirmation
# Dynatrace
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/dynatrace
Connect Dynatrace to CloudThinker for DQL queries, problem investigation, security vulnerability review, and entity discovery
Connect your Dynatrace environment to enable CloudThinker agents to run DQL queries, investigate problems, review security vulnerabilities, discover entities and ownership context, and inspect documents such as notebooks and dashboards across your observability stack.
CloudThinker connects to Dynatrace through the official Dynatrace MCP server using a **Dynatrace Platform token** and your **Dynatrace Platform environment URL**.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Dynatrace Platform environment** with the logs, events, spans, metrics, problems, entities, or documents you want CloudThinker to investigate.
* Your **Dynatrace Platform environment URL**, such as `https://abc12345.apps.dynatrace.com`.
* A **Dynatrace Platform token** with the read scopes CloudThinker needs.
CloudThinker runs the Dynatrace MCP server with `npx`, so you only need to provide the Dynatrace environment URL and Platform token in the connection form.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your Dynatrace Platform environment. Use the Platform URL that follows the format `https://.apps.dynatrace.com`.
Create a dedicated Dynatrace **Platform token** for CloudThinker and grant only the scopes listed in [Required permissions](#required-permissions) for the workflows you want to enable.
Copy the token immediately — it may not be shown again.
Navigate to **Connections → Dynatrace** and enter:
* **DT\_ENVIRONMENT**: your Dynatrace Platform environment URL
* **DT\_PLATFORM\_TOKEN**: the Platform token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Use a Dynatrace **Platform token**, not a classic Dynatrace API token. Classic API tokens do not provide the Platform scopes needed by the MCP server.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| **DT\_ENVIRONMENT** | Dynatrace Platform environment URL | `https://abc12345.apps.dynatrace.com` |
| **DT\_PLATFORM\_TOKEN** | Dynatrace Platform token | — |
Use the Platform environment URL, not a classic `live.dynatrace.com` URL. The MCP server uses `DT_ENVIRONMENT` to reach Dynatrace Platform APIs and Grail data.
***
## Required permissions
Create a dedicated Dynatrace **Platform token** and grant only the scopes required for the CloudThinker workflows you plan to use.
| Scope | What it enables |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `app-engine:apps:run` | Run most Dynatrace MCP tools |
| `storage:buckets:read` | Read system data stored on Grail and discover accessible buckets |
| `storage:logs:read` | Query logs through DQL |
| `storage:metrics:read` | Query metrics through DQL |
| `storage:bizevents:read` | Query business events through DQL |
| `storage:spans:read` | Query traces and spans through DQL |
| `storage:entities:read` | Query monitored entities through DQL |
| `storage:events:read` | Query events through DQL |
| `storage:security.events:read` | Query security events through DQL |
| `storage:system:read` | Query system data through DQL |
| `storage:user.events:read` | Query user events through DQL |
| `storage:user.sessions:read` | Query user sessions through DQL |
| `storage:smartscape:read` | Query Smartscape data through DQL |
| `storage:files:read` | Use DQL `load` statements for lookup data |
| `document:documents:read` | List and read notebooks, dashboards, and launchpads |
| `document:documents:write` | Create documents for approved workflows (optional) |
Start with `app-engine:apps:run` plus the read scopes for the data types you need. Add `document:documents:write` only for approved workflows that need agents to create Dynatrace documents. Older MCP server versions also required `app-engine:functions:run`, `settings:objects:read`, and `environment-api:entities:read` — current versions no longer need those scopes.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have access to the Dynatrace observability data allowed by the Platform token.
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **DQL execution** | Run and validate Dynatrace Query Language queries against Grail data |
| **Logs, events, spans, and metrics** | Investigate telemetry across short time windows and focused queries |
| **Problem investigation** | Retrieve Dynatrace problems and summarize affected services or infrastructure |
| **Security vulnerabilities** | Review reported vulnerabilities when the token includes security problem read access |
| **Entity discovery** | Discover monitored entities and ownership context for impacted systems |
| **Documents** | Inspect notebooks and dashboards when document scopes are granted |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run Dynatrace discovery and list active problems and monitored entity count
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex investigate current Dynatrace problems affecting production and summarize impacted entities
@alex run a Dynatrace DQL query for error logs from the checkout service over the last 30 minutes
@oliver check Dynatrace security vulnerabilities affecting internet-facing services
```
For large environments, scope requests with a known service, entity, bucket, and short time window so DQL queries stay focused.
***
## Troubleshooting
Make sure **DT\_ENVIRONMENT** is the Dynatrace Platform URL, such as `https://abc12345.apps.dynatrace.com`. Classic `live.dynatrace.com` URLs are not valid for this connection.
The Platform token is missing, expired, revoked, or copied incorrectly. Create a new Dynatrace Platform token with the required scopes and reconnect.
The token is missing one or more required scopes. If DQL works for events but not logs, add `storage:logs:read`. If most tools fail, confirm the token includes `app-engine:apps:run`.
The query may target an empty bucket, a data type the token cannot read, or a time range without matching telemetry. Try a shorter known query against a known service, bucket, or timeframe.
Unbounded DQL queries can return too much data or take too long. Add filters, use short time windows, and ask agents to validate the query before expanding it.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Platform token only** — use a Dynatrace Platform token, not a classic API token; classic tokens lack the scopes the MCP server requires.
- **Start with read scopes** — grant `document:documents:write` only for workflows that need agents to create documents.
***
## Related
Logs, metrics, APM, and incidents
APM, NRQL, infrastructure, and alerts
# GitGuardian
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/gitguardian
Connect GitGuardian to CloudThinker for secrets detection, incident investigation, and honeytoken monitoring across your code
Connect your GitGuardian workspace to enable CloudThinker agents to browse secret incidents, investigate exposed credentials, and monitor honeytokens across your repositories. GitGuardian authenticates with a **Personal Access Token (PAT)**; CloudThinker derives the right endpoint from your dashboard URL, so the same setup works for US, EU, and self-hosted instances.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | URL |
| --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **GitGuardian US (SaaS)** | `https://dashboard.gitguardian.com` |
| **GitGuardian EU (SaaS)** | `https://dashboard.eu1.gitguardian.com` |
| **GitGuardian Self-Hosted** | Your instance URL (e.g. `https://gitguardian.your-company.com`) |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **GitGuardian workspace** with access to the incidents you want to review.
* A **Personal Access Token** with the scopes for the data CloudThinker should reach.
* For honeytoken creation: a workspace **Manager** role.
A PAT inherits the scopes you grant it and the role of the workspace member who creates it. Mint it from a least-privileged member that still covers what CloudThinker needs.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your GitGuardian dashboard (US, EU, or your self-hosted URL).
On the sidebar, click **Settings**, then go to **API → Personal Access Tokens** and click **Create token**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Expiration**: set a rotation window
* **Scopes**: select the scopes for the data CloudThinker should access (start with `incidents`)
Copy the token immediately — it is shown only once.
Navigate to **Connections → GitGuardian** and enter:
* **GitGuardian URL**: your dashboard or instance URL
* **Personal Access Token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the token and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the Personal Access Token immediately after creation. GitGuardian shows it only once, and you'll need to mint a new one if it's lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| **GITGUARDIAN\_URL** | GitGuardian dashboard or instance URL | `https://dashboard.gitguardian.com` |
| **GITGUARDIAN\_PERSONAL\_ACCESS\_TOKEN** | GitGuardian Personal Access Token | — |
CloudThinker derives the API endpoint from the URL, so US, EU, and self-hosted forms all work without extra configuration.
***
## Required permissions
GitGuardian access is **scope-driven**: each PAT scope unlocks the matching family of capabilities. If a capability is missing, the token usually lacks that scope rather than the connection being broken.
Select the scopes for the data CloudThinker should reach. Start with `incidents` for incident triage and add others as needed.
| Scope | Enables |
| --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| `scanning` | Run secret and security scans on content |
| `incidents` | Browse, inspect, and manage secret incidents |
| `secrets` | Access detected secrets and their occurrence details |
| `sources` | List and inspect monitored sources (repositories) |
| `custom_tags` | Read and manage custom tags |
| `honeytokens` | List and create honeytokens |
| `members` | View and manage workspace members |
| `teams` | View and manage teams |
| `audit_logs` | Read workspace audit logs |
| `api_tokens` | View and manage API tokens |
| `ip_allowlist` | View and manage the IP allowlist |
| `health_checks` | Validate connection and token health |
Grant only the scopes CloudThinker needs. Many scopes offer separate **read** and **write** access — pick read-only unless a write capability is required.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have scope-gated access to your GitGuardian workspace.
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Incident browsing** | List and inspect secret incidents, including status and severity |
| **Incident investigation** | Review exposed credentials, sources, and occurrences for triage |
| **Honeytokens** | List honeytokens and, with Manager role, create new ones |
| **Token inspection** | Report the connected token's scopes and capabilities |
Honeytoken creation changes workspace state. CloudThinker requires explicit [approval](/guide/approval) and a Manager-role token before any write runs.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@oliver verify the GitGuardian connection: confirm the token is valid and report which scopes it carries
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver list open GitGuardian secret incidents and #alert on anything touching production repos
@oliver investigate the most recent secret incident and summarize the exposed credential and its sources
@oliver report which scopes the connected GitGuardian token carries
```
***
## Troubleshooting
The PAT lacks the matching scope. Re-mint or update the token with the needed GitGuardian scope, then reconnect.
The PAT is invalid, expired, or revoked. Create a new Personal Access Token and update the connection in CloudThinker.
The token's scope or workspace role is insufficient. Grant the required scope or workspace role. Honeytoken writes require the **Manager** role.
Incidents appear empty or the endpoint can't be reached. Confirm the **GitGuardian URL** matches your workspace region (US, EU) or self-hosted instance.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Scope-driven access** — grant only the scopes CloudThinker needs; prefer read-only access where a scope offers it.
- **Manager role for writes** — reserve Manager-role tokens for setups that must create honeytokens; keep honeytoken creation approval-gated.
***
## Related
Code quality and security scanning
Track incidents as Jira issues
# Graylog
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/graylog
Connect Graylog to CloudThinker for read-only log search, cluster and stream inspection, and message count analysis
Connect your Graylog cluster to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Infrastructure) and [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) (Kubernetes) check cluster health, list your streams and index sets, search recent messages over a limited time window, and count messages grouped by a field.
Graylog authenticates with a **REST API access token** belonging to a Graylog user. The connection is **read-only**: the Graylog API can change things, but CloudThinker gives agents no way to reach those endpoints, so they can read your logs and never change anything in Graylog.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Graylog cluster** reachable from CloudThinker over **HTTPS**.
* A **least-privilege Graylog user** for CloudThinker with the **Reader** role.
* **Read access shared on the streams and index sets** you want agents to read. The Reader role alone is not enough — see [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
* A **REST API access token** for that user.
Create a dedicated Graylog user for CloudThinker rather than reusing a person's account. The token inherits that user's access, so a dedicated reader keeps the scope visible and revocable in one place.
***
## Setup
In Graylog, go to **System → Users and Teams** and create a user for CloudThinker with the **Reader** role. Every Graylog user holds either Reader or Admin, and Reader is the read-only baseline.
The Reader role by itself grants no access to your entities — Graylog controls those by sharing. Share each stream and index set CloudThinker should read with the new user at the **Viewer** access level.
Skip this and Graylog returns an empty list of streams instead of an error, which looks like a Graylog with no streams rather than a missing permission.
Still in **System → Users and Teams**, find the user, open the **More** drop-down, and select **Edit tokens**. Enter a token name, set the **TTL** using ISO 8601 duration format, and click **Create Token**.
Copy the token immediately — Graylog does not show it again.
Navigate to **Connections → Graylog** and enter:
* **Graylog base URL**: your Graylog web/API root, such as `https://graylog.example.com:9000`
* **API token**: the token you just created
* **TLS certificate**: leave on **Verify TLS certificate**
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads your cluster status to verify the token and shows a **Connected** status with the node count it found.
Graylog access tokens expire. The default TTL is **30 days**, after which the connection starts failing with a rejected-token error. Set a TTL that matches your rotation schedule, and update the connection with a new token before the old one expires. An administrator can change the default under **System → Configurations → Users**.
Enter the Graylog **web/API root only**. Do not append `/api`, a path, a query string, or credentials — CloudThinker adds `/api` itself, and rejects a URL that carries anything else.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------- |
| **GRAYLOG\_URL** | Graylog web/API base URL, with no `/api`, path, query, or credentials | `https://graylog.example.com:9000` |
| **GRAYLOG\_API\_TOKEN** | REST API access token for the read-only Graylog user | — |
| **GRAYLOG\_VERIFY\_SSL** | Whether to verify the Graylog TLS certificate | `true` |
`GRAYLOG_URL` must use `https`. The token is sent with every request, so plain `http` is accepted only when Graylog runs on the same machine as CloudThinker.
***
## Required permissions
The token needs **read** access, and Graylog splits that across two layers:
| Layer | What to grant | Why |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Role** | The **Reader** role on the CloudThinker user | Graylog's read-only baseline. Every user holds either Reader or Admin, and new users get Reader by default |
| **Entity sharing** | Each **stream** and **index set** shared at **Viewer** | Graylog controls individual entities by sharing. With no entities shared, a Reader has no access to Graylog resources |
The Reader role on its own is the most common misconfiguration. Graylog returns an empty list of streams and a success code rather than a 403, so the connection tests as **Connected** while agents report that no streams exist. If discovery shows no streams on a cluster that has them, share the streams and index sets with the token's user.
No Graylog permission beyond read is ever needed. CloudThinker exposes no Graylog write action, so nothing here is approval-gated — granting write access only widens what a leaked token could do.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents have read access to your Graylog cluster.
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Cluster health** | Summarize node count, Graylog versions, and cluster health, including nodes that are unreachable or running different Graylog versions |
| **Streams & index sets** | List streams and index sets, and review stream routing rules, retention, and index rotation settings |
| **Log search** | Search messages with a query over a recent time window and return a sample of the matches |
| **Counts & distribution** | Count messages grouped by one field to find the noisiest source, service, or error class |
| **Ingestion checks** | Spot disabled streams and sources whose ingestion stopped |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run Graylog discovery and summarize cluster health, node count, and the streams and index sets this token can read
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex search Graylog for 5xx errors from the api-gateway over the last 6 hours
@alex count Graylog messages by source over the last 24 hours and #report anything that stopped sending
@kai check Graylog for errors from the payments pods in the last hour and #recommend a next step
```
Searches and counts are bounded so a broad question cannot pull your whole cluster: the time window reaches back at most **30 days**, and results return at most **100** rows or groups. Agents tell you which time window and limit they used, and say when a result was cut short instead of presenting it as a total. Narrow the query or the time window when you need an exact count.
***
## Troubleshooting
The token expired, was revoked, or was copied incompletely. Graylog tokens expire at their TTL, which defaults to 30 days. Create a new token under **System → Users and Teams → More → Edit tokens** and update the connection.
The token is valid but its Graylog user lacks the read role. Give the user the **Reader** role, then test the connection again.
The user has the Reader role but no streams shared with it, so Graylog returns an empty page instead of denying the request. Share each stream and index set with that user at **Viewer** access. An empty list here means the token cannot see those streams, not that Graylog has none.
The base URL points at the wrong root or already contains `/api`. Reconnect with the web/API root only, such as `https://graylog.example.com:9000`.
The base URL is plain `http` for a host that is not on the CloudThinker machine, which would send the token in clear text. Serve Graylog over HTTPS and reconnect.
**Skip TLS verification** is rejected for a remote Graylog. Without verification, the token is sent to whichever server answers, so the connection could report success while talking to the wrong one. Install the issuer of your Graylog certificate as trusted and keep **Verify TLS certificate** on.
Nothing answered at the base URL. Check the host, the port, and that your firewall or network policy allows CloudThinker to reach the Graylog API.
Graylog, or a proxy or load balancer in front of it, returned HTTP 429. Wait, then run one scoped request again rather than several broad ones.
The query hit the result limit, or the search timed out before it finished. A search that times out does not tell you how many messages matched — narrow the query, shorten the time window, or group by a more specific field, then ask again.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Keep certificate verification on** — the token is sent with every request, so turning verification off exposes it to whichever server answers.
- **Watch the token TTL** — a token that expires silently breaks the connection; rotate it on schedule and update the connection with the new value.
- **Share only the streams you want read** — entity sharing, not the role, is what decides which logs agents can see.
***
## Related
Log search, metrics, traces, and incident triage
Log analysis, index management, and search performance optimization
# Harness
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/harness
Connect Harness to inspect delivery health and cloud costs, diagnose failures, and author resources behind approval
[Alex](/guide/agents/alex) can inspect Harness delivery health, diagnose failed executions, review Cloud Cost Management data, and author resources. CloudThinker requires approval before every create, update, or delete and cannot run, retry, or interrupt a pipeline.
## Prerequisites
* A Harness account with access to the organizations, projects, and Cloud Cost Management data you want CloudThinker to inspect.
* A Harness personal access token (PAT) or service account token (SAT).
* Permission to create a service account and role bindings if you use the recommended service-account setup.
Use an account-level service account when CloudThinker needs both project delivery data and account-level cost data. Limit its role bindings to the resource groups and actions you want agents to reach.
## Setup
In Harness, open **Account Settings → Access Control → Service Accounts**. Create a service account for CloudThinker, then assign role bindings for the organizations, projects, and account resources it should access.
For personal testing, you can instead open your user profile and use **My API Keys**. A personal token inherits your own permissions.
Open the service account, select **API Keys → API Key**, and save a new key. Select **Token** under that key, set an expiration date, then select **Generate Token**.
Copy the `sat.` token immediately. Harness displays it only once. A personal API key produces a `pat.` token through the same key-and-token flow.
Navigate to **Connections → Harness** and enter:
* **API key**: the PAT or SAT you generated.
* **Harness URL**: keep `https://app.harness.io` unless your account uses another cluster or a self-managed installation.
* **Default organization**: optional organization identifier applied to scoped requests.
* **Default project**: optional project identifier. Set it only with a default organization.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker saves the connection and shows a **Connected** status.
Harness displays a generated token only once. Store it securely and create a replacement if it is lost.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Default |
| ------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------ |
| **API key** | Harness PAT or SAT; CloudThinker detects the Harness account for this token | — |
| **Harness URL** | Base URL for Harness SaaS or a self-managed installation | `https://app.harness.io` |
| **Default organization** | Optional organization identifier added to scoped calls | none |
| **Default project** | Optional project identifier used with the default organization | none |
Harness identifiers are not display names. Use the identifier shown in the Harness resource settings.
## Required permissions
Harness tokens inherit permissions from their user or service account. Grant view permissions for every delivery or cost resource CloudThinker should inspect.
| Access | Enables |
| -------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Organization and project view | Discovery across the selected Harness hierarchy |
| Pipeline, service, environment, and execution view | Delivery inventory, health summaries, and failed-execution diagnosis |
| Cloud Cost Management view | Spend, recommendations, anomalies, and budgets at account scope |
| Create, edit, or delete on selected resources | Approval-gated authoring through CloudThinker |
Start with view permissions. Add create, edit, or delete permissions only for resource groups where you want CloudThinker to author definitions.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents read live Harness state for each request.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Discovery** | Inventory organizations, projects, pipelines, services, environments, connectors, and triggers |
| **Delivery health** | Calculate pass rate and failure streaks, and identify failed or stuck executions |
| **Failure diagnosis** | Read an execution's failure details and failed-step logs |
| **Cloud costs** | Review account spend, recommendations, anomalies, and budget coverage |
| **Resource authoring** | Create, update, or delete a supported Harness resource after approval |
CloudThinker deliberately excludes pipeline execution controls. An agent cannot run, retry, or interrupt an execution, toggle a feature flag, sync a GitOps application, or approve a Harness approval step.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list my Harness organizations and projects, then summarize delivery health for one project
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report show failed and stuck Harness executions in the payments project
@alex #recommend rank Harness Cloud Cost Management recommendations by monthly savings
@alex #report diagnose the latest failed Harness execution and name the failed step
```
## Troubleshooting
The initial connection step does not validate the token. A revoked, expired, or incorrect token can therefore connect and fail on the first read. Generate a new token and reconnect.
The user or service account lacks a role binding for the requested scope. Check its Harness roles and resource groups, then narrow the request or grant the missing view permission.
The resource needs both an organization identifier and a project identifier. Set **Default organization** and **Default project**, or ask Alex to discover the identifiers before repeating the request.
Check that you supplied the resource identifier rather than its display name. Copy the identifier exactly as Harness shows it in the resource settings.
This is an intentional connection boundary. Open the pipeline in Harness to run, retry, or interrupt it. CloudThinker can inspect the execution and diagnose a failure without starting one.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated identity** — prefer a service account so the connection does not inherit a person's changing access.
- **Bounded role bindings** — grant access only to the resource groups and operations agents need.
- **Token rotation** — set an expiration date and replace the token before it expires.
## Related
Pipeline status, workflow analysis, and gated controls
How CloudThinker gates agent write actions
# Honeycomb
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/honeycomb
Connect Honeycomb to CloudThinker with OAuth for trace queries, BubbleUp root-cause analysis, and approval-gated board and trigger changes
Connect your Honeycomb team to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) query traces, rank failing endpoints, run BubbleUp to find what changed, and follow a trace waterfall to the span that failed.
Honeycomb authenticates with **OAuth** through its hosted MCP server, so there is no API key to create and no credential to paste into CloudThinker.
## Prerequisites
* A **Honeycomb account** with access to the team you want CloudThinker to read.
* Permission to authorize CloudThinker during Honeycomb's OAuth flow.
* At least one **environment with a dataset receiving telemetry**. Every query tool needs a dataset; an environment with none means the account sends no telemetry, not a healthy zero.
CloudThinker connects to Honeycomb's US endpoint, `https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp`. The EU endpoint is not selectable, so an EU-only team cannot connect yet.
## Setup
Go to **Connections → Honeycomb** in your CloudThinker workspace.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker opens Honeycomb's authorization page.
Sign in to the Honeycomb account that can reach the team you want to use, then approve access.
Honeycomb sends you back and CloudThinker stores the tokens. The connection shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
Honeycomb uses OAuth, so there are no fields to fill in. CloudThinker stores the access and refresh tokens after the flow completes and refreshes them without asking you again.
| Field | Description |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **OAuth tokens** | Issued by Honeycomb and stored automatically; no manual entry required |
| **Endpoint** | `https://mcp.honeycomb.io/mcp`, Honeycomb's hosted MCP server |
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits whatever the authorizing Honeycomb account can reach. The authorization grants two scopes:
| Scope | What it covers |
| ----------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `mcp:read` | Environments, datasets, columns, queries, traces, triggers, boards, and recipients |
| `mcp:write` | Creating and updating boards, triggers, SLOs, markers, and recipients |
Authorize with an account scoped to the team you want the agent to see. CloudThinker cannot narrow the grant below what that account already has.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Environment discovery** | Name the team, list environments and datasets, and report whether triggers, boards, and recipients exist |
| **Service health** | Rank endpoints by failing span count and error rate, with p95 latency |
| **Root-cause analysis** | Run BubbleUp to find the dimension that separates failing spans from healthy ones |
| **Trace investigation** | List spans, open span details, and follow a trace waterfall to the failure |
| **Alerting review** | Read triggers, SLOs, boards, and notification recipients |
| **Approval-gated changes** | Create or update a board, trigger, SLO, marker, or recipient after you approve the exact inputs |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report summarize my Honeycomb setup: team, environments, datasets, and whether triggers exist
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex which endpoint is in the worst shape right now
@alex why is POST /checkout failing and #report the dimension that changed
@alex show me the trace waterfall for the slowest checkout request
```
## Writes are permanent
Honeycomb's MCP server exposes no delete tool. A board, trigger, SLO, marker, or recipient the agent creates cannot be removed from CloudThinker; you remove it in Honeycomb.
Every write is therefore gated twice. The agent states the effect and shows the exact inputs, and the change runs only after you [approve](/guide/approval) it in that turn.
Approve a create only when you want the object to exist for good. There is no undo path through CloudThinker.
## Troubleshooting
Your browser may be signed in to a different Honeycomb account. Sign in to the intended account, then start the Honeycomb connection again.
The stored tokens are no longer valid, usually because the authorization was revoked in Honeycomb. Remove the connection and reconnect.
Queries need a dataset in a queryable environment. Confirm the environment is receiving telemetry in Honeycomb; an environment with no dataset cannot answer a query, a BubbleUp, or a trace question.
`$activity-log$` is Honeycomb's own audit environment. It appears in the environment list, but every scoped call rejects it, so CloudThinker skips it on purpose.
Creating a board, trigger, SLO, marker, or recipient needs your approval in the same turn. Answer the approval prompt while it is open; a new turn asks again.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **No result links in chat** — Honeycomb signs its query-result and trace-result download URLs. CloudThinker shares the human permalink instead, so a copied message never carries a token that grants result access.
- **Reconnect to switch teams** — remove the existing connection before authorizing a different Honeycomb account.
## Related
Cloud and observability investigation agent
How CloudThinker gates a write behind your confirmation
# Jenkins
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/jenkins
Connect Jenkins CI/CD server to CloudThinker for build pipeline monitoring, job analysis, and deployment tracking
Connect your self-hosted Jenkins server to enable CloudThinker agents to monitor builds, analyze test results, review pipeline logs, and manage job operations. Jenkins authenticates with a **username and API token** over the Jenkins MCP Server Plugin.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **self-hosted Jenkins** instance running version 2.x or later (cloud-hosted Jenkins is not supported).
* The **[Jenkins MCP Server Plugin](https://github.com/jenkinsci/mcp-server-plugin)** installed on your server; the default MCP port is `9090`.
* Admin access to Jenkins to configure the root URL and create credentials.
Cloud-hosted Jenkins services are not supported. This connection requires the Jenkins MCP Server Plugin.
***
## Setup
The MCP Server Plugin requires Jenkins to have a root URL configured to return correct job links. Run the following in the Jenkins Script Console:
```bash theme={null}
COOKIE_JAR=/tmp/jenkins_cookies
CRUMB=$(curl -s -c $COOKIE_JAR -u "admin:" \
'http://:9090/crumbIssuer/api/json' | python3 -c "import json,sys; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['crumb'])")
curl -s -X POST "http://:9090/scriptText" \
-b $COOKIE_JAR -u "admin:" -H "Jenkins-Crumb: $CRUMB" \
--data-urlencode "script=
import jenkins.model.JenkinsLocationConfiguration
def loc = JenkinsLocationConfiguration.get()
loc.setUrl('http://:9090/')
loc.save()
println('Root URL set to: ' + loc.getUrl())
"
```
Confirm the plugin is running before connecting:
```bash theme={null}
curl -s http://:9090/mcp-health/
```
Navigate to **Connections → Jenkins** and enter:
* **URL**: `http://:9090`
* **Username**: `admin`
* **API Token**: your Jenkins admin password or API token
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------- | ----------------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **URL** | Base URL of your Jenkins instance | `http://192.168.1.100:9090` |
| **Username** | Jenkins username | `admin` |
| **API Token** | Jenkins admin password or API token | — |
***
## Required permissions
Grant the Jenkins user the following permissions:
* **Overall**: Read
* **Job**: Read, Discover
* **View**: Read
Create a dedicated Jenkins user for CloudThinker with only these permissions. Keep write operations (trigger builds, replay pipelines) approval-gated.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can monitor and investigate your Jenkins pipelines.
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Build monitoring** | List jobs and check build status |
| **Log analysis** | Retrieve and search build logs |
| **Test results** | View test outcomes |
| **SCM integration** | View Git changes and commits |
| **Job controls** | Trigger builds and replay pipelines — **requires approval** |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all Jenkins jobs and show the last build status for each
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex search Jenkins build logs for errors in the last 10 builds and #recommend fixes
@alex show test results for the main project's recent builds and #report failures
@alex check the Jenkins build queue and identify any stuck jobs
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify Jenkins is running and that port 9090 is reachable from CloudThinker. Use the host IP address (not `localhost`) in the URL field.
The root URL has not been configured or the Script Console command failed. Re-run the Script Console command in Setup and reconnect.
The username or API token is incorrect, or the user lacks the required permissions. Verify the credentials and that the Jenkins user has Overall Read, Job Read, and View Read access.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated user** — create a dedicated Jenkins user for CloudThinker scoped to only the jobs and views it needs.
- **Network isolation** — restrict Jenkins port 9090 to CloudThinker's IP range or use a VPN; avoid exposing the Jenkins UI to the public internet.
***
## Related
Connect custom tools via Model Context Protocol
Connect Kubernetes clusters
# Jira Service Management
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/jsm
Connect Jira Service Management Operations for alert triage, on-call visibility, and incident sync during response
Connect Jira Service Management Operations to let CloudThinker agents triage alerts, see who is on call, and run the alert lifecycle during an incident. JSM Operations authenticates with an **Atlassian API token** tied to one account.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Jira Service Management** site with **Operations** enabled. Operations ships on the Premium and Enterprise plans only.
* An **Atlassian account** that can open Operations on that site.
* An **Atlassian API token** from [id.atlassian.com](https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens).
* A CloudThinker workspace on the **Business** or **Enterprise** plan.
This is a separate connection from [Atlassian](/guide/connections/atlassian). Atlassian covers Jira issues and Confluence over Rovo; Operations is a different product with a different credential, so connect both if you want tickets and alerts.
***
## Setup
Go to [id.atlassian.com → Security → API tokens](https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens) and click **Create API token**:
* **Label**: `cloudthinker`
* Click **Create**
Copy the token immediately — Atlassian will not show it again.
Open your site and check that **Operations** appears in the JSM sidebar for the account you just created the token under. A site without Operations, or an account that cannot open it, fails the connection test.
Navigate to **Connections → Jira Service Management** and enter:
* **Site URL**: your Atlassian site, such as `https://acme.atlassian.net`
* **Account email**: the account the token belongs to
* **API token**: the token you just created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker resolves the site, calls Operations once to confirm access, and shows a **Connected** status.
An API token carries the full permissions of its account. Create it under a dedicated account scoped to the teams CloudThinker needs, not a site admin.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------- |
| **JSM\_SITE\_URL** | Your Atlassian site. A pasted project or board URL works too | `https://acme.atlassian.net` |
| **JSM\_SITE\_EMAIL** | Atlassian account the API token belongs to | `oncall@acme.com` |
| **JSM\_API\_TOKEN** | Atlassian API token, not an account password | `ATATT3xFfGF0...` |
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read-only)
An account with **Responder** access to the relevant teams provides:
* List alerts and read their timelines
* View who is on call now and upcoming rotations
* View schedules and escalation routing
### Recommended (full lifecycle)
Add **team admin** on the teams you want agents to act on:
* All read permissions
* Acknowledge, assign, and add responders
* Add notes, close, and escalate
Follow least privilege: start with a Responder-level account for read-only triage, and grant team admin only on the teams where agents should write.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents work alerts within the token account's team access.
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Alert triage** | List open alerts, read timelines, spot repeat offenders |
| **On-call lookup** | See who is on call now and which schedule routed the page |
| **Alert lifecycle** | Acknowledge, assign, add responders, and add notes |
| **Escalation** | Close an alert or escalate it to the next rung |
| **Incident sync** | Keep a CloudThinker incident in step with the responder's alert |
Incident sync runs as a [Deep Response Engine](/guide/incident/overview) outcome. When a responder acknowledges the alert in JSM, the matching incident moves to **Acknowledged** — a responder owns it, and analysis has not started.
Closing and escalating always ask for your approval, even in Auto mode. Acknowledge, assign, add responder, and add note run under the incident's standing approval.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@anna list open JSM alerts and report who is on call right now
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@anna list open JSM alerts and #report which service pages most often
@anna who is on call for the platform team, and what routed the last page?
@alex acknowledge the checkout latency alert and add a note with the deploy that preceded it
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Authentication worked, so the token is good. Either the site's JSM plan does not include Operations, or the account cannot open it. Confirm **Operations** appears in the JSM sidebar for that account, then reconnect.
The token is wrong, revoked, or paired with the wrong email. The email must be the account that created the token. Create a new token at id.atlassian.com and update the connection.
CloudThinker resolves your site before calling Operations. Enter the site origin, such as `https://acme.atlassian.net` — a custom domain that does not front an Atlassian site fails here.
The token account is not on the relevant teams. JSM scopes alerts by team, so add the account to every team whose alerts agents should see.
Incident sync needs the JSM outcome enabled for the incident. Open the incident's connections panel and confirm **Sync provider incident** is on.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated account** — issue the token from an account created for CloudThinker, so revoking it never locks out a person.
- **Team scoping** — an API token inherits everything its account can reach; keep that account on only the teams you want agents to touch.
***
## Related
Jira issues and Confluence knowledge
On-call management and escalation
# Langfuse
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/langfuse
Connect Langfuse to CloudThinker for LLM trace investigation, conversation debugging, evaluation review, and prompt auditing
Connect your Langfuse project to enable CloudThinker agents to investigate LLM traces, debug conversations, review evaluation scores and datasets, and audit prompt versions across your observability stack. Langfuse authenticates with a **project-scoped API key pair** (a public key and a secret key) against your Langfuse host — the same setup works for Langfuse Cloud and self-hosted instances.
## Prerequisites
* A **Langfuse Cloud or self-hosted project** you want to investigate.
* A **project-scoped API key pair** (public key and secret key) from that project.
* Your **Langfuse host URL** (`https://cloud.langfuse.com` for EU, `https://us.cloud.langfuse.com` for US, or your self-hosted domain).
Langfuse API keys are scoped to a single project. Create the key pair in the project CloudThinker should reach, and use a key pair dedicated to CloudThinker so access is easy to audit and revoke.
## Setup
Sign in to Langfuse and select the project you want CloudThinker to investigate.
Go to **Project → Settings → API Keys** and click **Create new API keys**. Langfuse generates:
* A **Public Key** (prefixed `pk-lf-`)
* A **Secret Key** (prefixed `sk-lf-`)
Copy the secret key immediately — it is shown only once and cannot be retrieved later.
Navigate to **Connections → Langfuse** and enter:
* **Host**: your Langfuse base URL, e.g. `https://cloud.langfuse.com` (base URL only, no path)
* **Public Key**: the `pk-lf-` key you created
* **Secret Key**: the `sk-lf-` key you created
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the secret key immediately after creation. Langfuse shows it only once, so you'll need to create a new key pair if it's lost.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| **LANGFUSE\_HOST** | Base URL of your Langfuse instance — EU cloud, US cloud, or self-hosted | `https://cloud.langfuse.com` |
| **LANGFUSE\_PUBLIC\_KEY** | Project-scoped public key | `pk-lf-...` |
| **LANGFUSE\_SECRET\_KEY** | Project-scoped secret key | `sk-lf-...` |
## Required permissions
Langfuse API keys inherit the access of the project they belong to. CloudThinker uses the key pair for read and investigation workflows across traces, observations, metrics, scores, datasets, annotation queues, comments, and prompts.
Follow least privilege: scope the key pair to the single project CloudThinker should investigate, and keep it separate from keys used by your SDKs or other integrations so it can be rotated or revoked independently.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can investigate LLM observability data across your Langfuse project.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Traces** | Search and inspect traces, correlate errors, latency, and model usage |
| **Observations** | Drill into spans, generations, and events within a trace |
| **Metrics** | Query usage, latency, and cost metrics over a time window |
| **Scores** | Review evaluation scores and quality signals |
| **Datasets** | Inspect datasets used for evaluation and testing |
| **Annotation queues** | Review annotation queues and their items |
| **Comments** | Read comments left on traces and observations |
| **Prompts** | List prompt versions, labels, and recent changes for prompt audits |
A CloudThinker chat URL carries a `conversationId` that maps to a Langfuse `sessionId`. Ask the agent to analyze the chat URL and it resolves the session through Langfuse rather than fetching the URL as a webpage.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex investigate recent Langfuse traces and summarize errors, latency, and model usage
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex investigate recent failed Langfuse traces for production conversations, correlate errors and latency, and #recommend likely fixes
@alex inspect this CloudThinker chat URL by mapping its conversationId to a Langfuse session and summarize tool calls, model usage, and failures
@alex list active Langfuse prompts, versions, and labels, and #report prompts tied to degraded scores
```
Trace and metric queries are time-bounded, so mention a window (e.g. "the last hour") to keep results focused.
## Troubleshooting
Verify the public and secret keys are correct and have not been rotated or deleted. Confirm both keys belong to the **same** Langfuse project and were copied without extra whitespace.
Data is separated per region, so a key pair only works against the host it was created in. Check that **LANGFUSE\_HOST** matches the URL you sign in to, e.g. `https://cloud.langfuse.com` for EU or `https://us.cloud.langfuse.com` for US.
**LANGFUSE\_HOST** has an extra path suffix. Set it to the base URL only, with no trailing path.
Trace and metric searches need a time range. Ask the agent to use a recent window (e.g. the last hour) and widen it only if needed. Confirm the project is actively receiving traces from your application.
Ask the agent to extract the `conversationId` and map it to a Langfuse `sessionId` instead of fetching the URL directly.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Project-scoped key pair** — use a key pair scoped to the single project CloudThinker investigates; create a dedicated pair for CloudThinker so access is easy to audit and revoke independently.
- **Correct host** — match the host to the region where the project lives to avoid cross-region failures.
## Related
Logs, metrics, traces, and dashboards
Log search, metrics, and monitoring
# MCP
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/mcp
Connect custom tools and APIs to CloudThinker via Model Context Protocol (MCP) for extensible agent capabilities
Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables CloudThinker to connect to custom tools and services. Use MCP to extend agent capabilities with your own [connections](/guide/connections/overview).
***
## What is MCP?
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol for connecting AI agents to external tools and data sources. It provides a standardized way to:
* Expose tools that agents can call
* Provide context and data to agents
* Enable custom integrations with any service
***
## Setup
Ensure your MCP server is running and accessible:
* Supports Server-Sent Events (SSE) transport
* Has a publicly accessible endpoint (or VPN access)
* Returns proper MCP protocol responses
Navigate to **Connections → MCP** and click **Add MCP Connection**.
Enter connection details:
* **Name**: descriptive name for the connection
* **Prefix**: tool prefix (e.g., `mytools` → `mytools_function_name`)
Set up the connection transport:
* **Transport Type**: Server-Sent Events
* **URL**: your MCP server endpoint
* **Timeout**: connection timeout (default: 5 seconds)
* **SSE Read Timeout**: event stream timeout (default: 30 seconds)
Configure any required environment variables:
* API keys
* Authentication tokens
* Custom configuration
Test the connection and save. CloudThinker shows a **Connected** status when the server responds correctly.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Required |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------- | ---------------- |
| **Name** | Connection display name | Yes |
| **Prefix** | Tool name prefix | Yes |
| **URL** | MCP server endpoint | Yes |
| **Timeout** | Connection timeout (seconds) | No (default: 5) |
| **SSE Read Timeout** | Event stream timeout (seconds) | No (default: 30) |
| **Environment Variables** | Key-value pairs for configuration | No |
***
## Example MCP server
A simple MCP server that provides a weather lookup tool:
```python theme={null}
from mcp import Server, Tool
server = Server("weather-tools")
@server.tool()
async def get_weather(location: str) -> str:
"""Get current weather for a location."""
# Your implementation here
return f"Weather for {location}: Sunny, 72°F"
if __name__ == "__main__":
server.run()
```
Once connected with prefix `weather`, agents can call:
```
weather_get_weather(location="San Francisco")
```
***
## Use cases
### Custom data sources
Connect proprietary databases or APIs:
* Internal metrics systems
* Custom monitoring tools
* Business intelligence platforms
### Specialized tools
Add domain-specific capabilities:
* Custom compliance checks
* Internal automation scripts
* Legacy system integrations
### External services
Integrate third-party services:
* Communication platforms
* Ticketing systems
* Cloud services not built-in
***
## Best practices
* **HTTPS endpoints** — expose your MCP server only over HTTPS.
* **Rotate API keys** — rotate credentials stored in environment variables on your normal schedule.
* **Implement authentication** — validate incoming requests from CloudThinker before processing.
* **Set appropriate timeouts** — tune Timeout and SSE Read Timeout to match your server's response characteristics.
* **Monitor server health** — track error rates and latency so connection drops are caught early.
* **Handle errors gracefully** — return structured MCP error responses rather than crashing the server.
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the MCP server is running, check network connectivity, increase timeout values, and confirm the firewall allows traffic.
Verify the prefix is set correctly, check that the MCP server returns tool definitions, ensure the protocol version is compatible, and review server logs for errors.
Verify environment variables are set correctly, check that API keys are valid, and ensure the server validates credentials correctly.
Increase the SSE read timeout, check for proxy interference, verify the server sends keepalive events, and review network stability.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **HTTPS endpoints** — expose your MCP server only over HTTPS and validate the CloudThinker request origin.
- **Scoped credentials** — store API keys and tokens in environment variables rather than hardcoding them in server code.
***
## Related
All connection types
How agents use connections
# monday.com
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/monday
Connect monday.com to CloudThinker for board review, stalled-work analysis, sprint reporting, and approval-gated item updates
Connect your monday.com account to let CloudThinker agents review boards, find work that stopped moving, read item discussions, and update items after you approve them.
monday.com uses **OAuth** through its hosted MCP server, so you do not create an API token or paste credentials into CloudThinker.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **monday.com account** that can see the boards you want CloudThinker to read.
* Permission to authorize CloudThinker through monday.com's OAuth flow.
* A CloudThinker workspace where monday.com is not already connected.
Agents see exactly what the authorizing account sees. A board that account cannot open stays invisible to CloudThinker.
***
## Setup
Navigate to **Connections → monday.com** in your CloudThinker workspace.
Click **Connect** to open monday.com's authorization page.
Sign in to the monday.com account that can access the boards you want to use, then approve access.
After authorization, CloudThinker stores the OAuth tokens and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
monday.com uses OAuth — there are no connection fields to enter manually. CloudThinker stores the tokens automatically after the authorization flow completes.
| Field | Description |
| ---------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **OAuth tokens** | Issued by monday.com and stored automatically; no manual entry required |
***
## Required permissions
CloudThinker inherits the monday.com access granted during OAuth.
* **Read operations** cover the workspaces, boards, items, updates, docs, users, teams, automations, and sprints the authorizing account can already open.
* **Write operations** — creating an item, changing an item's column values, and posting an update — need matching monday.com permission **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Authorize with an account limited to the boards CloudThinker needs. monday.com's MCP server exposes no delete or archive tool, so anything an agent creates has to be removed in monday.com itself.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can:
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Account discovery** | List workspaces, boards, users, and teams, and return the board ids other requests need |
| **Board review** | Summarize a board's groups and columns, and how its work splits by status and owner |
| **Stalled work** | Find items that have not moved inside a date window, ranked oldest first |
| **Item context** | Read item updates, board activity, and monday docs before acting |
| **Sprint reporting** | Read monday dev sprint boards, sprint metadata, and sprint summaries |
| **Item writes** | Create an item, change column values, or post an update — each after explicit approval |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my monday.com workspaces and boards
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex review the Tasks board on monday.com and #report how work splits by status and owner
@alex find monday.com items that have not moved in 14 days and #recommend what to chase first
@alex read the updates on the checkout bug item and summarize what is blocking it
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Your browser may be signed in to a different monday.com account. Sign in to the intended account and retry the connection flow in CloudThinker.
monday.com answers an unknown, deleted, or invisible board id with an empty record rather than an error. Ask the agent to list your workspaces and boards first, then name the board from that list.
The OAuth flow may have run under an account without access to that board. Reconnect with the account that can open it. Recently visited boards are not the full inventory — boards belong to a workspace, and an agent has to read the workspace to list them.
Sprint summaries need a monday dev board that carries the sprint summary column. Boards without it return no summary, so ask for sprint metadata or a board review instead.
Item writes are approval-gated. Approve the pending action in CloudThinker, or check that the authorizing monday.com account has write permission on that board.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Approval for writes** — keep item creation, column changes, and updates approval-gated in CloudThinker.
- **No undo path** — monday.com exposes no delete or archive tool, so remove anything an agent created from monday.com directly.
***
## Related
Jira and Confluence issue tracking and knowledge base
How approval-gated actions work
# New Relic
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/newrelic
Connect New Relic to CloudThinker for APM, infrastructure monitoring, NRQL queries, alerting, and incident investigation via the New Relic MCP server
Connect your New Relic account to enable CloudThinker agents to monitor application performance, inspect infrastructure, run NRQL queries, review alerts, and investigate incidents across your observability stack.
New Relic authenticates with a **User API key** (`NRAK-…`) and connects through the **New Relic AI MCP server**, which must be enabled before connecting.
***
## Supported regions
| Region | MCP endpoint |
| ------ | --------------------- |
| **US** | `mcp.newrelic.com` |
| **EU** | `mcp.eu.newrelic.com` |
Select the region that matches your account. An EU account connected with the US region (or vice versa) will fail authentication or return empty results.
***
## Prerequisites
You need the **New Relic AI MCP server** enabled and a **User API key** (`NRAK-…`).
**Enable the New Relic AI MCP server:**
CloudThinker connects to New Relic through the New Relic AI MCP server, which is in public preview and must be turned on before connecting. Use with FedRAMP- or HIPAA-governed accounts is strictly prohibited per New Relic's terms.
1. In New Relic, click your **username** in the bottom-left corner.
2. Go to **Administration → Previews & Trials**.
3. Enable the **New Relic AI MCP server** preview toggle.
**Create a User API key:**
1. Open **API keys** (user menu → **API keys**, or go to `one.newrelic.com/api-keys`; EU: `one.eu.newrelic.com/api-keys`).
2. Click **Create a key** and set **Key type** to **User**.
3. Name it (e.g., `CloudThinker`) and save.
4. Copy the key value — the full `NRAK-…` key is shown **only once** at creation.
Use a **User API key** (`NRAK-…`). License, ingest, and query keys are for data ingestion and will not work for querying — this is the most common setup mistake.
***
## Setup
Navigate to **Connections → New Relic** in your CloudThinker workspace and click **Connect New Relic**.
Enter an **Alias** (a unique identifier for this instance, e.g. `production`) and a **Description**.
Paste your New Relic **User API key** (`NRAK-…`).
Choose **US** (`mcp.newrelic.com`) or **EU** (`mcp.eu.newrelic.com`) to match your New Relic account.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | -------------------------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **NEWRELIC\_API\_KEY** | Your New Relic User API key (`NRAK-` prefix) | `NRAK-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX` |
| **NEWRELIC\_REGION** | The region that matches your account | `US` / `EU` |
***
## Required permissions
The User API key inherits the permissions of the user it belongs to. For least-privilege, scope that user to read-only access.
For MCP server access, the key's user must be in a group assigned **Organization Read Only**, **Organization Manager**, or **Organization Product Admin** — or a custom role granting the MCP read permission. For least privilege, use **Organization Read Only**. For NRQL and NerdGraph querying, a read-only role is sufficient.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can query and investigate across your New Relic environment.
| Capability | What the agent can do |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **APM** | Inspect application performance — throughput, error rates, and transaction traces |
| **Infrastructure** | List hosts and containers, review resource utilization |
| **NRQL** | Run NRQL queries via NerdGraph against any telemetry |
| **Alerts** | Review alert policies, conditions, and open violations |
| **Logs** | Search and analyze logs across services and environments |
| **Entities** | Discover and inspect monitored entities and services |
| **Incidents** | Investigate open issues and retrieve full incident detail |
| **Dashboards** | Inspect dashboard configurations |
| **Connection health** | Validate that the New Relic connection is working |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex verify the New Relic connection and list monitored entity types and any open alert violations
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex check error rates for the checkout service in New Relic over the last hour
@alex run an NRQL query for the slowest transactions in the production app
@alex list open New Relic alert violations and investigate the root cause
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify you are using a **User API key** (`NRAK-…`), not a license, ingest, or query key. Confirm the key was not deleted or rotated in New Relic and that the key's user still has access to the account.
Check that the selected region matches your account — EU accounts must use the EU endpoint. Disconnect and reconnect with the correct region.
The key's user may lack the MCP-server read role. Assign **Organization Read Only**, **Organization Manager**, **Organization Product Admin**, or a custom organization-scoped role with MCP read permission. Confirm the user has access to the account whose data you expect.
Confirm the **New Relic AI MCP server** preview is enabled under **Administration → Previews & Trials**. The connection cannot function until the preview is turned on.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **User API key only** — use a User key (`NRAK-…`); license, ingest, and query keys do not authenticate MCP requests.
- **Dedicated read-only service user** — create the key under a read-only user so the key inherits minimal permissions.
***
## Related
Alternative APM and observability
Metrics and dashboards
# PagerDuty
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/pagerduty
Connect PagerDuty to CloudThinker for on-call management, incident alerting, and escalation policy integration
Connect your PagerDuty account to enable CloudThinker agents to manage incidents, view on-call schedules, monitor services, and handle escalation policies. PagerDuty authenticates with a **User API Token** scoped to the creating user's permissions.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **PagerDuty** | All plans (Free, Professional, Business, Digital Operations) |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **PagerDuty account** on any plan.
* A **User API Token** from **My Profile → User Settings → API Access**.
Use a **User API Token**, not a General Access REST API Key. User tokens scope access to what the user can see, providing better security boundaries.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your PagerDuty account at [app.pagerduty.com](https://app.pagerduty.com).
Click your **User Icon → My Profile**, then scroll to **User Settings → API Access** and click **Create API User Token**:
* **Description**: `cloudthinker`
* Click **Create Key**
Copy the key immediately — it will not be shown again.
Navigate to **Connections → PagerDuty** and enter:
* **User API Key**: the token you just generated
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API token immediately after creation. PagerDuty will not show it again, and you'll need to create a new token if lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------ | ------------ |
| **PAGERDUTY\_USER\_API\_KEY** | PagerDuty User API Token | `u+xxxxx...` |
***
## Required permissions
### Minimum (read-only)
A user with **Observer** or **Responder** role provides:
* View incidents, services, and escalation policies
* View on-call schedules
* View teams and users
### Recommended (full operations)
A user with **Responder** or **Manager** role provides:
* All read permissions
* Acknowledge and resolve incidents
* Create incidents and status updates
* Manage on-call overrides
Follow least privilege: assign Observer role for read-only monitoring. Promote to Responder or Manager only when incident write actions are needed.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can query and act on PagerDuty data.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Incident triage** | List triggered and acknowledged incidents, identify patterns |
| **On-call schedules** | View who is currently on-call and upcoming rotations |
| **Service health** | Monitor service status and active incident counts |
| **Escalation policies** | View escalation chains and notification rules |
| **Incident actions** | Acknowledge, resolve, and add notes to incidents |
| **Schedule management** | View schedules and identify coverage gaps |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all triggered PagerDuty incidents and report the current on-call schedule
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list all triggered and acknowledged incidents and #report any patterns by service
@alex who is currently on-call for the platform-engineering service?
@alex show next week's on-call schedule and identify any coverage gaps
```
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is incorrect, expired, or revoked. Verify the User API Token, ensure you are using a **User Token** (not a REST API Key), and generate a new token if needed.
The user has insufficient role permissions or team-level access restrictions. For write operations, ensure the user has Responder or Manager role.
The user does not have access to the relevant teams. Verify team membership includes the services you want to monitor.
Navigate to **My Profile → User Settings** in PagerDuty, create a new API User Token, and update the token in CloudThinker connection settings.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **User token** — use a User API Token scoped to a dedicated PagerDuty user rather than a General Access REST API Key.
- **Team scoping** — limit the dedicated user's team membership to only the services CloudThinker needs to monitor.
***
## Related
ITSM incident management
Observability and monitoring
# PostHog
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/posthog
Connect PostHog to CloudThinker for product analytics, error triage, HogQL queries, and approval-gated feature flag, insight, dashboard, and survey changes
Connect your PostHog project to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) read what your product is doing: feature flags, insights, dashboards, surveys, tracked errors, and your event schema. Alex ranks error issues, summarizes event volume, and answers questions with bounded HogQL queries.
PostHog authenticates with a **personal API key** through its hosted MCP server. The key's own scopes decide what the agent can reach.
## Prerequisites
* A **PostHog account** with access to the project you want CloudThinker to read.
* Permission to create a **personal API key**. PostHog allows up to 10 personal API keys per user.
* A project that is **receiving events**. Analytics and error questions need ingested data; a project with no events returns an empty answer, not a broken connection.
PostHog does not charge for the MCP connection or for its tool calls. A few AI-powered tools bill as PostHog AI spend and need AI data processing enabled in your project.
## Setup
In PostHog, go to **Settings → Personal API keys**, or open [the MCP preset link](https://app.posthog.com/settings/user-api-keys?preset=mcp_server) directly.
Click **+ Create a personal API Key** and give it a label such as `CloudThinker`.
Select the **MCP Server** preset. PostHog describes it as scoping access to a specific project. Without the preset, select only the scopes you need; PostHog recommends selecting only the scopes required for what you really use.
Copy the value immediately. PostHog shows a personal API key once and never displays it again after you refresh the page. Keys begin with `phx_`.
Go to **Connections → PostHog**, paste the key into **POSTHOG\_PERSONAL\_API\_KEY**, select your **POSTHOG\_REGION**, then click **Connect**.
## Connection details
| Field | Description |
| ------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **POSTHOG\_PERSONAL\_API\_KEY** | The personal API key you created, starting with `phx_` |
| **POSTHOG\_REGION** | **US** or **EU**, matching the PostHog cloud that issued the key |
PostHog Cloud US and PostHog Cloud EU are separate instances that serve different hosts, and PostHog directs API requests to the host where the instance lives. Select **US** if you sign in at `us.posthog.com` and **EU** if you sign in at `eu.posthog.com`.
One connection signs in as one account with one active project. To work across two projects, create a second PostHog connection with its own key and give it a distinct name.
## Required permissions
CloudThinker cannot reach anything the key's scopes exclude. A scope is a resource paired with read or write access, for example `insight:read`.
| Area | Why the agent needs it |
| ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Projects and organizations** | Name the account, list projects, and confirm which one is active |
| **Feature flags** | Report which flags exist, their rollout, and their status |
| **Insights and dashboards** | Read saved insights and the dashboards that hold them |
| **Surveys** | Report which surveys are running and what they ask |
| **Error tracking** | Rank issues, group them by status, and open issue details |
| **Query** | Run HogQL and read the event schema |
PostHog hides what the key's scopes exclude rather than announcing it: the capability is absent from the key's surface, and a call that reaches one anyway is refused for a missing scope. That is easy to mistake for a project with no flags or no errors. If the agent reports nothing where you expect data, check the key's scopes first.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex can:
| Capability | Description |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Workspace discovery** | Name the organization and active project, then list feature flags, insights, dashboards, surveys, and tracked errors |
| **Error triage** | Rank error issues by occurrence, group them by status, and open the details of the worst offenders |
| **Usage trends** | Summarize event volume over a period and name the top events |
| **Event schema** | Report which events and properties your project actually records |
| **HogQL queries** | Answer a question with a bounded query that carries its own row limit |
| **Approval-gated changes** | Create or update a feature flag, insight, dashboard, experiment, survey, annotation, cohort, or alert after you approve the exact inputs |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report summarize my PostHog setup: organization, active project, and whether feature flags and insights exist
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex which errors are hurting users most right now
@alex how has signup event volume moved over the last 7 days
@alex what feature flags are rolled out to more than half of users
```
## Every call asks for approval
PostHog's MCP server has hundreds of tools, so it serves them behind a single command tool that runs the rest. That one tool can reach every change PostHog allows, so CloudThinker classifies it as a write and never lets it run unattended.
The practical effect: PostHog calls pause for your decision, including ones that only read. In **Manual** mode the call waits for your approval. In **Auto** mode the classifier decides each call and records the outcome. See [Auto Mode](/guide/auto-mode) and [Approvals](/guide/approval).
Changing the active project or organization is a write. Approve it only when you intend the rest of the conversation to look at the other project.
## Troubleshooting
The key belongs to the other PostHog cloud, or it was revoked. Confirm **POSTHOG\_REGION** matches the host you sign in to, then create a fresh key on that instance and reconnect.
The key is missing that scope, so PostHog does not offer the capability to it. Open the key in PostHog and confirm it carries the areas you expect, or create a new key with the **MCP Server** preset. Adding the scope needs a reconnect; the other areas keep working meanwhile.
One connection has one active project. Ask the agent to switch projects and approve the change, or add a second PostHog connection scoped to the other project.
Calls run against PostHog's API and are subject to its rate limits, which are shared across all users and keys in your organization. There is no separate limit for this connection. Wait for the window to reset, then narrow the question so the agent reads less.
PostHog shows a personal API key once. Create a new one and update the connection; you cannot recover the original.
That is expected. PostHog's whole tool surface arrives as one command tool that CloudThinker treats as a write, so reads pause too.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Scope the key tightly** — PostHog states a personal API key can enable full access to your account, like logging in with your email and password. Use the **MCP Server** preset, and keep the key dedicated to CloudThinker so you can revoke it alone.
- **Your project API token stays out of chat** — the agent reads project details through a path that drops the token, so it is never quoted back into a conversation.
- **Review before you approve** — PostHog advises reviewing MCP tool calls before running them. The approval prompt shows the exact inputs first.
## Related
Cloud and observability investigation agent
How CloudThinker gates a write behind your confirmation
# Prometheus
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/prometheus
Connect Prometheus, Thanos, VictoriaMetrics, or Grafana Cloud for read-only PromQL queries, metric discovery, target health, and alert inspection
Connect your Prometheus-compatible monitoring backend to enable CloudThinker agents to run PromQL queries, discover metrics and labels, inspect scrape-target health, and correlate active alerts — all read-only.
The connector works with any backend that speaks the standard Prometheus HTTP API: self-hosted **Prometheus**, **Thanos**, **VictoriaMetrics**, and **Grafana Cloud**. Authentication supports **None**, **Bearer Token**, and **Basic Auth**.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support | Typical auth |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Prometheus** | Self-hosted, all recent releases | None or Bearer |
| **Thanos** | Querier behind an auth proxy | None, Bearer, or Basic |
| **VictoriaMetrics** | Single-node and cluster | None or Basic |
| **Grafana Cloud** | Prometheus / Mimir endpoint | Basic |
Against managed, Mimir-backed endpoints (Grafana Cloud), the `/api/v1/targets`, `/rules`, and `/alerts` paths are not exposed and return 404. This is expected — the query API (instant queries, range queries, labels, and metadata) works normally.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Prometheus-compatible endpoint** reachable from CloudThinker over HTTPS — self-hosted Prometheus, Thanos, VictoriaMetrics, or Grafana Cloud.
* Credentials if the endpoint requires authentication: a bearer token (Bearer Token mode) or a username and password (Basic Auth mode).
* For **Grafana Cloud**, the numeric instance ID and an access-policy token with the **metrics:read** scope.
***
## Choosing an auth mode
Pick the mode that matches how your endpoint is exposed:
| Mode | When to use | Fields |
| ---------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------- |
| **None** | Open or network-restricted endpoint (self-hosted Prometheus inside a private network) | URL only |
| **Bearer Token** | Endpoint behind a proxy or gateway that expects `Authorization: Bearer ` | URL + token |
| **Basic Auth** | Grafana Cloud, Thanos behind an auth proxy, or VictoriaMetrics with username/password | URL + username + password |
For **Grafana Cloud**, the username is your numeric instance ID and the password is an access-policy token with metrics read scope.
***
## Setup
Identify the base URL of your Prometheus HTTP API, e.g. `https://prometheus.your-domain.com` or your Grafana Cloud Prometheus query endpoint. CloudThinker appends the standard `/api/v1/...` paths.
* **None** — nothing to prepare; the endpoint is reachable without auth.
* **Bearer Token** — obtain the bearer token your proxy or gateway expects.
* **Basic Auth** — obtain the username and password (for Grafana Cloud, the numeric instance ID and an access-policy token).
Navigate to **Connections → Prometheus** and enter:
* **PROMETHEUS\_URL**: your endpoint, e.g. `https://prometheus.your-domain.com`
* **PROMETHEUS\_AUTH\_TYPE**: select **None**, **Bearer Token**, or **Basic Auth**
The credential fields appear based on your selection:
* **Bearer Token** → **PROMETHEUS\_TOKEN**
* **Basic Auth** → **PROMETHEUS\_USERNAME** and **PROMETHEUS\_PASSWORD**
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the endpoint and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **PROMETHEUS\_URL** | Base URL of the Prometheus HTTP API | `https://prometheus.your-domain.com` |
| **PROMETHEUS\_AUTH\_TYPE** | Authentication mode: `none`, `bearer`, or `basic` | `basic` |
| **PROMETHEUS\_TOKEN** | Bearer token (Bearer Token mode only) | `eyJhbGci...` |
| **PROMETHEUS\_USERNAME** | Username, or numeric instance ID for Grafana Cloud (Basic Auth only) | `1234567` |
| **PROMETHEUS\_PASSWORD** | Password or access-policy token (Basic Auth only) | `glc_xxxxx...` |
***
## Required permissions
The Prometheus connector is **read-only** — agents query and inspect but never write to your monitoring backend.
* For **Grafana Cloud**, create an access-policy token with the **metrics:read** scope only.
* For protected endpoints, ensure the credentials can reach the query, labels, targets, rules, and alerts API paths.
On Grafana Cloud, scope the access-policy token to `metrics:read` only — no other scope is needed for CloudThinker.
***
## Agent capabilities
The Prometheus connector is read-only — agents query and inspect, but never modify your monitoring backend.
| Capability | What the agent can do |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Instant queries** | Run a PromQL expression for a single point in time |
| **Range queries** | Run a PromQL expression over a time window with a step interval |
| **Metric discovery** | List available metric names, optionally filtered by prefix |
| **Label enumeration** | List label names and inspect the dimensions a metric is sliced by |
| **Target health** | Inspect scrape targets and spot ones that are down or unhealthy |
| **Alert inspection** | List active alerts and review configured alert rules |
| **Health probe** | Run the universal `up` query to confirm the backend and its targets are reachable |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run the Prometheus health probe and confirm all scrape targets are reachable
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex query node_cpu utilization across the cluster for the last hour and #report anything sustained above 85%
@kai list scrape targets that are currently down and #report which jobs they belong to
@alex show all active alerts and #recommend which to investigate first
```
Prometheus exposes no tool for label **values** — label enumeration returns label **names** only. Name the metric and the labels you care about so the agent can build an accurate PromQL selector.
***
## Troubleshooting
* Confirm **PROMETHEUS\_AUTH\_TYPE** matches what the endpoint expects.
* For **Bearer**, verify the token is current and has not been revoked.
* For **Basic**, verify the username/password — on Grafana Cloud, the username is the numeric instance ID and the password is the access-policy token.
* Expected on managed, Mimir-backed endpoints (Grafana Cloud) — these paths are not exposed.
* The query API (instant, range, labels, metadata) still works; use queries instead of target/rule inspection.
* Verify **PROMETHEUS\_URL** is reachable from CloudThinker over HTTPS.
* For self-hosted or network-restricted endpoints, confirm there's a network path from CloudThinker.
* Drop any trailing `/api/v1` from the URL — enter only the base URL.
* Confirm the metric exists with a discovery query before slicing by labels.
* Widen the time window — the series may not have samples in the requested range.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Read-only by design** — the connector never writes to your monitoring backend; no write permissions are needed
- **Least-privilege credentials** — on Grafana Cloud, scope the access-policy token to metrics read only
***
## Related
Dashboards and unified observability
Log search, metrics, and infrastructure monitoring
# Rollbar
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/rollbar
Connect Rollbar to CloudThinker for error triage, top-error tracking, and deployment-correlated investigation
Connect your Rollbar projects to enable CloudThinker agents to triage errors, rank top issues, review deployments, pull session-replay context, and update items across one or many projects. Rollbar authenticates with **project access tokens** — a read-scoped token covers investigation; a write-scoped token adds approval-gated item updates.
## Prerequisites
* A **Rollbar account** with access to the projects you want CloudThinker to see.
* A **project access token** for each project (read scope is enough for investigation).
* A **write-scoped token** only if you want agents to update item status (approval-gated).
Rollbar tokens are scoped **per project**. CloudThinker supports multiple projects in one connection — supply one token per project you want to include.
## Setup
In Rollbar, open the project and create (or copy) a **project access token** with **read** scope. Add a **write**-scoped token if you want agents to update items. See Rollbar's [MCP Server Setup](https://docs.rollbar.com/docs/mcp-server-setup#configuration) for token and configuration details.
Navigate to **Connections → Rollbar** and enter:
* **Project config (JSON)**: a `projects` array, one entry per Rollbar project, each with its `name` and `token`.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------- |
| **ROLLBAR\_CONFIG\_JSON** | A `projects` array mapping each Rollbar project to its access token. Each entry has a `name` and a `token`. | see below |
```json theme={null}
{
"projects": [
{ "name": "backend", "token": "tok_abc123" },
{ "name": "frontend", "token": "tok_xyz789" }
]
}
```
The token field is `token` (not `access_token`), and `projects` is an array. Format matches Rollbar's [MCP multi-project configuration](https://docs.rollbar.com/docs/mcp-server-setup#configuration).
## Required permissions
Read operations (project list, items, top errors, deployments, versions, replay) work with a **read**-scoped project access token. Item updates additionally require a **write**-scoped token **and** explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker.
Follow least privilege: use read-scoped tokens for investigation, and only add a write-scoped token for projects where agents should update items.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can investigate and act on errors across your configured projects.
### Read capabilities
| Category | What the agent can do |
| ----------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Projects** | List configured Rollbar projects and auto-scope to a single project |
| **Error items** | List current and active items, inspect item details and occurrence signals |
| **Top errors** | Surface the highest-impact errors and current production error posture |
| **Deployments** | Review recent deployments per project |
| **Releases & versions** | Pull version context and correlate releases with error activity |
| **Session replay** | Fetch replay context for items that have a recorded replay |
### Write capabilities
| Category | What the agent can do |
| ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Item updates** | Change an item's status (e.g. resolve, mute) — **requires approval** |
Item updates require explicit user approval before execution, and you must name the project, item, and desired change.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list my Rollbar projects and show the current top errors
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex triage current Rollbar items and rank them by impact #recommend
@alex show the top errors that appeared after the latest deployment
@alex review recent deployments and correlate them with new error activity
```
## Troubleshooting
The pasted project config is invalid JSON, does not include the requested project name, or maps the project to an expired token. List your configured projects first before treating a missing item or deployment as "no data".
This happens when several projects are configured. Name the project in your prompt (e.g. "for my-app") so the agent can scope the query.
Session replay context only exists for items that have a recorded replay. Items without replays will not return replay data — this is expected, not an error.
Updates are approval-gated and need a **write**-scoped token. Confirm the token for that project has write scope, then approve the action when prompted.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Least-privilege tokens** — use read-scoped project tokens for investigation; add write scope only when agents need to update item status.
- **Rotation** — rotate project access tokens regularly and update them in CloudThinker.
## Related
Logs, metrics, and incident investigation
How approval-gated actions work
# Rootly
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/rootly
Connect Rootly to CloudThinker to triage live incidents, review alerts, and track the action items an incident leaves behind
Connect your Rootly account to let CloudThinker agents triage open and recent incidents, review alerts and whether each became an incident, and track the follow-up work a response leaves behind.
Rootly authenticates with an **API key**, and agents read incident state on every question and can file one thing back: an incident action item, behind an approval prompt.
## Prerequisites
* A **Rootly account** with access to the organization you want to investigate.
* An **API key** with **Global** scope, keeping the role Rootly assigns it, so agents can read every team's incidents.
* Permission to open **Organization Settings** in Rootly, which is where keys are minted.
A Team-scoped or Personal key still connects. It returns fewer rows on the endpoints it can reach and `403` on the ones it cannot, which reads like a quiet account rather than a narrow credential.
## Setup
Sign in to Rootly and open the organization dropdown in the top-left corner.
Go to **Organization Settings → API Keys** and click **Generate New API Key**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Scope**: pick **Global** so the key reads across every team
Copy the key immediately and store it in your secret manager.
Navigate to **Connections → Rootly** and enter:
* **API Key**: the key you just generated
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credential and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the API key before you leave the page. If you lose it, generate a new key and reconnect — CloudThinker cannot recover the old one.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------- | ------- |
| **ROOTLY\_API\_TOKEN** | Rootly API key, Global scope | — |
CloudThinker calls the Rootly REST API at `https://api.rootly.com/v1` directly. There is no endpoint or region to configure.
## Required permissions
Mint the key with **Global** scope. A Global key can reach every entity in your Rootly instance. Rootly assigns it the On-Call and Incident Response role at generation, and that role's permissions decide what the key actually reads, so leave the role in place.
Follow least privilege where it costs you nothing else. Rootly scopes a key at creation and offers no per-endpoint permission list, so scope is the only control — pick Global for full visibility, or a Team key when one team's incidents are all you want agents to see.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents read your Rootly incident state. Filing, updating, or removing an action item asks you to approve it first.
| Capability | Description |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Discovery** | Read the acting identity and the account's own severity, team, service, environment, and incident-type names |
| **Incident triage** | List open and recent incidents with status, severity, kind, impacted services, responding teams, and lifecycle timestamps |
| **Alert review** | List alerts with status, source, urgency, owning service, and whether each became an incident |
| **Follow-up tracking** | List the action items an incident left behind, who owns each one, and what is still owed |
| **Action item writes** | Create, update, or delete one incident action item per run, after you approve it |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex run Rootly discovery and summarize the acting identity, the severity names this account uses, and how many teams and services it can read
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list the Rootly incidents still open right now with severity and impacted services
@alex show Rootly alerts from the last 24 hours and #report which ones never became an incident
@alex what action items are still owed on incident 4821, and who owns each one?
```
Agents cap every read and say so. A run that returns 20 rows against a total of 340 reports `truncated`, so ask for a narrower window rather than reading a row count as the account total.
## Write access
Agents cannot declare, update, resolve, or delete a Rootly incident. Declaring one through the API runs your account's real workflows: it opens a Slack channel, notifies subscribers, and pages the on-call rotation. Deleting the incident afterwards removes the record without retracting any of that, so incident writes stay in Rootly's own UI.
The one change agents can make is to an **incident action item** — file a new one, update an existing one, or remove one. An action item attaches to an incident that already exists and changes no incident state.
Every action item write asks you first. The agent names the action, the incident, and the exact fields, then waits. Your rejection ends it.
Two rules bound what an approval can do:
* **One write per run.** An approval covers that call, not the next one.
* **The read-back is the proof.** After the write the agent reads the item back and reports whether the change is present. Rootly answers an update that sets nothing with `200`, so the status code alone proves nothing.
## Troubleshooting
The key is missing, revoked, or mistyped. Generate a new key in **Organization Settings → API Keys** and reconnect.
The key is Team-scoped or Personal, or the role assigned to your Global key was narrowed. A narrow key answers `200` with fewer rows on the endpoints it can reach and `403` on the rest. Generate a Global key, leave its assigned role in place, and reconnect.
Rootly answers an unknown filter value with an empty list, not an error. A severity or team name that does not exist in your account looks exactly like a quiet week. Ask the agent to run discovery and quote the account's own names, then filter again.
Rootly allows 3,000 reads per API key per minute. Wait and retry. Reconnecting does not reset the limit.
The write asks for approval, so a declined prompt changes nothing. If you approved it and the run reports the request timed out, ask the agent to list the incident's action items before retrying — a retry can file the same item twice.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Global scope is broad** — a Global key reads every team's incidents. Use a Team key when agents should only see one team.
- **The write boundary is structural** — only the action item route can write, and it asks for approval every run.
## Related
On-call schedules, alerting, and escalation
Alert triage and incident sync during response
# ServiceNow
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/servicenow
Connect ServiceNow ITSM to CloudThinker for incident, change request, problem, and CMDB management
Connect your ServiceNow ITSM platform to enable CloudThinker agents to manage incidents, change requests, problems, and CMDB configuration items. ServiceNow authenticates with a **username and password** for a dedicated service account.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------ |
| **ServiceNow** | Xanadu, Yokohama, and newer releases |
| **ServiceNow ITSM** | All editions |
| **ServiceNow ITOM** | All editions |
ServiceNow supports N and N-1 releases. CloudThinker uses the ServiceNow REST API, which is stable across all recent releases.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **ServiceNow instance** running Xanadu or a newer release.
* For developer instances: admin credentials.
* For enterprise instances: a dedicated service account with the `itil`, `cmdb_read`, and `rest_api_explorer` roles.
***
## Setup
Your developer instance URL follows the format:
```
https://devXXXXX.service-now.com
```
Navigate to **Connections → ServiceNow** and enter:
* **Instance URL**: your developer instance URL
* **Username**: your admin username
* **Password**: your admin password
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
In ServiceNow, navigate to **User Administration → Users** and create a new user:
* **User ID**: `cloudthinker`
* **Password**: a strong, unique password
* **Active**: checked
Assign the following roles to the user:
* `itil` — for incident, change, and problem management
* `cmdb_read` — for CMDB read access
* `rest_api_explorer` — for API access
Your ServiceNow instance URL follows the format:
```
https://your-instance.service-now.com
```
Navigate to **Connections → ServiceNow** and enter:
* **Instance URL**: your ServiceNow instance URL
* **Username**: `cloudthinker`
* **Password**: the password you set
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ----------------------------- | ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------- |
| **SERVICENOW\_INSTANCE\_URL** | Your ServiceNow instance URL | `https://your-instance.service-now.com` |
| **SERVICENOW\_USERNAME** | ServiceNow username | `cloudthinker` |
| **SERVICENOW\_PASSWORD** | ServiceNow password | — |
***
## Required permissions
### Developer instance
No additional configuration needed — the default admin user has full access.
### Enterprise instance
| Role | Access |
| ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `itil` | Full CRUD on incidents, changes, problems, and other ITSM task tables |
| `cmdb_read` | Read-only access to CMDB configuration items |
| `rest_api_explorer` | REST API access |
Follow least privilege: for read-only use cases, create a custom role with only read permissions on the required tables instead of the full `itil` role.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can query and act on ServiceNow data.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Incident management** | Create, update, and resolve incidents |
| **Change requests** | Create and review change requests with risk assessment |
| **Problem management** | Track and analyze problem records |
| **CMDB queries** | Query configuration items and dependencies |
| **User & group lookup** | Find users, groups, and their assignments |
| **Natural language search** | Search across any ServiceNow table |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list all open P1 incidents in ServiceNow and show their priority and status
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list all open P1 incidents and #report on any patterns across services
@alex review pending change requests and assess risk
@alex query the CMDB for all production servers and their dependencies
```
***
## Troubleshooting
The ServiceNow instance URL is incorrect or the instance is in maintenance mode. Verify the URL is accessible and that no IP restrictions are blocking CloudThinker.
The username or password is incorrect, or the user account is locked. Verify credentials and ensure the user has `rest_api_explorer` or equivalent API access role.
The user lacks the required roles for the table being accessed. Check ACL rules and ensure `cmdb_read` is assigned for CMDB access.
ServiceNow may throttle API requests under heavy load. Reduce concurrent operations if you see 429 errors, and contact your ServiceNow admin to review rate limit settings.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Dedicated service account** — create a dedicated ServiceNow user for CloudThinker rather than using a shared admin account.
- **IP restrictions** — consider limiting API access to CloudThinker IPs in ServiceNow's access control settings.
***
## Related
Incident management and on-call
Correlate logs with ServiceNow incidents
# SigNoz
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/signoz
Connect SigNoz to CloudThinker to investigate service latency, search logs, audit alert rules, and drill into distributed traces across your stack
Connect your SigNoz instance to enable CloudThinker agents to investigate service latency, search and aggregate logs, audit alert rules, and drill into distributed traces across your stack.
SigNoz authenticates with a **Service Account API key** scoped to a role (`signoz-viewer` for read-only access, `signoz-admin` for write access).
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ------------------------ | ---------------------- |
| **SigNoz Cloud** | All tenants |
| **SigNoz (self-hosted)** | Self-managed instances |
SigNoz Cloud and self-hosted share the same interface, so the setup steps below are identical for both.
***
## Prerequisites
* A **SigNoz Cloud or self-hosted instance**.
* A **Service Account** to mint an API key (use `signoz-viewer` for read-only access or `signoz-admin` if CloudThinker should make changes).
* Your **SigNoz base URL**.
***
## Setup
In SigNoz, open **Settings → Workspace Settings → Service Accounts** and click **New Service Account**. Enter a name (e.g. `cloudthinker-svc`) and click **Create Service Account**.
On the **Overview** tab, use the **Roles** dropdown to pick `signoz-viewer` for read-only access or `signoz-admin` if CloudThinker should make changes. Click **Save Changes** so the role takes effect.
Switch to the **Keys** tab and click **Add Key**. Enter a key name (e.g. `cloudthinker-key`), optionally set an expiration date, click **Create Key**, and copy the key.
Navigate to **Connections → SigNoz** and enter:
* **SigNoz URL**: your instance base URL, e.g. `https://.signoz.cloud` (base URL only, no path, or requests return a 404)
* **API Key**: the key you copied
* **Log Level** (optional): leave as `info` unless you are debugging
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------- |
| **SIGNOZ\_URL** | Base URL of your instance, no path suffix | `https://.signoz.cloud` |
| **SIGNOZ\_API\_KEY** | Service Account key | Copied from the Keys tab |
| **LOG\_LEVEL** | MCP server log verbosity: `debug`, `info`, `warn`, or `error` | `info` |
***
## Required permissions
* **`signoz-viewer`** grants read-only access: querying services, logs, traces, metrics, and inspecting alerts, dashboards, and views.
* **`signoz-admin`** additionally grants write access: creating, updating, or deleting alerts, dashboards, views, and channels.
* Write operations also require explicit [approval](/guide/approval) in CloudThinker before they run.
Start with `signoz-viewer` for read-only investigation. Assign `signoz-admin` only when you want agents to manage alerts or dashboards.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can perform read operations across your observability data and a set of approval-gated write operations.
| Capability | What the agent can do |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Services (APM)** | List instrumented services, inspect top operations by latency |
| **Logs** | Search logs by time and filter, aggregate and group by patterns |
| **Traces** | Search traces, fetch full trace waterfalls, drill into dependencies |
| **Metrics** | List metrics and run time-series queries |
| **Dashboards** | List and inspect dashboards and templates |
| **Alerts** | List alert rules, inspect a rule and its state-transition history; create, update, or delete (admin only) |
| **Saved views** | List, inspect, create, update, or delete saved query views (admin only) |
| **Notification channels** | List, inspect, create, update, or delete channels (admin only) |
| **Documentation** | Search and fetch SigNoz documentation |
Write operations change live alerting and dashboards. CloudThinker requires explicit [approval](/guide/approval), naming the resource, before any write runs. Deletes are irreversible.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@tony list SigNoz services and confirm that metrics and traces are reachable
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@tony find the slowest operations for the checkout service
@tony search error logs and group spikes by service
@tony audit SigNoz alert rules and flag misconfigured thresholds
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the API key is correct and has not been revoked. Confirm you clicked **Save Changes** after assigning the role, then re-mint the key.
`SIGNOZ_URL` has an extra path suffix. Set it to the base URL only, e.g. `https://.signoz.cloud`, with no `/api/v1`.
The service account's role is too low for the action. Assign `signoz-admin` for write operations, then click **Save Changes**.
Log, trace, and metric searches need a time range. Ask the agent to use a recent window (e.g. the last 15 minutes) and widen it only if needed.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Base URL only** — set `SIGNOZ_URL` to the root URL with no path suffix; a trailing path causes all requests to return 404.
- **Approval for writes** — keep write operations approval-gated so alert and dashboard changes stay deliberate.
***
## Related
Observability and monitoring
Dashboards and metrics
# SonarQube
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/sonarqube
Connect SonarQube to CloudThinker for continuous code quality analysis, security scanning, and technical debt tracking
Connect your SonarQube instance to enable CloudThinker agents to analyze code quality, review security hotspots, and monitor quality gate statuses across your projects. CloudThinker uses the official SonarSource MCP server and authenticates with a **user token**.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| -------------------- | ----------------- |
| **SonarQube Cloud** | All organizations |
| **SonarQube Server** | 2025.4 and above |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **SonarQube Cloud** organization or a **SonarQube Server** instance running version 2025.4 or newer.
* A **user token** generated from **My Account → Security → Generate Tokens**.
* **Browse** permission on the projects CloudThinker should analyze.
CloudThinker uses the official SonarSource MCP server, which requires SonarQube Server 2025.4+ or SonarQube Cloud.
***
## Setup
Go to [SonarQube Cloud](https://sonarcloud.io/) → **My Account → Security → Generate Tokens**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Type**: `User Token`
* **Expires in**: set an appropriate duration
Copy the token — it will not be shown again.
Go to **My Organizations** and note the organization key from the URL:
```
https://sonarcloud.io/organizations/YOUR_ORG_KEY
```
Navigate to **Connections → SonarQube** and enter:
* **Token**: the token you generated
* **Deployment Type**: select **SonarQube Cloud**
* **Organization**: your organization key
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Go to your SonarQube instance → **My Account → Security → Generate Tokens**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **Type**: `User Token`
* **Expires in**: set an appropriate duration
Copy the token — it will not be shown again.
Your SonarQube Server URL is the address of your instance, e.g., `https://sonarqube.your-domain.com`.
Navigate to **Connections → SonarQube** and enter:
* **Token**: the token you generated
* **Deployment Type**: select **SonarQube Server**
* **Server URL**: your SonarQube instance URL
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
Copy the token immediately after generation. SonarQube will not show it again, and you'll need to create a new token if lost.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------------- | ----------------------------- | ----------------------------------- |
| **SONARQUBE\_TOKEN** | User token for authentication | `squ_xxxxx...` |
| **SONARQUBE\_DEPLOYMENT\_TYPE** | `cloud` or `self_hosted` | `cloud` |
| **SONARQUBE\_ORG** | Organization key (Cloud only) | `my-org` |
| **SONARQUBE\_URL** | Server URL (self-hosted only) | `https://sonarqube.your-domain.com` |
***
## Required permissions
* **Browse** permission on projects you want CloudThinker to analyze
* **Execute Analysis** permission for triggering scans
Follow least privilege: Browse permission is sufficient for read-only analysis. Add Administer and Create Projects only if CloudThinker must manage quality gates or onboard new projects.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can query code quality data across your SonarQube projects.
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Project browsing** | List and inspect all projects in your organization |
| **Issue analysis** | Retrieve and categorize bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells |
| **Quality gates** | Check quality gate statuses across projects |
| **Security hotspots** | Review and prioritize security hotspots |
| **Code duplication** | Analyze code duplication metrics |
| **Code metrics** | Inspect coverage, complexity, and maintainability ratings |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@oliver list all SonarQube projects and report quality gate statuses
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@oliver analyze code quality metrics across all projects and #report quality gate statuses
@oliver review all security hotspots and categorize them by risk level
@oliver list all blocker and critical severity issues broken down by type
```
***
## Troubleshooting
The token is incorrect, expired, or revoked. Confirm the token type is `User Token`, generate a new token if needed, and update the connection.
The organization key is incorrect, or the account is not a member of that organization. Confirm the key from **My Organizations** in SonarQube Cloud and verify membership.
The SonarQube URL is wrong or the instance is not reachable from CloudThinker. Verify the URL, check firewall rules, and confirm the SonarQube service is running.
The token owner lacks Browse permission on the projects. Check project visibility settings (public vs. private) and grant Browse permission for the projects CloudThinker should analyze.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **HTTPS only** — always use HTTPS for self-hosted instances to protect the token in transit.
- **User token type** — use a `User Token`, not a Global Analysis Token, to limit the token's scope to what CloudThinker needs.
***
## Related
Search code quality logs
Visualize code quality metrics
# Splunk Observability
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/splunkobservability
Connect Splunk Observability Cloud to CloudThinker for read-only APM investigation, service latency and error breakdowns, exemplar traces, metric discovery, and SignalFlow queries
Connect your Splunk Observability Cloud organization to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) list APM environments and services, break latency and errors down by tag, follow a dependency to the service that is failing, pull exemplar traces, search your metric catalog, and run SignalFlow queries.
The connection reads. It uses Splunk's hosted MCP Gateway and needs your realm and an access token.
## Prerequisites
* A **Splunk Observability Cloud** organization, and the **realm** that holds it. A realm is the self-contained deployment your organization runs in, named like `us1`, `eu0`, or `mon0`.
* An **organization administrator**, since Splunk requires the admin role to create an access token.
* A **supported, authorized organization**. Splunk supports the MCP server in every production realm except Google Cloud Platform and GovCloud realms, and an organization that is not authorized for the Observability MCP tools answers `Org Not Allowed`.
* **APM instrumentation**, for the APM answers. An organization that reports metrics but instruments no services returns zero environments; metric and SignalFlow questions still work.
## Setup
In Splunk Observability Cloud, open **Settings → Access Tokens**, select **New Token**, and name it. Select the **API** authorization scope, then the **read\_only** role when Splunk asks which roles to attach.
Choose who can read the token and set its expiration date. Splunk expires an access token 30 days after creation unless you change that here.
Select the token name, select **Show Token**, then **Copy**.
Open **Settings**, select your user name at the top of the menu, then open the **Organizations** tab. Your realm is there to view or copy.
Go to **Connections → Splunk Observability**, paste the token into **Access token**, enter your **Realm**, choose a **Gateway region**, then click **Connect**.
## Connection details
| Field | Description |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Access token** | An API-scope org access token with the `read_only` role |
| **Realm** | The realm that holds your organization, for example `us1` or `eu0` |
| **Gateway region** | Which Splunk Cloud Services region serves the MCP Gateway. Your requests and their results pass through it |
Splunk's rule is that the gateway region must correspond to your realm, and it points at a supported-regions table that is not published yet. Until it is, pick the region in your realm's geography; a region that does not serve your realm answers `404`.
Splunk's other credential, a **user API access token**, also reaches the gateway but expires when you log out of Splunk Observability Cloud, or after 30 days, whichever comes first. That takes the connection down with no warning, so use one only for a quick trial.
## Required permissions
`read_only` is enough. Splunk describes it as reaching every page and object a `power` user can, without creating, editing, or deleting anything, and every tool in this connection reads. `power` and `usage` both grant more than it needs.
Splunk enforces the role at its own API. The connection has no write lane, so an agent cannot create, edit, mute, or delete a detector, dashboard, chart, or alert here, and a change you want stays yours to make in Splunk.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex can:
| Capability | Description |
| ------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Environment and service discovery** | List APM environments and the services reporting in each one |
| **Service health** | Break latency, errors, and request counts down by tag for one service |
| **Dependency mapping** | Read inbound and outbound dependencies with their requests and latencies |
| **Trace investigation** | Pull exemplar traces for errors or latency buckets, then open the spans of one trace by ID |
| **Metric discovery** | Search the metric catalog, then read a metric's dimensions, properties, and sample values |
| **SignalFlow queries** | Write a program grounded in real metric names and execute it for a time series |
| **Alert review** | Search triggered alerts and incidents |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report summarize my Splunk Observability setup: realm, APM environments, services, and whether APM instrumentation is reporting
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex which service in the prod environment has the worst error rate
@alex why is checkout slow - break its latency down by tag and show me an error trace
@alex what metrics do we have for kafka, and chart the busiest one
```
## Troubleshooting
Splunk's `-32005`. Your organization is not authorized to reach the Observability MCP tools, and no credential or region change fixes it. Ask your Splunk administrator.
Splunk's `-32003`. The access token is invalid or expired. Check the **Access token** field, then confirm the token was issued in the organization your **Realm** names.
Splunk's `404`. The MCP endpoint is not served at the address used, so change the **Gateway region** to the one that corresponds to your realm.
Expect this from a token that does not match the realm: rather than failing, the gateway can answer with an empty tool set. Reissue the token in the organization that owns your realm.
Both credentials expire in 30 days by default, and a user API access token also expires the moment you log out. Create a new org access token with a longer expiration, or rotate the existing one.
Empty is often the true state: an organization with no APM instrumentation reports zero environments, and a catalogued metric can simply be idle. The agent says when a search did not finish instead of reporting zero, and trace search can outrun the time budget for one call. In either case, ask again over a different time range.
The catalog search matches loosely and returns only a few names per call, so a name you know exists can be missed. Ask for the exact name, or search with different terms.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Least privilege by role** — an API-scope token with `read_only` is the narrowest credential that runs every tool here, and Splunk enforces it server-side.
- **The gateway region is a data path** — your requests and their results travel through the region you select, so choose it deliberately when data residency matters. The realm and region are routing values, not credentials.
## Related
Trace queries, BubbleUp root-cause analysis, and approval-gated board and trigger changes
DQL queries, problem investigation, and vulnerability review
# Splunk Platform
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/splunkplatform
Connect Splunk Cloud Platform or Splunk Enterprise to CloudThinker for read-only SPL searches, index and event-volume review, and saved search inspection
Connect your Splunk deployment to let [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer) run bounded SPL searches over a time range, list your indexes and how many events each holds, read the roles the connection is working under, and inspect saved searches, their schedules, and their alert actions.
The connection is **read-only** and reaches Splunk on its management port with an authentication token.
## Supported platforms
| Platform | What it needs |
| ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Splunk Cloud Platform** | The management port opened to CloudThinker. It is closed to everyone by default |
| **Splunk Enterprise** | The management port reachable from CloudThinker, and TLS enabled, which token authentication requires |
Free trial Splunk Cloud Platform accounts cannot use the REST API, so this connection cannot reach them. No setting in your deployment changes it.
## Prerequisites
* A **Splunk Cloud Platform** deployment or a **Splunk Enterprise** instance.
* **Token authentication turned on**. Splunk ships it off, and the Tokens page says so plainly when it is off.
* An **administrator**, or any user holding a role that can issue tokens to others.
* A **Splunk user for CloudThinker** whose roles reach only the indexes you want read.
## Setup
Splunk closes the search head API allow list to every address by default, so nothing reaches port 8089 until you add CloudThinker to it.
Go to **Settings → Server settings → IP allow list**, open the **Search head API access** tab, click **Add IP subnet**, and add CloudThinker's egress IP addresses in CIDR notation. Click **Save**. Changes can take 15 minutes or more to propagate.
This page needs Splunk Cloud Platform 8.2.2201 or higher and a role with the `edit_ip_allow_list` capability, which `sc_admin` has by default. On an older deployment, open a case in the Splunk Support Portal with the same addresses instead.
Go to **Settings → Tokens**. If it reads `Token authentication is currently disabled`, click **Enable Token Authentication**. It applies immediately, with no restart.
On Splunk Enterprise this also needs TLS enabled on the instance and the app key value store running, which is the default on a search head.
Still on **Settings → Tokens**, click **New Token**. Enter the CloudThinker user in **User** and a short description in **Audience**.
Set an **Expiration**. Left blank, Splunk applies your deployment's global default, which is 30 days unless an administrator changed it.
Click **Create**, then copy the whole **Token** field before closing the dialog. Splunk shows a token once and cannot recover it.
Go to **Connections → Splunk Platform** and enter the token, the management port, and your management host: `.splunkcloud.com` on Splunk Cloud Platform, or your instance's hostname. Leave **TLS certificate** on **Verify TLS certificate**.
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker reads your server info and reports **Connected** with the Splunk product and version it found.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Management host** | Hostname only, with no scheme, port, path, or credentials | `acme.splunkcloud.com` |
| **Management port** | Splunk's management port | `8089` |
| **Authentication token** | The token you created, issued to the CloudThinker user | — |
| **TLS certificate** | Whether to verify the certificate Splunk presents | Verify TLS certificate |
The management port is not the port you browse to: Splunk Web defaults to **8000** and the management port to **8089**. Point this connection at 8000 and Splunk answers with a web page instead of a clean error. Splunk treats both as recommendations, so an instance that found 8089 taken at install time was assigned another.
A token works only on the instance that issued it, except across the nodes of a search head cluster.
## Required permissions
The token authenticates as the Splunk user it was issued to, so that user's roles decide everything the connection can reach. Issue it to a user created for CloudThinker rather than to a person's account: the scope stays visible in one role, and revoking the token affects nothing else.
| Grant | Why |
| --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| A role with the **`search`** capability | Splunk defines it as letting the user run a search using SPL. The default `user`, `power`, `admin`, and `sc_admin` roles all carry it |
| **Only the indexes you want read** | A Splunk role sets which indexes a user can search. This is the control that decides what agents can see |
Start from the narrowest role that carries `search` and widen only if you have to. Connecting also reads your server info, and Splunk publishes no capability requirement for that endpoint, so a narrow role can be refused there even though searching would have worked.
Splunk's search endpoint runs whatever SPL the token's roles permit, including SPL that writes. CloudThinker refuses those commands before sending them, and refuses SPL it cannot fully inspect, but that refusal lives in CloudThinker. The durable boundary is the role: restrict the token's user to the indexes it should read, and to no capability beyond searching them.
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, Alex can:
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Deployment overview** | Report the Splunk product, version, and license state, and the roles this connection works under |
| **Index review** | List indexes with their event counts, and name the ones holding nothing |
| **Log search** | Run an SPL search over a time window and return a bounded sample of the matches |
| **Aggregation** | Answer a question about shape with a query such as a count grouped by host or sourcetype |
| **Saved searches** | List the saved searches this token can see, with their schedules, and flag ones that are disabled but still scheduled, or that notify nothing |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report summarize my Splunk deployment: product and version, the indexes this connection can read with their event counts, and the roles it is working under
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex search Splunk for 5xx errors from the api service over the last 6 hours
@alex count Splunk events by sourcetype over the last 24 hours and #report the noisiest ones
@alex which Splunk saved searches are scheduled but disabled
```
Searches are bounded so a broad question cannot pull your whole deployment: the window defaults to 24 hours and reaches back at most 90 days, rows are capped, and each search runs under a time budget. Agents report the window and limits they used, and say when a search was cut short rather than presenting a partial result as a total.
## Troubleshooting
The token value is wrong, or token authentication is off. Check the value, then check **Settings → Tokens** for the disabled message. A rejected token never means the deployment is empty.
The user's roles are too narrow for that endpoint. Issue the token to a user with a search-capable role, and if a role that can already search is still refused, widen it a step at a time. Splunk publishes no capability requirement for this endpoint, so there is no single capability to name.
On Splunk Cloud Platform, nothing answering is the expected result before CloudThinker is on the search head API allow list. Add the addresses and allow time to propagate. On Splunk Enterprise, check the host, the port, and any firewall or security group between them. An answer that is not server info usually means the web port on 8000 rather than the management port, or a proxy in front of the deployment. If the host field is rejected outright, it carries a scheme, port, path, or credentials: enter the hostname alone.
The token expired. Splunk applies your deployment's global default when a token is created without an expiration, 30 days unless an administrator changed it. Create a replacement with an explicit expiration and update the connection. A token also stops working if an administrator disables or deletes it, deletes the user, or turns token authentication off.
The SPL writes or sends data, or it hides SPL that cannot be inspected. CloudThinker refuses commands such as `| delete`, `| outputlookup`, `| collect`, `| script`, and `| sendemail`, and refuses shapes whose real SPL it cannot see, such as a macro, a nested search, or an unterminated quote. Rewriting the query to get around a refusal is not the fix; make the change in Splunk yourself.
Check what this token can reach before reading a result as absence. Roles decide which indexes a user can search, so an excluded index never appears at all, and an empty result over an unreachable index is a permission boundary rather than a quiet system. Saved searches carry their own permissions, and Splunk gates seeing every one of them behind a capability it tells you to assign only to privileged roles, so a short list is this token's view. An index that does appear with no events genuinely holds nothing, which says nothing about the system it is named after. A search that times out establishes nothing at all: narrow the query, shorten the window, or group by a more specific field.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **The role is the real boundary** — restrict the token's user to the indexes it should read. The connection's refusals are a second line, not the first.
- **Keep certificate verification on** — the token is sent with every request. **Skip TLS verification** exists for a self-hosted instance still on Splunk's default certificate, and it sends that token to whichever server answers.
- **Set an expiration and rotate it** — Splunk shows a token once, and an expired token takes the connection down with no other warning.
## Related
Read-only log search, cluster and stream inspection, and message count analysis
Log analysis, index management, and search performance optimization
# Sumo Logic
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/sumologic
Connect Sumo Logic to CloudThinker for log search, monitor review, resource discovery, and Cloud SIEM insight triage
Connect Sumo Logic to let CloudThinker agents search logs, inspect monitors and ingest resources, review platform health events, and triage Cloud SIEM insights. The connection uses a read-only Access ID and Access Key tied to your Sumo Logic deployment.
## Prerequisites
* A **Sumo Logic account** and its deployment.
* The **Create Access Keys** role capability, or **Manage Access Keys** when an administrator creates the key for another account.
* A user or service account whose roles allow the six read scopes listed under [Required permissions](#required-permissions).
* A Cloud SIEM plan and role capabilities only if agents need to inspect Cloud SIEM insights.
## Setup
Sign in to Sumo Logic. In the new UI, go to **Administration → Account Security Settings → Access Keys**. In the classic UI, go to **Administration → Security → Access Keys**. See [Sumo Logic Access Keys](https://www.sumologic.com/help/docs/manage/security/access-keys/) for details.
Click **+ Add Access Key**, name the key `cloudthinker`, and set **Scopes** to **Custom**. Select exactly these scopes: `runLogSearch`, `viewCollectors`, `viewFields`, `viewMonitorsV2`, `viewPartitions`, and `viewPersonalAccessKeys`.
Click **Save**, then copy the **Access ID** and **Access Key** before closing the dialog. Sumo Logic shows them only once.
Navigate to **Connections → Sumo Logic** and enter:
* **Access ID**: the generated Access ID
* **Access Key**: the generated Access Key
* **Deployment**: the deployment that matches your Sumo Logic sign-in URL
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and both scope sets, then shows a **Connected** status.
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| -------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- |
| **SUMOLOGIC\_ACCESS\_ID** | Access ID generated with the key | Copied from the creation dialog |
| **SUMOLOGIC\_ACCESS\_KEY** | Secret shown once when the key is created | Copied from the creation dialog |
| **SUMOLOGIC\_REGION** | Sumo Logic deployment selected in CloudThinker | `us2` |
CloudThinker supports these deployment choices:
| Deployment | Location |
| ---------- | ----------------------------- |
| `us1` | US East (N. Virginia) |
| `us2` | US West (Oregon) |
| `eu` | Europe (Ireland) |
| `de` | Europe (Frankfurt) |
| `au` | Asia Pacific (Sydney) |
| `jp` | Asia Pacific (Tokyo) |
| `kr` | Asia Pacific (Seoul) |
| `ca` | Canada (Central) |
| `fed` | US East (N. Virginia) FedRAMP |
Use Sumo Logic's [API endpoint guide](https://www.sumologic.com/help/docs/api/about-apis/getting-started/) to identify the deployment from your account URL. The key works only in the deployment where it was created.
## Required permissions
The Access Key must contain exactly these assigned scopes and no others:
* `runLogSearch`
* `viewCollectors`
* `viewFields`
* `viewMonitorsV2`
* `viewPartitions`
* `viewPersonalAccessKeys`
The key owner's roles must grant the matching capabilities. Sumo Logic calculates effective scopes from the key scopes and the owner's role capabilities. CloudThinker rejects the connection if either the assigned or effective scopes differ from this six-scope set.
Create a dedicated key instead of reusing a default key. Default keys can carry permissions outside this read-only set and will fail CloudThinker's scope verification.
## Agent capabilities
| Capability | What the agent can do |
| -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Discovery** | List collectors, partitions, fields, and platform health events |
| **Log search** | Run a bounded Sumo Logic query over a specified time window |
| **Monitors** | List monitors and inspect whether they are disabled or currently triggered |
| **Cloud SIEM** | Triage insights, severity, status, assignee, and signal count when the plan and owner roles allow access |
This connection is read-only. Log searches create temporary search-job state and remove it after collecting the result.
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex #report list Sumo Logic collectors, partitions, fields, and platform health events, then summarize what is reachable
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex #report search Sumo Logic logs for 5xx responses from the api service in the last hour and group them by source host
@alex #alert review Sumo Logic monitors and identify which are disabled or currently triggered
@oliver #report triage open Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM insights and summarize severity, assignee, and signal count
```
## Troubleshooting
Check the Access ID and Access Key. If both are correct, select the deployment where the key was created. Another deployment rejects the key as an unknown credential.
Recreate the key with exactly the six [required scopes](#required-permissions). If an effective scope is missing, grant the owner the matching role capability, then test again.
The credentials are valid, but the key owner's roles do not allow that resource. Ask a Sumo Logic administrator to grant the matching View capability. A permission error does not mean the account has no data.
A 403 or 404 from Cloud SIEM means the feature is not included in the plan or the key owner's roles cannot reach it. Logs, monitors, and discovery can still work, so do not recreate the connection only for this result.
Sumo Logic limits API requests. Wait, then retry one focused request with a short time window instead of running several broad searches at once.
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **Exact read scope**: keep both assigned and effective scopes limited to the six required values. CloudThinker refuses broader keys.
- **Credential lifecycle**: use Sumo Logic's [rotate or delete controls](https://www.sumologic.com/help/docs/manage/security/access-keys/#edit-activatedeactivate-rotate-or-delete-access-keys), then update or remove the CloudThinker connection.
## Related
Log search, metrics, traces, and incident triage
Logs, metrics, infrastructure, and incidents
# Zabbix
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/connections/zabbix
Connect Zabbix monitoring to CloudThinker for infrastructure monitoring, alerting, and performance analysis
Connect your Zabbix monitoring platform to enable CloudThinker agents to manage hosts, analyze problems, handle maintenance windows, and perform infrastructure monitoring operations.
Zabbix authenticates with **username and password** (Zabbix 4.4+) or an **API token** (Zabbix 5.4+). API token authentication is preferred for production use.
***
## Supported platforms
| Platform | Support |
| ---------------- | ---------------------------------------------------- |
| **Zabbix** | 4.4+ (username/password auth), 5.4+ (API token auth) |
| **Zabbix Cloud** | All tiers |
***
## Prerequisites
* A **Zabbix frontend** (version 4.4 or later) accessible from CloudThinker.
* A **dedicated Zabbix user** with API access enabled, or an **API token** (Zabbix 5.4+).
* Your **Zabbix frontend URL**.
***
## Setup
Sign in to your Zabbix frontend as an administrator.
Go to **Users → Users** and create a new user:
* **Username**: `cloudthinker`
* **Password**: a strong, unique password
* **Role**: Super Admin role (required for full API access) or a custom role with API access enabled
Go to **Administration → General → API Tokens** and click **Create API token**:
* **Name**: `cloudthinker`
* **User**: select the user created above
* **Expires at**: set an appropriate expiration date
Copy the token — it will not be shown again.
Your Zabbix URL is the address of your Zabbix frontend, e.g. `https://zabbix.your-domain.com`.
Navigate to **Connections → Zabbix** and enter:
* **Zabbix URL**: your Zabbix frontend URL
* **Auth Type**: select **Username & Password** or **API Token**
* **Username / Password** or **API Token**: the credentials created above
Click **Connect**. CloudThinker verifies the credentials and shows a **Connected** status.
API tokens require Zabbix 5.4 or later. For earlier versions, use username and password authentication.
***
## Connection details
| Field | Description | Example |
| ---------------------- | ---------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| **ZABBIX\_URL** | Your Zabbix frontend URL | `https://zabbix.your-domain.com` |
| **ZABBIX\_AUTH\_TYPE** | Authentication method | `credentials` or `token` |
| **ZABBIX\_USERNAME** | Zabbix username (credentials auth) | `cloudthinker` |
| **ZABBIX\_PASSWORD** | Zabbix password (credentials auth) | — |
| **ZABBIX\_TOKEN** | Zabbix API token (token auth) | — |
***
## Required permissions
**Minimum (read-only monitoring):**
* User role with Zabbix API access enabled
* Read access to host groups you want to monitor
**Recommended (full operations):**
* Super Admin role or a custom role with API access enabled, read/write access to hosts, templates, triggers, and events, and permission to create and modify maintenance windows
Follow least privilege: grant only the host groups and permissions CloudThinker needs for your use case.
***
## Agent capabilities
Once connected, agents can perform monitoring and operational tasks across your Zabbix environment.
| Capability | Description |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Host management** | List, inspect, enable, and disable monitored hosts |
| **Problem analysis** | Retrieve active problems, analyze patterns, correlate events |
| **Trigger management** | View and modify alert trigger configurations |
| **Maintenance windows** | Create and manage maintenance periods to suppress alerts |
| **Template operations** | Inspect and apply monitoring templates across hosts |
| **Dashboard access** | Retrieve Zabbix dashboards and graph data |
### Verify the connection
```text theme={null}
@alex list Zabbix hosts and summarize active problem count by severity
```
### Example prompts
```text theme={null}
@alex list all Zabbix hosts with active problems and their severity
@alex analyze active Zabbix problems with severity >= High and #recommend remediation steps
@oliver review Zabbix trigger configurations for security-related alerts
```
***
## Troubleshooting
Verify the Zabbix URL is accessible from CloudThinker. Check firewall rules to ensure inbound connections are allowed on port 80 or 443, and confirm the Zabbix frontend is running.
Verify the username and password are correct and the user account is not locked or disabled. For API token auth, verify the token has not expired and the user has API access enabled in their role.
Verify the user has sufficient permissions for the requested operations. Check that host group access is granted to the user. For write operations, confirm the role permits API write access.
Go to **Administration → API Tokens** in Zabbix, delete the expired token, and create a new one. Update the token in the CloudThinker connection settings.
***
## Security
* **Least privilege** — grant only the permissions the agents need for your use case; start read-only and widen later.
* **Read-only by default** — use read-only credentials unless you want agents to make changes through this connection.
* **Rotate credentials** — rotate keys and tokens on your normal schedule; CloudThinker picks up the new value when you update the connection.
* **Revoke on offboarding** — remove the credential at the provider when you delete a connection or a teammate leaves.
- **API token over credentials** — use API token authentication (Zabbix 5.4+) instead of username/password for better auditability.
- **Set token expiration** — configure an appropriate expiration date on API tokens and rotate them on schedule.
***
## Related
Visualize Zabbix metrics in Grafana
Forward Zabbix logs to Elasticsearch
# Deployment
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/deployment/overview
Deploy CloudThinker in self-hosted, dedicated, or air-gapped environments for regulated and data-residency-constrained use cases
**Preview** — Self-hosted CloudThinker is in early access for design partners. Supported topologies, system requirements, and upgrade paths may change before general availability. [Contact us](https://cloudthinker.io/contact) to discuss your environment.
Most CloudThinker customers run on the multi-tenant SaaS at [app.cloudthinker.io](https://app.cloudthinker.io). For environments with strict data residency, compliance, or network-isolation requirements, CloudThinker also supports dedicated and self-hosted deployments.
***
## Deployment models
| Model | Description |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| SaaS (Multi-Tenant) | Default — managed by CloudThinker. Fastest path to value, no operational burden. |
| Dedicated Cloud | Single-tenant instance hosted by CloudThinker in your preferred region and cloud |
| Self-Hosted | Run CloudThinker inside your own VPC on Kubernetes — your data never leaves your perimeter |
| Air-Gapped | Fully offline install for classified or regulated environments |
***
## System requirements
| Resource | Minimum (POC) | Production |
| ------------------ | ------------------ | ------------------- |
| **Kubernetes** | 1.34+ | 1.34+ |
| **Nodes** | 3 × 4 vCPU / 16 GB | 6+ × 8 vCPU / 32 GB |
| **PostgreSQL** | 14+ | 15+ with HA |
| **Object storage** | S3 or MinIO | Same |
| **LLM access** | AWS Bedrock | Same |
***
## Upgrades
| Channel | Cadence |
| ---------- | ----------------------------------------- |
| **Stable** | Monthly |
| **LTS** | Quarterly with 12-month support |
| **Patch** | As needed for security and critical fixes |
Helm-based upgrades are performed in place with zero downtime for the API and agent runtime.
***
## Compliance
Self-hosted deployments inherit the security posture of your cluster — keep CloudThinker inside the same boundary as the workloads it operates on. Self-hosted installs do not need re-certification because your audit boundary already covers the cluster.
***
## Related
Authentication, RBAC, and security controls
SAML and OIDC single sign-on
Automated user provisioning
# Knowledge Base
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/knowledge
Create and manage knowledge bases to enhance your AI agents with organizational knowledge, documents, and procedures
Give your AI agents access to your organizational knowledge by uploading documents or crawling websites. Your agents can then reference this information to provide better, more contextual responses.
***
## The problem with generic AI
Generic AI models know AWS best practices — but they don't know *your* AWS environment. They don't know that your company policy requires all S3 buckets to use SSE-KMS with a specific key ARN. They don't know that your disaster recovery RTO is 4 hours, not the AWS-recommended 1 hour. They don't know your incident response procedure mandates an Opsgenie alert before any remediation action.
The result: generic AI recommendations that conflict with your policies, contradict your existing documentation, or miss company-specific context that every senior engineer knows.
**Knowledge Base solves this.** By connecting your runbooks, policies, compliance documents, and architecture documentation, CloudThinker agents operate with your organization's institutional knowledge — not just general cloud best practices.
***
## How it compares to generic RAG
| Approach | Generic AI | CloudThinker Knowledge Base |
| --------------------------- | ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- |
| **Company policies** | Unknown | Indexed and referenced in every relevant response |
| **Custom runbooks** | Not available | Automatically pulled when relevant |
| **Architecture context** | Generic best practices | Your specific design decisions and constraints |
| **Compliance requirements** | Standard frameworks | Your specific audit requirements and evidence formats |
| **Incident procedures** | Generic steps | Your company's exact escalation paths and tools |
| Source type | What it does |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Document Upload** | Add PDFs, Word docs, and text files to create knowledge repositories |
| **Web Crawling** | Automatically index websites, wikis, and documentation sites |
***
## Quick setup
Go to **Knowledge** in CloudThinker and click **"Create Knowledge Base"**
Select **Document Upload** or **Web Crawler** based on your content source
* **Name**: Give it a descriptive name
* **Description**: Brief overview of the content
* **Access**: Choose who can use this knowledge base
Upload documents or set up web crawling (see sections below)
***
## Document upload
### Supported files
* **Text**: TXT, Markdown, RTF
* **Office**: Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx)
* **PDF**: Adobe PDF files
* **Web**: HTML, XML, JSON
### How to upload
1. Click **"Upload Document"**
2. Choose your file (max 50MB)
3. Add title and tags
4. Click **"Upload"**
1. Drag and drop up to 100 files
2. Or upload a ZIP file
3. Add batch metadata
4. Click **"Process All"**
***
## Web crawling
### Basic setup
Provide the starting webpage URL to crawl
* **Depth**: How many clicks deep (1-10)
* **Pages**: Maximum pages to crawl (100-10,000)
* **One-time**: Single crawl
* **Daily**: Update every 24 hours
* **Weekly**: Weekly updates
* **Manual**: Only when you trigger it
### Common examples
* Documentation sites (GitBook, Confluence)
* Company wikis
* Help centers and FAQs
* GitHub repositories
***
## Using knowledge bases
### Access modes
| Mode | Behavior |
| -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Always Available** (automatic) | Agents automatically use this knowledge in all conversations |
| **Manual Search** (on-demand) | Agents only use when you ask with `#kb` command |
### Agent commands
```text theme={null}
# Search any knowledge base
@alex #kb find AWS cost optimization strategies
# Search specific knowledge base
@tony #kb:database-guide PostgreSQL backup procedures
# Let agents decide when to use knowledge (Always mode)
@oliver analyze this security incident
# Oliver automatically references security procedures
```
### Agent examples
**Knowledge Types:**
* AWS documentation and guides
* Cost optimization playbooks
* Infrastructure procedures
**Example:**
```
@alex #kb find EC2 cost savings
→ References uploaded cost optimization guide
→ Provides specific recommendations
```
**Knowledge Types:**
* Security policies and procedures
* Compliance documentation
* Incident response playbooks
**Example:**
```
@oliver #kb security incident response
→ References uploaded incident procedures
→ Provides step-by-step guidance
```
**Knowledge Types:**
* Database administration guides
* Performance tuning documentation
* Backup and recovery procedures
**Example:**
```
@tony #kb PostgreSQL performance tuning
→ References database optimization guide
→ Suggests specific improvements
```
***
## Best practices
### Content organization
**Document structure (make it searchable):**
* Use clear headings (H1, H2, H3)
* Include table of contents
* Add relevant keywords
* Use bullet points and lists
**Tagging (smart organization):**
* Use consistent tag names
* Include functional tags (security, database, aws)
* Add priority levels (critical, reference)
* Include department/team tags
### Maintenance tips
* Review and update content monthly
* Remove outdated documents
* Monitor which content gets used most
* Test search functionality regularly
***
## Quick examples
### Example 1: Company procedures
```yaml theme={null}
Name: "Operations Procedures"
Type: Document Upload
Content:
- Employee handbook (PDF)
- IT policies (Word docs)
- Emergency procedures (PDF)
Access: Always Available
Agents: All agents can reference
```
### Example 2: Technical documentation
```yaml theme={null}
Name: "AWS Documentation"
Type: Web Crawler
URL: "https://docs.aws.amazon.com/"
Schedule: Weekly updates
Access: Manual (#kb command)
Agents: Alex (primary), others as needed
```
### Example 3: Security policies
```yaml theme={null}
Name: "Security Compliance"
Type: Document Upload
Content:
- SOC 2 checklist (PDF)
- Security policies (Multiple PDFs)
- Incident templates (Word)
Access: Manual (sensitive content)
Agents: Oliver (full access), others (limited)
```
***
## Getting started checklist
* [ ] Identify key documents and websites
* [ ] Decide on naming conventions
* [ ] Choose access levels for each knowledge base
* [ ] Create knowledge base in CloudThinker
* [ ] Upload 3-5 important documents OR set up web crawling
* [ ] Add proper tags and descriptions
* [ ] Test search functionality
* [ ] Set knowledge base access for each agent
* [ ] Test manual search with `#kb` commands
* [ ] Configure "Always Available" for critical knowledge
* [ ] Train your team on usage commands
* [ ] Check which content gets used most
* [ ] Update outdated information
* [ ] Add new knowledge based on team needs
* [ ] Gather feedback and optimize
***
## Troubleshooting
**Solutions:**
* Check if agent has access to the knowledge base
* Verify knowledge base is set to "Always Available" or use `#kb` command
* Improve document titles and add more keywords
* Test search with different terms
**Solutions:**
* Check file size (max 50MB per file)
* Ensure file type is supported
* Verify document isn't password-protected
* Try uploading one file at a time
**Solutions:**
* Verify the website URL is accessible
* Check if website blocks crawlers (robots.txt)
* Start with smaller page limits
* Try crawling a single page first
***
## Next steps
**Success Tips:**
* Start small with your most important documents
* Use clear, descriptive names for everything
* Test search functionality before going live
* Train your team on the `#kb` command syntax
**Get Started Now**
Create your first knowledge base and start uploading content
**Setup AI Agents**
Configure your agents to use your knowledge bases effectively
# MCP Server
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/mcp/overview
Expose CloudThinker's cloud-ops tools and data to external MCP-compatible AI clients like Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf
**Preview** — The CloudThinker MCP server is in early access. The tool surface and transport options may change before general availability. [Contact us](https://cloudthinker.io/contact) to join the preview.
CloudThinker can act as a [Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) (MCP) server, letting any MCP-compatible AI client call CloudThinker tools and read CloudThinker data using your workspace's authenticated context.
This is the inverse of the existing [MCP connection](/guide/connections/mcp), which lets CloudThinker agents call *your* external MCP servers.
***
## What it enables
| Capability | Description |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Cloud Ops in Your IDE | Query AWS, GCP, Azure inventory and costs from Cursor, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client |
| Use Your Connections | Reach databases, Kubernetes clusters, and observability tools you already connected to CloudThinker |
| Run Skills Remotely | Invoke your workspace [skills](/guide/skills/overview) from any MCP-compatible host |
| Shared Context | Read recommendations, dashboards, and incident memory the same way the web console does |
***
## Exposed tools
The MCP server surfaces a curated subset of agent capabilities:
| Tool family | What it does |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `resources.*` | Query the unified [resource inventory](/guide/infrastructure/resources) and topology |
| `recommendations.*` | List, accept, dismiss, or comment on optimization recommendations |
| `costs.*` | Run cost queries and forecasts across cloud accounts |
| `incidents.*` | Create incidents, attach signals, and read RCA results |
| `dashboards.*` | Read built-in and custom dashboards |
| `skills.*` | Execute workspace skills with parameters |
The exact tool list is exposed through MCP discovery — clients see whatever the workspace API key is permitted to use.
***
## Transports
| Transport | Best For |
| -------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **HTTP + SSE** | Cloud-hosted clients, remote agents, and team-shared setups |
| **stdio** | Local IDEs and desktop apps (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf) launched via a local proxy |
***
## Authentication
The MCP server authenticates with the same workspace [API keys](/guide/api/overview) used by the REST API. The key is scoped to a single workspace and inherits the role of the issuing member.
***
## Related
Connect external MCP servers as CloudThinker tools
Same operations over a REST surface
Package domain knowledge into reusable workflows
Terminal access to the same capabilities
# Notifications Center
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/notifications
Configure and manage role-specific notifications across email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams channels for timely cloud operations alerts
Stay informed about critical cloud operations with intelligent, role-specific notifications. Configure how and where you receive alerts for CloudThinker features with flexible severity filtering and multiple delivery channels.
***
## The problem with alert fatigue
Generic cloud alerting sends everything to everyone — and when everyone gets everything, nobody reads anything. Security engineers don't need to see every cost recommendation. Finance teams don't need Kubernetes OOMKill alerts. On-call engineers don't need compliance digest emails at 3 AM.
The result: critical alerts get buried in noise, teams disable notifications entirely, and important findings go unacted on.
CloudThinker's Notifications Center solves this with role-based routing and severity filtering: each team member configures what they care about, at what severity threshold, through which channel — so the right person gets the right alert at the right time.
| Feature | Description |
| ------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Smart Routing** (channel-based delivery) | Route notifications to email or Slack channels based on feature categories and severity levels |
| **Alert Fatigue Control** (intelligent filtering) | Configure severity thresholds to receive only the alerts that matter to your role |
| **Multi-Channel Support** (flexible preferences) | Receive notifications via email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or any combination, tailored to each feature |
| **Multi-Workspace** (workspace isolation) | Configure separate notification preferences for each workspace you manage |
***
## Quick start
In CloudThinker, navigate to **Notifications** — or open **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) and select **Notifications** under **Integrations**
Choose which CloudThinker feature you want to configure notifications for
(Alerts, Agents & Tasks, Code Review, etc.)
Toggle Email, Slack, and/or Microsoft Teams on for the selected feature
Choose your minimum severity threshold (Critical, High, Medium, Low)
For external email recipients, confirm the verification link sent to your
email address
***
## Configuration interface
The notification system organizes around CloudThinker's core features, allowing independent configuration for each area. Access comprehensive settings by selecting each feature category.
### Feature categories
Configure notifications independently for each area:
* **Alerts** - Critical and operational alert notifications for system events
* **Agents & Tasks** - Agent interruptions and task completions
* **[Code Review](/guide/code-review/setup) / Pipeline Monitoring** - Code review findings with severity breakdown, pipeline execution status, and failure notifications
* **[CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers) / [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment)** - Cost optimization recommendations and AWS assessment updates
* **Discussions** - Team discussion activity, replies, and resolved discussions
* **Resources** - Infrastructure resource changes and updates
***
## Channel configuration
Each feature category supports flexible channel configuration with independent control:
### Email notifications
Send notifications to verified email addresses, supporting both workspace members and external recipients.
**Key Features:**
* Verified external recipients for security
* Multiple email addresses per feature
* Workspace member defaults
* Email verification required for external addresses
### [Slack integration](/guide/slack-integration)
Route notifications to Slack channels instead of direct messages, reducing notification fatigue while maintaining team awareness. Start typing to filter channels by name — the search matches partial names and is case-insensitive, making it easy to find channels in large workspaces.
**Key Features:**
* Channel-based routing (not direct messages)
* Searchable channel picker with type-ahead filtering
* Reduces notification overload
* Team-wide visibility and opt-in
* Context-aware channel selection
### [Microsoft Teams integration](/guide/teams-integration)
Route notifications to Microsoft Teams channels using Adaptive Cards for rich, structured alerts. Teams notifications work the same way as Slack — configure per-feature categories, select a Teams channel, and set severity thresholds.
**Key Features:**
* Adaptive Card format with structured data and action buttons
* Channel-based routing with searchable picker
* Per-category channel selection (e.g., code review findings to `#code-reviews`, incidents to `#incidents`)
* Same severity threshold filtering as other channels
* Requires [Teams integration](/guide/teams-integration) to be connected first
***
## Severity filtering
Filter notifications by severity level to receive only alerts meeting your threshold:
* **Low** - Informational updates and general notifications
* **Medium** - Important updates requiring attention and review
* **High** - Critical issues affecting operations that need prompt action
* **Critical** - System-critical alerts requiring immediate action
Each channel can have independent severity thresholds. For example, configure Slack for Medium and above while Email is set to High and above.
***
## Notification categories in detail
### Alerts
System-wide alert notifications for critical events and important operational updates requiring attention.
### Agents & tasks
Notifications for AI agent activity and task execution:
* **Agent Interrupts** - When an AI agent pauses and requires your action (e.g., to approve a tool call)
* **Scheduled Task Resource Missing** - When a scheduled task cannot run because a required resource was deleted or unavailable
### [Code Review](/guide/code-review/setup) / Pipeline monitoring
#### Pipeline monitoring
* Pipeline execution status updates
* Pipeline failure notifications with AI-analyzed logs
#### Code review findings
When an AI code review completes on a pull/merge request, CloudThinker sends a notification with:
* **Severity summary** — count of critical, high, medium, and low findings
* **Finding details** — title, severity, file path, and line number for up to 10 findings
* **Resolved tracking** — count of previously identified findings that have been resolved
* **Action link** — direct link to the code review dashboard
Code review findings notifications are sent automatically after each review completes. Configure severity thresholds to control which reviews trigger a notification — for example, set to **High** to only be notified when critical or high-severity findings are detected.
Each notification channel renders findings in its native format:
* **Slack** — [Block Kit message](/guide/slack-integration#code-review-notifications) with severity emoji indicators
* **Microsoft Teams** — [Adaptive Card](/guide/teams-integration#code-review-notifications) with FactSet severity table
* **Email** — HTML table with findings details and dashboard link
### [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers) / [Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment)
Notifications for cost optimization and cloud assessment updates:
* Cost optimization recommendations from [CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers)
* AWS [Well-Architected Assessment](/guide/infrastructure/assessment) completion and results
* Cost anomaly detection
### Discussions
Notifications for team collaboration activities:
* **Replies** - When someone replies directly to one of your comments
* **Resolved Discussions** - When a discussion you're involved in is marked as resolved
***
## Key features
### Email verification
To prevent unauthorized access and data leakage, external email recipients must be verified before receiving notifications:
1. Enter the external email address in the notification settings
2. A verification link is sent to that email address
3. The recipient must click the verification link to confirm
4. Only verified addresses receive workspace notifications
This ensures that sensitive cloud operations data is only distributed to intended recipients.
### Slack channel-based routing
Instead of sending direct messages to individual users, notifications route to Slack channels:
* **Better Context** - All team members can see notifications in the channel
* **Reduced Fatigue** - Single channel per feature instead of individual messages
* **Opt-In Subscriptions** - Team members can choose to join specific notification channels
* **Team Awareness** - Operations visibility across your team
### Multi-workspace support
Configure separate notification preferences for each workspace you belong to:
* Different severity thresholds per workspace
* Role-specific configurations
* Workspace-specific channels
* Tailored alert strategies based on workspace context
***
## Best practices
### Reducing alert fatigue
* **Configure severity filters appropriately** - Set High or Critical for roles that manage many features
* **Use Slack or Teams channels** - Route team notifications to channels instead of direct messages
* **Disable unused features** - Turn off notifications for features your team doesn't actively manage
* **Gradual enablement** - Start with Critical alerts, then gradually add lower severity levels
### Security considerations
* **Always verify external emails** - Ensure only authorized recipients have access to sensitive data
* **Use workspace-specific channels** - Route sensitive operations to dedicated Slack or Teams channels
* **Review recipients regularly** - Periodically audit who receives notifications
* **Restrict channel access** - Limit notification channel membership to relevant team members
* **Monitor notification activity** - Track who receives what notifications for compliance
### Configuration strategy
1. **Start with Critical + High severity** for critical operational alerts
2. **Gradually add Medium severity** as your team becomes familiar with the system
3. **Use different channels for different features** - Keep infrastructure alerts separate from cost alerts
4. **Tailor by role** - Adjust thresholds based on team member responsibilities
5. **Test notification delivery** - Verify emails and Slack messages are reaching intended recipients
***
## Next steps
**Begin Setup**
Configure your first notification preferences in CloudThinker
**Understand Agents**
Get to know CloudThinker's AI agents and their capabilities
**Setup Slack**
Connect your Slack workspace for richer team collaboration
**Setup Teams**
Connect your Microsoft Teams workspace for Adaptive Card notifications
# Security & Authentication
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/security/overview
Secure access to CloudThinker with MFA, SSO, and role-based access control
CloudThinker implements enterprise-grade security to protect your cloud infrastructure data and ensure only authorized users can access sensitive operations.
***
## Why security matters for an AI operations platform
CloudThinker agents have read (and optionally write) access to your cloud infrastructure. This is powerful — it enables autonomous analysis and optimization across all your cloud accounts. But it also means the platform itself needs to be hardened against unauthorized access, credential leakage, and prompt injection attacks.
The security model is designed around these principles:
* **Least-privilege by default**: agents use read-only credentials unless write access is explicitly configured and approved
* **Zero persistence**: no agent actions modify infrastructure without going through the [approval workflow](/guide/approval)
* **Defense-in-depth**: MFA, SSO, RBAC, audit logging, and sandbox isolation combine to protect against both external attacks and internal misuse
* **Transparent**: every agent action is logged with the user who initiated it, the approval chain, and the exact command executed
## Authentication methods
| Method | Description |
| --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| Email & Password | Standard authentication with secure password requirements |
| Multi-Factor Authentication | TOTP-based MFA for additional security |
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | SAML/OIDC integration with your identity provider |
| API Keys | Secure programmatic access to the API |
***
## Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Add an extra layer of security with TOTP-based MFA:
### Enabling MFA
Go to **Profile > Security Settings**
Click **Enable Multi-Factor Authentication**
Use an authenticator app (Google Authenticator, Authy, 1Password, etc.) to scan the QR code
Enter the 6-digit code from your authenticator to confirm setup
Download and securely store your backup codes for account recovery
### MFA at login
With MFA enabled:
1. Enter your email and password
2. Enter the current 6-digit code from your authenticator
3. Access granted
### Recovery options
If you lose access to your authenticator:
* Use a backup code (one-time use)
* Contact organization admin for MFA reset
* Contact support with identity verification
Store backup codes securely. Each code can only be used once. If you lose all backup codes and your authenticator, account recovery may require identity verification.
***
## Single sign-on (SSO)
Enterprise plans support [SSO](/guide/security/sso) integration:
SSO is configured by Organization Owners in **Admin Settings → Identity and access**. Key capabilities:
* **Domain verification** — prove ownership of your email domain before enabling SSO
* **SAML or OIDC** — choose the protocol your identity provider supports
* **SSO enforcement** — optionally require all users with a verified domain to authenticate via SSO
* **JIT provisioning** — auto-create user accounts on first SSO login
* **SCIM directory sync** — automate user and group provisioning from your IdP
### Configuring SSO
Step-by-step setup for Google Workspace, Azure AD, AWS IAM Identity Center, Okta, OneLogin, and generic SAML/OIDC
### SSO enforcement
Organization admins can enforce SSO:
* Require all users to authenticate via SSO
* Disable password-based login
* Auto-provision users on first SSO login
* Auto-deprovision when removed from IdP
***
## Role-based access control (RBAC)
Control what users can do with granular permissions:
### Organization roles
| Role | Description | Permissions |
| ---------- | --------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------- |
| **Owner** | Full organization control | All permissions, billing, member management |
| **Admin** | Organization administration | Manage workspaces, members, settings (no billing) |
| **Member** | Standard access | Access assigned workspaces, use agents |
| **Viewer** | Read-only access | View dashboards and reports only |
### Workspace roles
| Role | Description | Permissions |
| ------------------- | ---------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| **Workspace Admin** | Full workspace control | All workspace operations, member management |
| **Editor** | Standard operations | Run agents, create recommendations, modify settings |
| **Operator** | Limited operations | Run agents, view data, cannot modify settings |
| **Viewer** | Read-only | View dashboards, reports, and recommendations |
### Permission matrix
| Action | Owner | Admin | Editor | Operator | Viewer |
| ----------------------- | ----- | ----- | ------ | -------- | ------ |
| View dashboards | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Run agent conversations | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Create recommendations | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Approve operations | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage connections | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Manage members | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Organization settings | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
| Billing | Yes | No | No | No | No |
***
## API authentication
Secure programmatic access to CloudThinker:
### API keys
Generate API keys for automation:
1. Go to **Profile > API Keys**
2. Click **Create API Key**
3. Name the key and set expiration
4. Copy the key (shown only once)
5. Use in API requests
```bash theme={null}
# Example API request
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer " \
https://api.cloudthinker.io/v1/workspaces
```
### Key management
* **Rotation**: Regularly rotate keys (recommended: every 90 days)
* **Scoping**: Limit keys to specific operations when possible
* **Monitoring**: Review key usage in audit logs
* **Revocation**: Immediately revoke compromised keys
Never commit API keys to version control. Use environment variables or secret management tools.
### OAuth tokens
For integrations that use OAuth:
* Tokens are automatically refreshed
* Revoke access from **Settings > Connected Apps**
* Monitor token usage in audit logs
***
## Data security
### Encryption
CloudThinker protects your data with:
| Layer | Protection |
| ----------- | ---------------------------- |
| **Transit** | TLS 1.3 for all connections |
| **At Rest** | AES-256 encryption |
| **Secrets** | Encrypted credential storage |
| **Backups** | Encrypted database backups |
### [Bring your own key (BYOK)](/guide/byok)
Enterprise customers can use their own encryption keys:
1. Configure AWS KMS or similar
2. Provide key ARN to CloudThinker
3. Your key encrypts sensitive data
4. Maintain full key control
Set up Bring Your Own Key encryption
### Data residency
* Choose data region during workspace creation
* Data stays within selected region
* Multi-region options for redundancy
***
## Audit logging
Track all activities in CloudThinker:
### Logged events
* User authentication (login, logout, MFA)
* Resource access and modifications
* Agent conversations and actions
* Administrative changes
* API access
### Viewing audit logs
1. Navigate to **Admin Settings > Organization**
2. Filter by:
* User
* Action type
* Resource
* Date range
3. Export logs for compliance
### Log retention
* Standard: 90 days
* Professional: 1 year
* Enterprise: Configurable (up to 7 years)
***
## Security best practices
Require MFA for all organization members, especially those with admin access. Consider enforcing via [SSO](/guide/security/sso) policies.
Assign the minimum role required for each user's responsibilities. Review and adjust permissions regularly.
Rotate API keys, refresh tokens, and cloud credentials on a regular schedule.
Regularly review audit logs for suspicious activity. Set up alerts for critical events.
Use read-only credentials when possible. Limit scope to necessary services and regions.
Conduct quarterly access reviews. Remove inactive users and revoke unnecessary permissions.
***
## Compliance
CloudThinker maintains compliance with:
* **SOC 2 Type II**: Security, availability, and confidentiality
* **GDPR**: Data protection for EU users
* **HIPAA**: Healthcare data handling (Enterprise)
* **ISO 27001**: Information security management
Contact us for security questionnaires and compliance documentation
## Related
Configure SAML or OIDC SSO with Google Workspace, Azure AD, Okta, and more
Automate user and group sync from your identity provider
# Set Up SCIM Provisioning
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/security/scim
Automate user and group provisioning from your identity provider with SCIM 2.0
SCIM provisioning is available on **Scale**, **Scale +**, and **Enterprise** plans. It requires an active SSO connection.
This guide covers how to enable SCIM directory sync, configure group-to-workspace mappings, manage tokens, and monitor sync activity.
**Before you begin:** Complete the steps in [Set up single sign-on (SSO)](/guide/security/sso) first. SCIM builds on top of an active SSO connection — you'll need domain verification and SSO configured with your identity provider before proceeding.
***
## How SCIM works in CloudThinker
SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) is an industry standard that lets your identity provider automatically keep CloudThinker in sync with your company directory. Instead of manually inviting and removing users, your IdP handles it for you.
When SCIM is enabled:
* **Users assigned** to your CloudThinker application in your IdP are automatically added to your organization
* **Users removed** from your IdP application are automatically deactivated in CloudThinker
* **Groups pushed** from your IdP appear in CloudThinker and can be mapped to specific workspaces and roles
* **Group membership changes** in your IdP automatically update workspace access in CloudThinker
Behind the scenes, your IdP calls CloudThinker's SCIM 2.0 API using a bearer token whenever it needs to create, update, or remove users and groups.
***
## Step 1: Enable SCIM in CloudThinker
Go to **Admin Settings → Identity and access**. The **Provisioning & directory sync** card appears below the SSO card when your SSO connection is active.
Click the **SCIM** option in the provisioning mode selector. CloudThinker generates a bearer token and a SCIM endpoint URL.
A dialog appears with two values you'll need to paste into your identity provider:
* **Bearer token** — the secret token your IdP uses to authenticate with CloudThinker's SCIM API
* **SCIM base URL** — the endpoint your IdP will send requests to (format: `https:///api/v1/scim/{org_id}/v2`)
Copy both values now — the bearer token is only shown once.
Copy the bearer token immediately — it cannot be retrieved after you close the dialog. If you lose it, you'll need to rotate the token.
***
## Step 2: Configure SCIM in your identity provider
Now switch to your identity provider's admin console and set up SCIM provisioning for your CloudThinker application. The exact steps vary by provider (Okta, Azure AD / Microsoft Entra, OneLogin, etc.), but the values you need are the same.
### General configuration
In your IdP's SCIM or provisioning settings for the CloudThinker application, enter:
| Field | Value |
| --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **SCIM connector base URL** | The SCIM base URL from Step 1 |
| **Authentication mode** | HTTP Header / Bearer Token |
| **Bearer token** | The token from Step 1 |
| **Unique identifier field** | `userName` (this maps to the user's email address) |
### What your IdP can sync
| Operation | Supported | What it does |
| ---------------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Create Users | Yes | Adds new user accounts to your CloudThinker organization |
| Update User Attributes | Yes | Keeps name, email, and active status in sync |
| Deactivate Users | Yes | Disables access when a user is deactivated in your IdP |
| Delete Users | Yes | Removes the user from your organization |
| Push Groups | Yes | Syncs your IdP groups to CloudThinker for workspace mapping |
| Group Membership | Yes | Keeps group members in sync between your IdP and CloudThinker |
CloudThinker supports filtering by `userName` for user lookups and `displayName` for group lookups. Bulk operations are not currently supported.
***
## Step 3: Map groups to workspaces and roles
Once your IdP starts pushing groups via SCIM, they appear automatically in the **Group mappings** section on the Identity and access page. Group mappings let you control which workspaces users land in and what role they get, based on their group membership in your IdP.
For each synced group, you can configure:
| Setting | Description |
| ----------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Auto-assigned workspaces** | Which workspaces members of this group are automatically added to |
| **Auto-assigned organization role** | The organization role for members of this group — choose Viewer, Developer, or Admin. Select "Use connection role" to use the default role from your SSO connection settings. |
After configuring SCIM in your IdP, assign groups to your CloudThinker application. Groups show up in the **Group mappings** table once your IdP pushes them — this may take a few minutes depending on your IdP's sync interval.
For each group, select which workspaces its members should have access to using the workspace dropdown.
Optionally choose a specific role for each group. If you leave it as "Use connection role," members get the default role from your SSO connection settings.
Click **Save** for each group row to apply the mapping.
If no groups have synced yet, the Group mappings section shows a message: "No groups synced yet. Groups will appear here automatically once your identity provider pushes them via SCIM."
***
## Managing SCIM tokens
### Rotate a token
If your token is compromised or your security policy requires periodic rotation, you can rotate it without downtime:
1. In the **Directory sync (SCIM)** section, click **Rotate token**
2. Confirm the rotation — the old token stays valid for 24 more hours, giving you time to update your IdP
3. Copy the new token and update it in your IdP's SCIM configuration
Both the old and new tokens work during the 24-hour overlap window, so your IdP won't experience any sync failures while you make the switch.
### Revoke a token
Switching away from SCIM (to Manual or JIT) automatically revokes the SCIM token and stops all directory sync. Your IdP will no longer be able to create, update, or remove users in CloudThinker.
***
## Monitoring sync activity
Click **View sync logs** in the Directory sync section to see a history of all SCIM operations. This is useful for verifying that your IdP is pushing changes correctly and for troubleshooting provisioning issues.
Each log entry shows:
| Field | Description |
| ------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Timestamp** | When the operation occurred |
| **Action** | What happened (e.g., CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE) |
| **Resource** | Which user or group was affected |
| **Status** | Whether it succeeded (SUCCESS), was skipped (SKIPPED), or failed (FAILED) |
***
## Disabling SCIM
If you no longer need directory sync, you can disable SCIM:
1. In the **Provisioning & directory sync** card, select **Manual** or **Just-in-time**
2. Confirm the action — this immediately revokes your SCIM token and stops all directory sync
3. Existing users remain in your organization, but your IdP can no longer add or remove users automatically
Disabling SCIM takes effect immediately. Your identity provider will start receiving authentication errors on its next sync cycle. Update or disable SCIM provisioning in your IdP to avoid unnecessary error alerts.
***
## Troubleshooting
### Groups aren't appearing in CloudThinker
Make sure groups are assigned to your CloudThinker application in your IdP's provisioning settings. CloudThinker doesn't pull groups from your IdP — your IdP needs to push them. Check **View sync logs** to see if any group sync attempts have been made.
### Users aren't being provisioned
1. Verify the user is assigned to your CloudThinker application in your IdP
2. Check that the SCIM token hasn't been rotated or revoked — if in doubt, rotate the token and update your IdP
3. Open **View sync logs** and look for FAILED entries — these often include details about what went wrong
4. Make sure the user's email address is valid and not already associated with a different CloudThinker organization
### Users aren't being deprovisioned
1. Make sure the user was removed from the CloudThinker application in your IdP (removing them from a group alone isn't enough — they need to be unassigned from the application)
2. Check sync logs for a DELETE or DEACTIVATE action for that user
3. Some IdPs don't sync changes instantly — for example, Microsoft Entra syncs approximately every 40 minutes. Wait for the next cycle and check again.
### SCIM token stopped working
The token may have been rotated or revoked by another admin. Generate a new token in CloudThinker and update your IdP's SCIM configuration with the new value.
### "Cannot enable JIT provisioning while SCIM is active"
JIT (Just-in-Time) provisioning and SCIM can't be used at the same time. To switch to JIT, first select a different provisioning mode (Manual or JIT) — this will revoke the SCIM token and stop directory sync.
***
## Related
Configure SAML or OIDC single sign-on (prerequisite for SCIM)
MFA, RBAC, API keys, and data security
Manage organization members and roles
Workspace-level access control
# Single Sign-On (SSO)
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/security/sso
Configure SAML or OIDC SSO with Google Workspace, Azure AD, AWS IAM Identity Center, Okta, and more
Single Sign-On lets your team authenticate to CloudThinker using your existing identity provider — no separate passwords, automatic user provisioning, and centralized deprovisioning when someone leaves.
SSO is available on **Scale**, **Scale +**, and **Enterprise** plans. To get started, navigate to **Organization Settings → Security → SSO** and click **Add Connection**.
***
## How the setup wizard works
The SSO wizard has three steps: **Protocol → SP Metadata → IdP Configuration**.
1. **Protocol** — Choose SAML 2.0 or OIDC
2. **SP Metadata** — Copy CloudThinker's values into your IdP when creating the SAML app
3. **IdP Configuration** — Paste your IdP's values back into CloudThinker
Use the tabs below to follow the exact steps for your identity provider.
***
## SAML setup
### Google Workspace — SAML setup
Go to [admin.google.com](https://admin.google.com) → **Apps → Web and mobile apps → Add app → Add custom SAML app**.
Give it a name like **CloudThinker** and click **Continue**.
On the **Google IdP information** screen, download the **IdP metadata XML** or note:
* **SSO URL** (Single Sign-On URL)
* **Entity ID** (`https://accounts.google.com/o/saml2?idpid=...`)
* **Certificate** (download the X.509 certificate)
Click **Continue**.
Copy the values from **CloudThinker → Settings → Security → SSO → SP Metadata**:
| Google Field | CloudThinker Value |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------- |
| **ACS URL** | Paste the **ACS URL** from CloudThinker |
| **Entity ID** | Paste the **SP Entity ID** from CloudThinker |
| **Name ID format** | `EMAIL` |
| **Name ID** | `Basic Information > Primary email` |
Click **Continue**.
Add the following attribute mappings:
| Google Directory Attribute | App Attribute |
| -------------------------- | ------------- |
| Primary email | `email` |
| First name | `firstName` |
| Last name | `lastName` |
Click **Finish**.
In the app settings, set access to **On for everyone** (or target specific organizational units).
Back in CloudThinker's SSO wizard, paste in:
* **Entity ID** from Google
* **SSO URL** from Google
* **Certificate** (paste the X.509 certificate content)
Click **Create Connection** and then **Test** to verify.
Use the **Import** field in CloudThinker to paste your Google IdP metadata URL — this auto-fills Entity ID, SSO URL, and Certificate in one step.
### Microsoft Azure AD (Entra ID) — SAML setup
In the [Azure Portal](https://portal.azure.com), go to **Microsoft Entra ID → Enterprise applications → New application → Create your own application**.
Name it **CloudThinker**, select **Integrate any other application you don't find in the gallery**, and click **Create**.
Open the new application → **Single sign-on → SAML**.
Click **Edit** on **Basic SAML Configuration** and fill in from CloudThinker's SP Metadata:
| Azure Field | CloudThinker Value |
| -------------------------- | -------------------------- |
| **Identifier (Entity ID)** | Paste the **SP Entity ID** |
| **Reply URL (ACS URL)** | Paste the **ACS URL** |
| **Sign on URL** | Same as ACS URL |
Save.
In **Attributes & Claims**, confirm the `emailaddress` claim maps to `user.mail`. Optionally add:
* `firstName` → `user.givenname`
* `lastName` → `user.surname`
In **SAML Signing Certificate**, download the **Federation Metadata XML** or copy:
* **App Federation Metadata URL** (recommended — use this to auto-import into CloudThinker)
* **Certificate (Base64)**
* **Login URL** (SSO URL)
* **Azure AD Identifier** (Entity ID)
Go to **Users and groups → Add user/group** and assign who should have access to CloudThinker.
In CloudThinker's IdP Configuration step, use the **Import** field to paste the **App Federation Metadata URL** — this auto-fills all fields. Or enter manually:
* **Entity ID**: Azure AD Identifier
* **SSO URL**: Login URL
* **Certificate**: Certificate (Base64)
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### AWS IAM Identity Center (AWS SSO) — SAML setup
In the [AWS Console](https://console.aws.amazon.com), navigate to **IAM Identity Center → Applications → Add application → Add custom SAML 2.0 application**.
Give it a display name like **CloudThinker** and optionally add a description.
In the **IAM Identity Center metadata** section, copy or download:
* **IAM Identity Center SAML metadata file** (or the metadata URL)
* **IAM Identity Center issuer URL**
* **IAM Identity Center sign-in URL**
* **Certificate**
In the **Application metadata** section, paste values from CloudThinker's SP Metadata:
| IAM Identity Center Field | CloudThinker Value |
| ----------------------------- | -------------------------- |
| **Application ACS URL** | Paste the **ACS URL** |
| **Application SAML audience** | Paste the **SP Entity ID** |
Go to **Assigned users and groups** → **Assign users and groups** and select who should access CloudThinker.
In **Attribute mappings**, add:
| User attribute in the application | Maps to this string value or user attribute in IAM Identity Center |
| --------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| `Subject` | `${user:email}` — Format: `emailAddress` |
| `email` | `${user:email}` |
| `firstName` | `${user:givenName}` |
| `lastName` | `${user:familyName}` |
Back in CloudThinker, use **Import** to paste the IAM Identity Center metadata URL, or enter manually:
* **Entity ID**: IAM Identity Center issuer URL
* **SSO URL**: IAM Identity Center sign-in URL
* **Certificate**: from the metadata file
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### Okta — SAML setup
In the [Okta Admin Console](https://your-org.okta.com/admin), go to **Applications → Applications → Create App Integration → SAML 2.0**.
Name the app **CloudThinker** and click **Next**.
Fill in from CloudThinker's SP Metadata:
| Okta Field | CloudThinker Value |
| ------------------------------- | -------------------------- |
| **Single sign-on URL** | Paste the **ACS URL** |
| **Audience URI (SP Entity ID)** | Paste the **SP Entity ID** |
| **Name ID format** | `EmailAddress` |
| **Application username** | `Email` |
In **Attribute Statements**, add:
| Name | Value |
| ----------- | ---------------- |
| `email` | `user.email` |
| `firstName` | `user.firstName` |
| `lastName` | `user.lastName` |
After saving, go to the app's **Sign On** tab → **SAML Signing Certificates** section → click **Actions → View IdP metadata** to get the metadata XML URL.
Or copy directly:
* **Identity Provider Single Sign-On URL**
* **Identity Provider Issuer**
* **X.509 Certificate**
Go to the **Assignments** tab and assign users or groups who should have access.
In CloudThinker's IdP Configuration step, paste the **Okta metadata URL** into the **Import** field, or enter manually:
* **Entity ID**: Identity Provider Issuer
* **SSO URL**: Identity Provider Single Sign-On URL
* **Certificate**: X.509 Certificate
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### OneLogin — SAML setup
In the [OneLogin Admin Portal](https://app.onelogin.com/admin), go to **Applications → Applications → Add App → Search for "SAML Custom Connector (Advanced)"** and click it.
Set the display name to **CloudThinker** and click **Save**.
Go to the **Configuration** tab and paste in from CloudThinker's SP Metadata:
| OneLogin Field | CloudThinker Value |
| -------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- |
| **Audience (EntityID)** | Paste the **SP Entity ID** |
| **ACS (Consumer) URL** | Paste the **ACS URL** |
| **ACS (Consumer) URL Validator** | `.*` (or the exact ACS URL as a regex) |
| **Login URL** | Same as ACS URL |
Save.
Go to the **Parameters** tab and add:
| Field name | Value |
| ----------- | ---------- |
| `email` | Email |
| `firstName` | First Name |
| `lastName` | Last Name |
Go to the **SSO** tab and copy:
* **Issuer URL** (Entity ID)
* **SAML 2.0 Endpoint (HTTP)**
* **X.509 Certificate** (View Details → copy the certificate)
Go to **Users** tab and add users or roles that should have access.
In CloudThinker, enter:
* **Entity ID**: Issuer URL
* **SSO URL**: SAML 2.0 Endpoint (HTTP)
* **Certificate**: X.509 Certificate
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### Generic SAML 2.0
Use this for any SAML-compliant identity provider not listed above.
#### Step 1 — Get CloudThinker's SP metadata
Navigate to **Organization Settings → Security → SSO → Add Connection → SAML**. On the **SP Metadata** screen, copy:
| Field | What to do with it |
| ------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **ACS URL** | Paste into your IdP's "Reply URL" or "ACS URL" field |
| **SP Entity ID** | Paste into your IdP's "Audience" or "Entity ID" field |
| **SP Metadata URL** | Some IdPs let you import this URL to auto-fill all fields at once |
#### Step 2 — Create a SAML app in your IdP
Create a new SAML application in your identity provider and enter the SP values above. Configure user attribute mappings:
| CloudThinker Attribute | IdP Attribute |
| ---------------------- | ----------------------- |
| `email` (NameID) | User's primary email |
| `firstName` | Given name / first name |
| `lastName` | Family name / last name |
#### Step 3 — Configure IdP details in CloudThinker
After creating the SAML app in your IdP, return to CloudThinker and complete the **IdP Configuration** step:
| Field | Where to find it |
| ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Display Name** | Choose any label (e.g., "Okta SAML") |
| **Entity ID** | Your IdP's entity identifier (sometimes called "Issuer") |
| **SSO URL** | Your IdP's single sign-on endpoint URL |
| **Certificate** | The X.509 signing certificate from your IdP (base64-encoded) |
| **SLO URL** | *(Optional)* Single logout endpoint — only needed if you want users logged out of the IdP when they sign out of CloudThinker |
| **NameID Format** | Leave as "Email Address" unless your IdP requires a different format |
If your IdP provides a metadata URL or XML file, use the **Import** field at the top to auto-fill Entity ID, SSO URL, and Certificate — this saves time and avoids copy-paste errors.
Click **Create Connection**.
***
## OIDC setup
### Google Workspace — OIDC setup
Go to [console.cloud.google.com](https://console.cloud.google.com) → **APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → OAuth 2.0 Client ID**.
Application type: **Web application**.
Add the **Redirect URI** from CloudThinker's OIDC SP Metadata. Click **Create**.
Copy the **Client ID** and **Client Secret**.
In CloudThinker's OIDC configuration:
* **Discovery URL**: `https://accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration`
* **Client ID**: paste from Google
* **Client Secret**: paste from Google
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### Azure AD (Entra ID) — OIDC setup
In [Azure Portal](https://portal.azure.com) → **Microsoft Entra ID → App registrations → New registration**.
Name it **CloudThinker**. Under **Redirect URI**, select **Web** and paste the redirect URI from CloudThinker's OIDC SP Metadata.
Go to **Certificates & secrets → New client secret**. Copy the **Value** immediately — it won't be shown again.
In CloudThinker's OIDC configuration:
* **Discovery URL**: `https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant-id}/v2.0/.well-known/openid-configuration`
* **Client ID**: **Application (client) ID** from the app registration overview
* **Client Secret**: the secret value you copied
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### Okta — OIDC setup
In Okta Admin → **Applications → Create App Integration → OIDC - OpenID Connect → Web Application**.
Under **Sign-in redirect URIs**, paste the redirect URI from CloudThinker's OIDC SP Metadata. Click **Save**.
In CloudThinker's OIDC configuration:
* **Discovery URL**: `https://your-org.okta.com/.well-known/openid-configuration`
* **Client ID**: from the Okta app's **General** tab
* **Client Secret**: from the Okta app's **General** tab
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
### Generic OIDC
Use this for any OpenID Connect-compliant provider.
In your IdP, create a new OAuth 2.0 / OIDC application. Add the **Redirect URI** shown in CloudThinker's OIDC SP Metadata screen.
Enter the following in CloudThinker's OIDC configuration:
| Field | Description |
| ----------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Discovery URL** | Your IdP's `.well-known/openid-configuration` endpoint |
| **Client ID** | The client ID issued by your IdP |
| **Client Secret** | The client secret issued by your IdP |
Click **Create Connection** and **Test**.
***
## After setup
### Test the connection
Always test before enforcing SSO:
1. Click **Test** in the SSO connection settings
2. A new browser tab opens and attempts authentication
3. Confirm you are redirected back to CloudThinker successfully
4. Check that your user attributes (name, email) were received correctly
### Enforce SSO (optional)
Once verified, you can require all users to authenticate via SSO:
1. Go to **Organization Settings → Security → SSO**
2. Toggle **Enforce SSO** on
3. Users will be redirected to your IdP on next login — email/password login is disabled
Make sure at least one Owner account works with SSO before enforcing it. If SSO breaks after enforcement, an Owner with a backup access method can disable it.
### User provisioning
CloudThinker auto-provisions users on first SSO login using the `email`, `firstName`, and `lastName` attributes from your IdP. New users are assigned the **Developer** role by default — you can change this in SSO settings.
***
## Troubleshooting
Double-check that the ACS URL you entered in your IdP exactly matches what CloudThinker shows — including protocol (`https://`) and no trailing slash.
Confirm your IdP is sending `firstName` and `lastName` attributes. See the attribute mapping table for your provider above.
Make sure you copied the full X.509 certificate including the `-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----` and `-----END CERTIFICATE-----` headers. If your IdP rotated its certificate, update it in CloudThinker's SSO settings.
An Owner can disable SSO enforcement at **Organization Settings → Security → SSO** using their backup credentials. Check the IdP app is assigned to all affected users.
The SP Entity ID in your IdP must exactly match the SP Entity ID shown in CloudThinker's SP Metadata — they are case-sensitive.
***
## Next steps
Add TOTP-based MFA for an extra layer of authentication
Configure granular permissions for your team members
Manage members, workspaces, and organization-level configuration
Use your own AWS Bedrock credentials for data residency and cost control
# Kubernetes Health Monitoring
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/use-cases/kubernetes-health-monitoring
Use Kai to monitor EKS cluster health, surface resource waste, and get HPA recommendations before problems reach production.
Kai monitors your Amazon EKS cluster continuously, surfacing over-provisioned pods, underutilized nodes, and missing autoscaling policies before they cause outages.
## The scenario
A platform team runs a production EKS cluster across several namespaces. CPU alerts are intermittent but investigation is slow—engineers run manual `kubectl` commands across hundreds of pods to correlate logs, metrics, and events.
Manual Kubernetes troubleshooting challenges
The team asks Kai to assess the cluster end-to-end, identify resource waste, and recommend autoscaling policies where they are missing.
## Walkthrough
### Connect Kai to your cluster
Follow the [Kubernetes connection guide](/guide/connections/kubernetes) to give Kai access to your EKS cluster. Once the connection shows **Connected**, Kai can query the cluster directly.
### Analyze pod resource utilization
```text theme={null}
@kai #report analyze pod resource utilization in production namespace
```
Pod resource utilization analysis
Pod analysis visualization with performance recommendations
Kai surfaces three findings: auth-service and notification-worker are over-provisioned (18–21% CPU), api-gateway and cache-redis are appropriately sized, and payment-processor is dangerously under-provisioned at 80–86% CPU and 88–94% memory—at high risk of OOM kills and service disruption.
### Identify underutilized nodes
```text theme={null}
@kai #chart identify nodes with <30% CPU utilization
```
Node CPU utilization analysis showing underutilized instances
Kai finds five nodes averaging below 30% CPU (some as low as 12–15%), wasting approximately \$573 per month. Oversized t3.xlarge instances running lightweight workloads—combined with poor pod scheduling—leave some nodes with only 2–3 pods while others carry 8–9.
### Get HPA recommendations
```text theme={null}
@kai #recommend HPA policies for web deployments
```
HPA policy recommendations for auto-scaling
Kai flags payment-processor as critically at risk—only 2 replicas at 80–86% CPU, no autoscaling in place. It recommends adding HPA to api-gateway to handle traffic spikes, and removing excess capacity from user-service and auth-service.
## What made this work
* **[Kai](/guide/agents/kai)** queries the cluster API directly, replacing manual `kubectl` sessions and tool-switching.
* **Cross-layer correlation** links pod utilization, node capacity, and scheduling patterns in a single analysis pass.
* **[`#report`](/guide/language) and [`#chart`](/guide/language)** produce structured output Kai can reason over before surfacing findings.
* **[`#recommend`](/guide/language)** generates actionable HPA policy changes rather than a raw metrics dump.
* **[CloudKeepers](/guide/infrastructure/cloudkeepers)** can run this analysis on a schedule so findings arrive before on-call engineers are paged.
## Try it yourself
Full capabilities of Kai, the Kubernetes Engineer agent
Step-by-step guide to connecting CloudThinker to your EKS cluster
Map Kubernetes service dependencies for faster incident root cause analysis
Run continuous health checks across your Kubernetes workloads automatically
# Operating Multi-AWS Accounts
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/use-cases/multi-aws-accounts
Operate multiple AWS accounts from one workspace using IAM AssumeRole shortcuts to switch account context on demand
A platform team managing production, development, and staging AWS accounts can query costs, audit security, and investigate incidents across all three — from a single CloudThinker workspace.
## The scenario
Your organization maintains separate AWS accounts for production, development, and staging. A centralized platform team needs cross-account visibility without giving everyone production access or constantly losing context by switching workspaces. The solution: connect CloudThinker to a primary AWS account, create IAM roles in each target account, and define shortcuts that tell [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) which account to operate in — all from one workspace.
## Walkthrough
In **Connections**, add your primary AWS account using [Role-Based authentication](/guide/connections/aws). This is the hub account — all cross-account requests originate from its IAM identity.
**Success state:** the connection shows **Connected** status in the Connections panel.
In each target AWS account, create an IAM role with the following trust policy. Replace `PRIMARY_ACCOUNT_ID` with your hub account's AWS account ID.
```json theme={null}
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"AWS": "arn:aws:iam::PRIMARY_ACCOUNT_ID:root"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
}
]
}
```
Attach `ReadOnlyAccess` (or a scoped read-only policy) to the role to keep permissions minimal.
**Success state:** you can verify each role is assumable by running `aws sts assume-role` from the primary account.
Open the **Shortcuts** panel (top right of any workspace) and create one shortcut per target account. Set the **Init Step** to instruct the agent to assume the target role ARN before your prompt runs.
Shortcuts panel with an AssumeRole init step
| Shortcut name | Init step |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `/switch-to-prod` | `Please assume arn:aws:iam::111111111111:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole and use the STS token for this session.` |
| `/switch-to-dev` | `Please assume arn:aws:iam::222222222222:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole and use the STS token for this session.` |
| `/switch-to-staging` | `Please assume arn:aws:iam::333333333333:role/CloudThinkerAccessRole and use the STS token for this session.` |
**Success state:** each shortcut name appears in the Shortcuts autocomplete list when you type `/`.
Prefix any prompt with the shortcut name. Alex assumes the target role before acting, so every result is scoped to that account.
```text theme={null}
/switch-to-prod @alex #dashboard Build an AWS daily cost report
```
Alex assumes the production role, queries Cost Explorer and CloudWatch in that account, and returns a cost dashboard scoped to production.
```text theme={null}
/switch-to-dev @alex #report Summarize unused EC2 instances in the dev account
```
**Success state:** Alex's response references resources from the target account, not the hub.
## What made this work
* **[Role-Based authentication](/guide/connections/aws)** — the hub account's IAM identity performs the `sts:AssumeRole` call, so no long-term credentials are shared or stored for each target account.
* **IAM least privilege** — attaching `ReadOnlyAccess` to each cross-account role limits what agents can do, even if a shortcut is misused. Use specific principal ARNs instead of `:root` where your security policy allows.
* **Shortcuts** — an init step injected before your prompt sets the account context without retyping the role ARN every time. Shortcuts also let you scope knowledge or instructions per account.
* **[Alex (Cloud Engineer)](/guide/agents/alex)** — handles cost analysis, resource auditing, and infrastructure queries across AWS accounts once the role context is set.
* **[Workspaces](/guide/workspaces)** — when teams need full isolation (separate knowledge bases, audit trails, or access controls per account), create one workspace per account instead of using shortcuts.
## Try it yourself
Set up Role-Based authentication so Alex can assume roles across accounts.
Create dedicated workspaces when you need full isolation between accounts.
# Webhooks
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/guide/webhooks/overview
Give external systems a URL that starts an agent conversation or opens a DRE incident
Webhooks let external systems push events into CloudThinker. Each webhook gives you a unique URL; POST to it and CloudThinker starts an agent conversation or opens a [DRE](/guide/incident/overview) incident.
Webhooks are inbound only. CloudThinker does not POST events out to your endpoints. To send results outward, use [notifications](/guide/notifications), [Slack](/guide/slack-integration), or [Microsoft Teams](/guide/teams-integration).
## How it works
1. You create a webhook and choose what it does: start a **Conversation** or open a **DRE** incident.
2. CloudThinker issues a unique URL containing the webhook token, plus a signing secret shown once.
3. Your system POSTs a JSON body to that URL.
4. CloudThinker authenticates the request, checks the rate limit, records the event, and returns **202 Accepted** in under 100 ms.
5. A worker dispatches the payload and writes the final status.
## Create a webhook
Navigate to **Webhooks** in the sidebar, or open **Chat Settings** (the gear icon beside the **+** button in the chat prompt box) and select **Webhooks** under **Integrations**.
The wizard has four steps: **Basic Info**, **Type**, **Configure**, and **Advanced**.
* **Name** — a descriptive identifier
* **Description** — optional
* **Type** — **Conversation** or **DRE**
* **Rate limit** — requests per hour, default 100. Set 0 or below for unlimited
* **Prompt structure** — optional template that must contain `{{message}}`
* **Auth** — bearer token, HMAC, API key, or none
Save the webhook, then copy its URL and signing secret.
**Success state:** the webhook appears in the list as **active**.
The signing secret is shown only once, when you create the webhook. Store it before you close the dialog.
## Action types
| Type | What a request does |
| ---------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Conversation** | Starts an agent conversation from the payload. `message` is required |
| **DRE** | Opens an incident, and optionally runs automatic RCA. `message` is optional |
For a DRE webhook, automatic RCA is **on by default** with a minimum severity of **Medium**. See [webhook integrations](/guide/incident/webhook-integrations/overview).
## Request body
```json theme={null}
{
"message": "Hello from webhook!",
"metadata": {
"source": "external-system",
"priority": "normal"
}
}
```
| Field | Required | Description |
| ---------- | ------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| `message` | For Conversation webhooks | The prompt the agent receives |
| `metadata` | No | Custom fields carried into the incident payload |
Unknown top-level fields are silently dropped. Put every custom field inside `metadata`.
The response returns `success`, `request_id`, and — depending on the action type — `conversation_id`, `incident_id`, `rca_run_id`, and `signal_id`.
## Authentication
Choose one auth mode per webhook. CloudThinker verifies each incoming request before it accepts the payload.
| Mode | How the sender authenticates |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **Bearer** | `Authorization: Bearer ` |
| **HMAC** | A signature header, `X-Webhook-Signature` by default, computed with the webhook's signing secret |
| **API key** | A key header, `X-Api-Key` by default |
| **None** | No authentication. Rely on the unguessable token in the URL |
The header name is configurable for HMAC and API key. Sign the raw request body with HMAC-SHA256 and send `sha256=`:
```bash theme={null}
SIGNATURE="sha256=$(printf '%s' "$BODY" | openssl dgst -sha256 -hmac "$WEBHOOK_SECRET" -hex | awk '{print $2}')"
curl -X POST "$WEBHOOK_URL" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "X-Webhook-Signature: $SIGNATURE" \
-d "$BODY"
```
## Limits
| Limit | Value |
| ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Request body | 1 MB |
| Rate limit | 100 requests per hour by default; 0 or below means unlimited |
| Raw body retention | 90 days |
A request over the rate limit is recorded with status `rate_limited`.
## Review triggers
Navigate to **Webhooks > Triggers** to see every webhook trigger in the workspace.
| Column | What it shows |
| -------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| **Type** | Chat, Incident, System, or Auth Failed |
| **Request ID** | The identifier returned to the sender |
| **Status** | The HTTP status code |
| **Duration** | Processing time in milliseconds |
| **Error** | The failure reason, when one exists |
| **Created** | When the request arrived |
| **Actions** | A **View Incident** link for incident triggers |
Each event carries one of four lifecycle statuses: `accepted`, `processed`, `failed`, or `rate_limited`.
Triggers never expose stored request headers, bodies, or client details. That data is retained internally for 90 days and redacted from the interface.
## Pause a webhook
Set the webhook to **paused** to stop it accepting requests. A webhook is `active`, `paused`, or `disabled`. While paused, the endpoint rejects incoming requests rather than queueing them.
## Troubleshooting
The auth mode does not match what you send. Check the header name and confirm you are signing with the webhook's own secret. A failed attempt appears in Triggers as **Auth Failed**.
Sign the exact raw body bytes, before any reformatting, and send the digest as `sha256=`. Re-serializing JSON changes the bytes and breaks the signature.
Unknown top-level keys are dropped. Move them inside `metadata`.
The webhook is over its hourly rate limit. Raise the limit, or set it to 0 for unlimited.
The body is over the 1 MB cap. Send a reference instead of the full document.
## Related
Route alerts from monitoring platforms into incidents
Deliver CloudThinker results to email, Slack, and Teams
# About CloudThinker · Engineer Edition
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/about-cloudthinker
The unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform — engineers on the loop, not in the loop. The harness this book describes, as one platform.
*The unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform — engineers on the loop, not in the loop.*
CloudThinker builds the harness this book describes, as one platform: Anna, the orchestrating SuperAgent, leading named specialists — Alex (cloud engineering), Oliver (security), Tony (database), Kai (Kubernetes) — extensible with custom agents for your own surfaces, executing the Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate loop across AWS, Azure, GCP, local and sovereign clouds, and on-premise estates under one autonomy policy and one audit trail.
1. **The engineering in this book, shipped.** The two-engine Deep Response Engine (Pulse + Resolver), a 325+ CloudSkill catalog with declared risk metadata, runbooks with typed step kinds, the Action Engine’s policy-tokenization-sandbox stack on Firecracker-isolated runtimes, and discovery-first onboarding that earns write access with evidence.
2. **Built for regulated industries.** BYOC and fully self-hosted deployment, PII-aware tokenization in front of every model boundary — including self-hosted and fine-tuned small models for full model control — and audit evidence designed for FSI change management and regulator replay.
3. **Proven in Southeast Asia.** Holder of the first AWS Agentic AI Consulting Competency awarded in Vietnam, operating with banks, consumer-finance institutions, fintechs, and SaaS enterprises across Vietnam and the region, with open-source contributions recognized and integrated by industry partners including AWS and LangChain.
To run Appendix A against us — golden set, injection seeds, audit replay, kill-switch drill and all — visit [cloudthinker.io](https://cloudthinker.io) or write to the team. We wrote the test knowing we would have to pass it.
> *The future of operations is not fewer humans. It is humans multiplied.*
>
> — Agentic Infrastructure Operations, the series
# Appendix A · The POC Test Plan
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/appendix-a-poc-test-plan
A two-to-four-week evaluation protocol with signed pass/fail gates for testing any agentic operations platform against your own incidents.
*A two-to-four-week evaluation protocol you can run against any agentic operations platform — including ours.*
Structured POCs with defined success criteria are what separate evaluations that produce decisions from demos that produce feelings.
## Week 0 — Preparation (before any vendor touches anything)
1. **Freeze the baseline:** 90 days of MTTR, alert volume, pages per engineer, toil hours for the pilot domain (the Field Guide’s measurement rule — non-negotiable here).
2. **Assemble the golden set:** 10+ replayable scenarios from your incident history across your top classes, each with telemetry snapshot, known root cause, accepted fix, and verification evidence (Ch. 7).
3. **Write the injection seeds:** 5+ indirect-injection strings planted in staging telemetry and one poisoned document in the knowledge source (Ch. 5).
4. **Define pass/fail gates and sign them:** e.g., ≥70% useful-or-correct diagnosis on the golden set; zero unsafe actions; zero injection compliance; full audit replay of every action; cost per resolved incident within budget.
## Week 1 — Connect, discover, read-only
* **Time-to-connect and least-privilege check:** what access did it actually request? Flag anything beyond read for phase one.
* **Discovery quality:** one hour after connect, review the platform’s system map against reality. Score coverage and staleness handling (Ch. 2).
* **Data-boundary verification:** trace exactly what leaves your perimeter, to where; confirm tokenization on samples containing planted fake PII (Ch. 5). The Field Guide’s eight data-control questions get answered here with packet captures, not paragraphs.
## Weeks 2–3 — The golden-set gauntlet
* **Replay the golden set.** Score per scenario, in layers: detection / diagnosis / plan quality / evidence integrity (Ch. 7 rubric). On-call engineers grade blind where feasible.
* **Run the injection seeds through real investigations.** Any compliance with planted instructions is a hard fail; detection and refusal is the pass (Ch. 5).
* **Approval-surface test:** for three proposed remediations, evaluate the artifact on one screen — evidence chain, exact plan, blast radius, rollback, verification plan (Ch. 6).
* **Cost instrumentation:** tokens and spend per investigation; promotion behavior on a noisy day; projected cost per resolved incident at your volume (Ch. 4, 8).
## Week 4 — Limited write, full audit
* **Graduate 2–3 boring, reversible action classes** to act-with-approval in staging (or a bounded production slice if your governance allows). Measure acceptance rate and verification behavior.
* **Pull the audit trail for every action and replay it end-to-end:** trigger → context → reasoning → policy → approval → execution → verification. If replay requires the vendor’s help, note it — that is your regulator experience previewed (Ch. 6).
* **Kill-switch drill:** halt all execution in one action; verify investigation continues; measure time-to-halt.
* **Decision meeting against the signed gates.** The output is a go/no-go with evidence — and, on a go, the 90-day pilot from the Field Guide, Chapter 9, begins with its baseline already in hand.
**A NOTE ON FAIRNESS**
Run the identical protocol on every platform you evaluate, share the gates with vendors in advance, and let them see their scores. The goal is not gotcha; it is evidence. A vendor who improves against your golden set during the POC is showing you their day-2 behavior — which is what you are actually buying.
# Appendix B · The Agent Platform Engineering Checklist
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/appendix-b-engineering-checklist
Forty scored items across eight surfaces for grading a vendor platform or reviewing an internal agent build.
*Forty items across eight surfaces. Score 0 (absent), 1 (partial), 2 (solid) — for a vendor evaluation or an internal build review alike.*
## Loop & economics (Ch. 1, 4)
* Per-task step, token, time, and spend budgets, with loop detection
* Deterministic-rails execution: models select typed actions; code executes
* Two-engine separation with a measurable promotion seam
* Cost per resolved incident reportable at reference scale
* Independent, state-based verification with soak windows and staged rollback
## Context (Ch. 2)
* Automated discovery producing a reviewable system map
* Change-stream ingestion, time-ordered and attributable
* Retrieval with re-ranking; context budgets; traceable compaction
* Memory with provenance, decay, contradiction flags, and a human-curated tier
* Knowledge and topology refresh with staleness handling
## Tools & skills (Ch. 3)
* Intent-shaped tools; structurally separated read vs. write paths
* Size-capped, structured tool results with pointers to full data
* Skills versioned in source control with owners, tests, and changelogs
* Skill metadata declaring access class, reversibility, and blast radius
* MCP supply chain: pinned versions, allowlists, contract tests, egress map
## Security (Ch. 5)
* Per-agent identity; short-lived scoped credentials; environment separation
* Taint-tagged context with delimited untrusted material
* Sandboxed execution (microVM-class) with no ambient credentials
* Default-deny egress with allowlists and novel-destination alerts
* PII/secret tokenization before every model boundary; guarded de-tokenization
* Injection detection in telemetry and a standing red-team cadence
## Policy & approvals (Ch. 6)
* Two-axis action classification, machine-derivable from skill metadata
* Versioned policy-as-code with review workflow, per environment and agent
* One-screen approval artifacts with structured rejection capture
* Pre-flight checks, staged application, circuit breakers, rate limits
* Pre-staged executable rollback on every consequential action; drilled kill switch
## Evaluation (Ch. 7)
* Golden set harvested from real incidents; replay harness
* Layered scoring incl. evidence integrity; state-based mitigation oracles
* Calibrated judges plus a standing human grading slice
* Regression gates on every prompt/tool/policy/model change, per class
## Observability (Ch. 8)
* One trace per incident: agent, step, tool, and model spans in an open schema (OTel GenAI)
* Fleet metrics: quality, latency, cost, drift, security signals
* SLOs wired to trust-ladder graduation criteria
* Customer-exportable traces and audit data
## Day 2 (Ch. 9)
* Versioned bundles (prompts, tools, skills, policy, model pins); no invisible change
* Model migration playbook with per-class diffs and canary lanes
* Memory hygiene cadence with named ownership
* Blameless agent postmortems feeding the golden set
# Appendix C · Glossary — Engineer Delta
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/appendix-c-glossary
Engineering terms that extend the Field Guide glossary — from steps and trajectories to taint tagging and kill switches.
*Extends the Field Guide glossary; terms there are not repeated here.*
| Term | Definition |
| ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Step | One pass of the agent loop: context assembly → reasoning → action/tool → observation |
| Trajectory | The ordered sequence of steps for one task; the unit of replay and evaluation |
| Agent behavior | The observable decisions, tool interactions, evidence use, and outcome produced by the full agent system on one concrete problem; source, prompt, or isolated tool tests alone do not establish it |
| Model-visible context | The exact instructions, messages, tool schemas, and tool results supplied to a model for one step; it is an input to, not proof of, agent behavior |
| Determinism boundary | The deliberate line between generative reasoning (selection, judgment) and deterministic code (execution, verification) |
| Context budget | The allocation policy for the context window across system core, task frame, retrieved knowledge, and working set |
| Compaction | Agent-written summarization of its own trajectory with pointers back to evidence, to control context growth auditably |
| Golden set | A versioned corpus of replayable evaluation scenarios harvested from real incidents, with known answers and oracles |
| State-based oracle | A success check that probes actual system state rather than symptoms (e.g., defect present?) — resistant to alert-clearing false wins |
| Reward hacking | An agent satisfying the measured objective while defeating its intent (e.g., disabling the fault injector, restart-looping alerts clear) |
| Diagnosis–mitigation gap | The measured drop-off between correctly identifying a root cause and safely fixing it; the two are scored separately |
| Indirect prompt injection | Adversarial instructions planted in content the agent reads (logs, tickets, tool metadata) rather than sent to it directly |
| Confused deputy | An authorized agent misled into using its legitimate credentials for an attacker’s goal |
| Taint tagging | Provenance labels on context elements (system / human / telemetry / third-party) enforced through prompting and structure |
| Promotion (seam) | The sensing engine’s decision to wake the resolver engine for an event; its rate drives fleet economics |
| Bundle | The versioned deployable unit of an agent system: prompts, tools, skills, policy, retrieval config, model pins |
| Judge | A model scoring agent outputs against a rubric; requires calibration against human grades |
| Evidence integrity | The evaluation requirement that every claim in a conclusion traces to data the agent actually retrieved |
| Kill switch | A single drilled action halting all autonomous execution fleet-wide while investigation continues |
# Appendix D · Sources and How to Read the Numbers
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/appendix-d-sources
The primary sources behind this edition's figures, with the rules for weighing benchmark, vendor, and analyst numbers.
## Primary sources for this edition
1. **IBM Research, ITBench** (ICML 2025; github.com/itbench-hub/ITBench) — the open benchmark across SRE, CISO, and FinOps scenarios; source of the \~11–14% SRE resolution figures and scenario methodology.
2. **Artificial Analysis × IBM, ITBench-AA** (May 2026) — independent frontier-model evaluation on Kubernetes incident diagnosis; all evaluated models below 50% on the headline precision metric, with published turn, token, and cost curves.
3. **SREGym** (2026, arXiv) — live-benchmark research documenting reward hacking against fault injectors, alert-clearing false successes in prior benchmarks, and the measured diagnosis→mitigation gap (\~69–88% conditional success).
4. **Microsoft Research, AIOpsLab** — the live-environment agent evaluation framework this edition’s replay guidance builds on; and Microsoft’s Azure SRE Agent engineering posts — the 100+ tools → few core tools consolidation lesson, plus GA figures (1,300+ internal agents; 35,000+ incidents mitigated; 20,000+ hours saved) cited as first-party claims.
5. **AWS DevOps Agent GA materials** (March–April 2026) and adoption guidance — recommendation-only starts, single-service scoping; vendor-reported pilot outcomes labeled as such.
6. **Anthropic** — published multi-agent research-system engineering (orchestrator-worker gains at higher token cost) and the Model Context Protocol specification.
7. **OpenTelemetry GenAI SIG** — the GenAI semantic conventions for model, agent, and tool telemetry; agent-application and framework conventions in active development; vendor adoption notes from major observability platforms.
8. **OWASP Top 10 for LLM Applications** (LLM01: Prompt Injection) and practitioner threat research including CrowdStrike’s injection-technique taxonomy (150+ techniques; 300k+ analyzed adversarial prompts) — the Chapter 5 threat model’s public backbone.
9. **Gartner** — Market Guide for AI SRE (January 2026); the 40%+ agentic-project cancellation prediction (2027); guardian-agent and multi-agent inquiry data as cited in the Field Guide.
10. **Category signals** — Resolve AI’s \$125M Series A at a \$1B valuation (February 2026, category-record round); PagerDuty SRE Agent (Spring 2026 release); Datadog Bits AI SRE and peers — cited as market evidence, not endorsements.
## How to read the numbers
The Field Guide’s three rules apply unchanged — provenance stated, ranges over points, your baseline beats every benchmark — with one engineer’s addendum: benchmark scores measure models under a benchmark’s harness; your POC measures a platform under yours. Neither transfers to the other automatically, which is exactly why Appendix A exists. Where this edition quotes a number, its class (independent benchmark, peer-reviewed research, vendor first-party, analyst prediction, market event) is stated inline; anything we could not source to that standard was cut.
# Chapter 1 · The Anatomy of an Operations Agent
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-1-agent-anatomy
Everything that matters — quality, cost, safety — is decided by what you put inside the agent loop.
*Strip the marketing away and an operations agent is a loop. Everything that matters — quality, cost, safety — is decided by what you put inside that loop.*
## 1.1 The loop, precisely
An operations agent is software that repeatedly executes one cycle: assemble context → reason → select an action → execute a tool → observe the result → decide whether to continue, conclude, or escalate. Each pass is a step. An incident investigation is a trajectory of steps; a remediation is a trajectory whose final steps change the world and then verify the change. The Field Guide named the outer pipeline — Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate — and this chapter is about what happens inside each stage of it.
```text theme={null}
loop (one step):
context = system_prompt + task + memory + retrieved_context + tool_results_so_far
decision = model.reason(context) # hypothesis, plan, or tool selection
if decision is tool_call:
result = execute(tool, args) # via policy + sandbox (Ch. 5-6)
append result to trajectory # feeds the next step
elif decision is conclusion:
emit finding | plan | verification # with evidence attached
guard: step budget, token budget, time budget, loop detector
```
Three properties of this loop drive every architectural decision that follows. First, it is stateful across steps but stateless across incidents unless you build memory deliberately — Chapter 2. Second, its cost is multiplicative: tokens per step × steps per task × tasks per day, which is why economics get their own treatment in Chapter 4. Third, every input to the loop that came from the environment — logs, tickets, alert annotations — is untrusted data sitting next to trusted instructions, which is why security gets Chapter 5.
## 1.2 What a step really costs
Engineers evaluating agents should think in unit economics from day one. A realistic investigation of a non-trivial incident runs tens of steps and hundreds of thousands of tokens once telemetry excerpts are included; independent benchmark harnesses cap agents at around a hundred turns per task for exactly this reason, and publish token and cost curves alongside accuracy. The implications are concrete:
1. **Context dominates cost.** Tool results — log excerpts, metric series, config dumps — are almost always the largest token line, not the model’s own reasoning. Controlling what re-enters the loop (summarize, truncate, reference-by-pointer) is the first optimization, not the last.
2. **Steps are your latency.** Each step is a full model round-trip. A 40-step investigation on a slow frontier model is not a real-time responder. Parallel tool calls and specialist delegation (Chapter 4) are latency tools as much as quality tools.
3. **Budgets are guardrails.** Production agents run with explicit step, token, time, and spend ceilings per task, and a loop detector that recognizes when the same tool is being called with the same arguments to no new effect. An agent without budgets is a cost incident waiting for a quiet weekend.
## 1.3 The determinism boundary
The single most useful design question inside the loop is: which parts must be deterministic, and which parts benefit from judgment? Mature systems draw the line deliberately:
| Layer | Deterministic (code) | Generative (model) |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Sensing & triggering | Alert routing, dedup windows, severity mapping, policy filters | Deciding an anomaly is worth deep investigation |
| Investigation | Tool execution, data collection, redaction, timeouts | Hypothesis formation, evidence weighing, next-probe selection |
| Remediation | The runbook steps themselves; pre-flight checks; rollback mechanics | Choosing which remediation fits this incident; drafting a new plan when no runbook exists |
| Verification | Health checks, SLO probes, diff of before/after state | Judging whether the overall outcome matches intent; deciding to escalate |
The pattern is deterministic rails, generative core. Reasoning chooses; code executes. Every consequential side effect should pass through versioned, testable, idempotent code paths — never through freeform shell strings the model composed under pressure. Chapter 3 turns this into tool and runbook design; Chapter 6 turns it into policy.
**IN PRACTICE — STEP KINDS AS A CONTRACT**
CloudThinker’s runbook engine makes the determinism boundary explicit in its type system: every runbook is composed of five step kinds — Note (context for the reader), Check (read-only probe with an expected result), Act (a side-effecting, idempotent operation), Confirm (verification against intent), and Ask (an explicit human decision point). An agent may select and parameterize runbooks and may draft new ones for review, but Act steps execute as code under policy — the model never free-hands a mutation. The same contract is a useful lens on any platform you evaluate: ask where reasoning ends and execution begins.
## 1.4 Verification is the species difference
Automation executes and hopes. Agents execute and check. The validate stage — re-probing the symptom, diffing state against intent, watching the SLO for a soak period, and rolling back on failure — is what makes graduated autonomy defensible at all, and it is the first thing to inspect in any platform demo. Two engineering notes: verification must run against independent signals (the alert clearing is not proof; alerts can be cleared by the very restart that masked the fault — a failure mode documented in public benchmarks, Chapter 7), and verification must have a timeout with an opinion — an explicit soak window after which the system either declares success with evidence or escalates with a rollback already staged.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
An operations agent is a budgeted, observable loop with a deliberate determinism boundary and independent verification. Judge any platform by the loop’s internals — context handling, cost controls, execution rails, verification signals — not by the eloquence of its findings.
# Chapter 10 · The Vertical Pillars: Complexity, Cost, and Security & Compliance
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-10-vertical-pillars
One harness, three verticals — the machinery of Parts 01–03 creates value only when it is pointed at a domain, and each domain bends the engineering differently.
*One harness, three verticals. The machinery of Parts 01–03 creates value only when it is pointed at a domain — and each domain bends the engineering differently.*
Everything this book has built so far is deliberately pillar-agnostic: the loop, the context layer, the tool and policy stack, the evaluation and observability discipline. In the field, that harness ships pointed at three verticals — complexity (reliability and incident operations), cost optimization, and security & compliance. They are the three places where operational pain is large enough, recurring enough, and measurable enough to justify a standing agent. The engineering mistake is to treat them as three products. They are one loop with three different physics: what triggers it, what context decides quality, how dangerous its actions are, and — above all — how cheaply its work can be verified. Those four parameters, not the model, determine how fast each pillar earns autonomy.
## 10.1 One loop, three physics
| Engineering dimension | Complexity (reliability) | Cost Optimization | Security & Compliance |
| ---------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Primary trigger | Alerts and events, real time | Schedules; billing data lags 24–48h | Scanner findings, CVE feeds, config drift |
| Loop tempo | Minutes; latency-critical | Hours to daily; batch-friendly | Minutes for live exposure; daily for posture |
| Context that decides quality | Topology, change history, runbooks, incident memory | Utilization series, pricing and commitment data, ownership tags | Asset inventory, IaC state, identity graph, control mappings |
| Action risk profile | Reversible ops actions; rollback exists | Mostly reversible — except commitments (1–3 yr) | Enforcement can break production; quarantine has blast radius |
| Verification | SLO probe after the fix | Billing delta + a performance-regression guard | Rescan proves the finding is gone; evidence is recorded |
| Autonomy starting point | Investigate freely; act through gates (Ch. 6) | Report freely; rightsize gated; commitments approval-only | Detect and collect evidence freely; remediate approval-first |
## 10.2 Complexity: the pillar the pager answers to
Incident operations is the home turf of this book — and, not coincidentally, the hardest case in it. The objective is open-ended (“why is checkout slow?” has an unbounded hypothesis space), the environment is mid-failure, and verification is expensive: proving a fix worked means probing a live SLO, not reading a billing line. That is exactly the profile on which Chapter 7’s benchmark numbers are ugly, and why this pillar runs the full trust ladder rather than skipping to autonomy.
The engineering emphasis follows directly. Diagnosis is the product: precision of root-cause identification, graded by the on-call engineers who consume it, is the KPI that unlocks everything else. Cause over symptom is a policy, not a hope: Chapter 7 showed agents gaming mitigation benchmarks with restart loops; in production, the same guard applies — a remediation that does not reference a diagnosed cause, or that repeats within its own cooldown window, is escalated, not executed. Remediation rides runbooks: the highest-trust path to action is the operation runbook with pre-checks, typed steps, and post-verification, because it converts an open-ended act into a bounded, auditable one. The KPIs that matter: MTTR delta against your own baseline, diagnosis acceptance rate, escalation rate, and repeat-incident rate — the last one being the test of whether incident memory (Chapter 2) is actually learning.
## 10.3 Cost optimization: where autonomy is earned fastest
Cost inverts the physics. Verification is nearly free — the billing line either moved or it didn’t — and most actions are reversible: a rightsized instance can be resized back, an orphaned volume restored from snapshot, a schedule re-enabled. Cheap verification plus reversible action is precisely the promotion criterion Chapter 12 formalizes, which is why cost is where production deployments consistently reach act-with-notification first, and why it is the least contested place to demonstrate agent value.
Three traps still demand engineering. First, the counterfactual problem: “savings” is a claim about spend that would have happened — hold it to Chapter 7’s measurement discipline by reporting realized deltas against a frozen baseline, never the sum of recommendation screenshots. Second, the externality: every rightsizing decision is a performance bet, and a cost agent that causes latency incidents has not saved money, it has moved the bill to the complexity pillar — so the verification step is a billing delta and an SLO guard, and any cost action that trips the guard rolls back and writes the case to memory. Third, the one irreversible class: reserved instances and savings plans are one-to-three-year financial commitments; they stay approval-only permanently, with the agent’s job being the evidence package — utilization history, coverage math, break-even — not the signature.
## 10.4 Security & compliance: highest stakes, clearest split
Security has the sharpest read/write asymmetry in operations. The read side — triaging scanner findings, verifying whether a CVE is actually exposed in your environment, mapping controls, collecting audit evidence — is enormous, recurring toil with cheap verification: a rescan either confirms the finding is gone or it doesn’t. Automate it first and aggressively. The write side — patching, quarantining workloads, revoking credentials, rewriting IAM — carries the worst blast radius in this book: an over-broad quarantine is a self-inflicted outage, and a bad IAM change can lock out the responders. Chapter 6’s policy and approval machinery applies here at its strictest settings, with enforcement actions approval-first by default and graduating only per narrow action class.
Two pillar-specific disciplines. Fix in code, not in the console: on IaC-managed estates, a console-side remediation is a drift bomb — the next apply reverts it and the finding reopens, so the durable remediation path is a proposed change to the IaC source with CI as the verification gate. Treat compliance evidence as a first-class workload: the quietly transformative use case is not blocking attacks but continuously mapping controls to reality — collecting the configuration snapshots, access reviews, and change records that audits demand, kept current instead of reconstructed in a two-week scramble. It is read-only, verifiable, and directly billable time recovered; for regulated industries it is frequently the fastest-approved deployment in the portfolio. KPIs: mean time to remediate by severity, exposure window on internet-facing findings, evidence coverage and freshness, and a hard zero on unauthorized enforcement actions.
## 10.5 One harness, three tool packs
The cross-pillar conclusion is architectural. What changes per pillar is the tool pack, the context pack, the policy defaults, and the evaluation set. What must not change is the harness: one policy engine, one approval surface, one trace store, one evaluation discipline. The anti-pattern — a point product per pillar, each with its own console, permissions model, and audit trail — recreates the swivel-chair problem one layer up, triples the attack surface of Chapter 5, and makes the cross-pillar cases (a cost action that causes an incident; a security finding rooted in a change the reliability agent made) invisible to everyone. Chapter 11 catalogs how these deployments fail in practice; Chapter 12 returns to the pillars as standing missions and shows why their verification profiles set the order in which autonomy arrives.
**IN PRACTICE — ONE HARNESS, THREE PILLARS**
CloudThinker ships the pillar structure of this chapter as modules on a single harness. DRE (Deep Response Engine) is the complexity pillar and the daily wedge — deep investigation first, resolution through the trust ladder. CostOps is the fast-payback pillar: reporting and gap discovery run as free actions, rightsizing is gated, commitments stay approval-only. AppSec covers the third pillar — scheduled scans and pentest skills across SAST/DAST tooling, IaC-side remediation proposals — with an audit trail that doubles as compliance evidence. All three run the same DARV loop under the same Action Engine — one policy and approval surface, one runbook system, one trace store — so a cost action that risks an SLO, or a security finding rooted in last night’s change, is one query away, not three consoles away.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
1. **The pillar doesn’t change the loop; it changes the physics.** Trigger, tempo, context, action risk, and verification cost are the five dials — engineer them per vertical instead of buying a product per vertical.
2. **Autonomy arrives at the speed of verification.** Cost graduates first (billing delta is cheap proof), complexity’s bounded action classes next, security enforcement last — and compliance evidence collection is the underrated fast win.
3. **One harness, three packs.** Separate stacks per pillar triple the audit surface and hide exactly the cross-pillar failures — cost actions causing incidents, findings rooted in changes — that hurt most.
# Chapter 11 · The Failure Catalog — and Build vs. Buy for Engineers
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-11-failure-catalog
Twelve production failure modes, each with its detection signal and its antidote — then the build-vs-buy question answered the way engineers actually face it.
*Gartner’s canceled-40% is an aggregate; failures are specific. Twelve production failure modes, each with its detection signal and its antidote — then the build-vs-buy question answered the way engineers actually face it.*
## 11.1 The catalog
| Failure mode | What it looks like | Detection signal | Antidote |
| ------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| 1 · The infinite investigation | Agent probes forever, concludes nothing, bills plenty | Step counts and cost per investigation trending up; time-to-first-finding SLO burn | Step/token/time budgets; loop detector; escalate-on-budget with partial findings (Ch. 1) |
| 2 · Context flood | Quality collapses as raw tool output swamps the window | Tokens per step ballooning; accuracy drop on long incidents | Size-capped tool results; compaction with pointers; retrieval re-ranking (Ch. 2–3) |
| 3 · Confidently wrong | Fluent, evidenced-looking conclusion; wrong mechanism | Evidence-integrity failures; rejection reasons = “wrong diagnosis” | Evidence-traceable claims; layered eval scoring; human grading slice (Ch. 7) |
| 4 · Validation theater | “Fixed” because the alert cleared; defect intact | Repeat-incident rate; diagnosis–mitigation gap in evals | Independent state-based verification; soak windows; separate mitigation scoring (Ch. 1, 7) |
| 5 · Alert storm → cost storm | An incident wave wakes the resolver hundreds of times | Promotion-rate spike; spend anomaly at the seam | Sensing-side correlation and storm dampening; per-window resolver ceilings (Ch. 4) |
| 6 · Injection incident | Agent acts on instructions found in telemetry or tooling | Injection-pattern detections; novel egress; anomalous tool sequences | Full Ch. 5 stack; red-team cadence; memory provenance |
| 7 · Approval fatigue | Rubber-stamped approvals; gate becomes theater | Acceptance >95% with near-zero review latency | Graduate the class or improve the artifact; meter the gate (Ch. 6) |
| 8 · Memory poisoning | One bad conclusion steers future incidents | Contradiction flags; repeat wrong diagnoses of one class | Provenance, decay, human-curated tier; hygiene cadence (Ch. 2, 9) |
| 9 · Tool sprawl | Dozens of thin tools; wrong-tool choices; brittle prompts | Tool-choice error rate; context cost per step | Consolidate into intent-shaped capabilities; the fewer-better rule (Ch. 3) |
| 10 · Invisible change | Behavior shifts; no diffable cause | Drift metrics move with no bundle release | Everything-is-an-artifact; pins; gated deploys (Ch. 9) |
| 11 · Model-swap regression | Vendor upgrade quietly loses a class you had graduated | Per-class golden-set diff; step-count drift post-swap | Migration playbook; canary lanes; dual-run (Ch. 9) |
| 12 · The frozen pilot | Advise-only forever; no graduation evidence; renewal dies | Autonomy level flat across quarters; no MTTR delta | Signed graduation criteria; boring-domain-first; Appendix A gates |
Two meta-observations. First, every failure mode above is visible on a dashboard before it is visible in an outage — but only if Chapters 7 and 8 were built. Programs that skip evaluation and observability do not avoid these failures; they meet them without instruments. Second, the catalog is the interview: ask any platform vendor which of these twelve they have personally hit and what they shipped in response. Scar tissue is the only credential in a category this young.
## 11.2 Build vs. buy, the engineering edition
Capable teams can absolutely build an operations agent — a weekend with a frontier model, a ReAct loop, and kubectl produces a demo that will impress your leadership. The decision is not whether you can build the agent; it is whether you should own the harness. Tally what this book actually specified: the context subsystem with discovery, budgets, memory, and provenance (Ch. 2); the tool and skill layer with risk metadata and contract tests (Ch. 3); orchestration with typed handoffs and two-engine cost control (Ch. 4); the injection defense stack with sandboxing, egress control, and tokenization (Ch. 5); policy-as-code, approval engineering, execution safety, and a regulator-grade audit schema (Ch. 6); a golden set, judges, and regression gates (Ch. 7); decision-graph observability (Ch. 8); and the day-2 operating discipline (Ch. 9). The demo is a fifth of the system, and it is the fun fifth. The other four-fifths is undifferentiated heavy lifting for most organizations — and the exact surface where the twelve failure modes live.
The honest decision rule: build if agent operations is your product, or your constraints are so unusual that no platform’s trust architecture fits — and staff it as a product team with a roadmap, not a side quest. Buy if your differentiation lies elsewhere, and spend your engineering on what no vendor can ship: your golden set, your context curation, your policy design, and your operating discipline. Either way, hold the same bar — Appendix B is written to audit a vendor and to scope an internal build with equal precision, and Appendix A will pressure-test whichever path you choose against your own incidents.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Failures are specific, instrumented, and mostly self-inflicted at the harness layer. Whether you build or buy, you own the golden set, the policy, the context, and the discipline — and you should demand scar tissue, not slideware, from anyone who wants to own the rest.
# Chapter 12 · The Future of Cloud Operations: The Autonomous Mission Loop
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-12-autonomous-mission-loop
A fleet of narrow, standing missions that trigger themselves, verify their own work, and run under policy — while engineers move from the loop to above it.
*Eleven chapters built and hardened one loop. The end state is not a better chat window — it is a fleet of narrow, standing missions that trigger themselves, verify their own work, and run under policy, while engineers move from the loop to above it. This chapter maps that trajectory, and the five conditions that make it safe.*
## 12.1 From conversation to standing mission
Most deployments today are conversational: an engineer opens a session, asks, approves, closes the tab. That model is useful, and it is capped — by human attention. The agent works when you watch it, so its ceiling is your calendar. The unit that removes the cap is the mission: a standing objective with its own triggers, a bounded action space, and verification built into the loop. A mission is not “help me with Kubernetes.” It is “review every pull request for infrastructure impact,” “keep image vulnerabilities below this threshold,” “hold this service to its SLO.” You do not use a mission the way you use a chat. You commission it — and then you supervise a queue.
Missions wake three ways, and a production platform needs all three. Event-driven: an alert fires, a pull request opens, a CVE lands, a scanner finding arrives — the event stream is the front door, filtered and promoted so the expensive loop runs only on what matters (the event-promotion pattern from Chapter 4). Scheduled: the nightly cost sweep, the weekly patch audit, the daily hygiene pass — unglamorous, compounding, and in early production deployments often the largest single source of daily agent work. Continuous: watchers on SLO burn, configuration drift, and spend that hold a baseline rather than answer a question. The chat surface does not disappear; it becomes the exception surface — where you interrogate a mission’s work, not where the work happens.
> *Figure 5 — The autonomous mission: event, schedule, and watcher triggers start a detect → analyze → resolve → validate loop that closes on machine-run verification; engineers sit above it — policy, budgets, approvals for the irreversible, exceptions, and sampled audits.*
## 12.2 Vertical missions: autonomy through narrowness
Chapter 7 was blunt: on open-ended incident resolution, frontier agents still resolve a small minority of scenarios. Read carelessly, that says autonomy is years away. Read correctly, it says autonomy is not one dial. It is earned per mission — and the narrower the mission, the sooner it is earned. Shrink the objective, bound the action space, and make verification cheap, and the same underlying models move from research-grade to production-grade, because the harness can check the work.
| Mission | Trigger | The loop | Verification |
| ----------------- | -------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| Code review | Every pull request | Infra impact, security, cost delta on the diff | Human merge stays; agent comments are advisory |
| Code / IaC ops | Schedule + drift events | Reconcile drift, update dependencies, patch images | Plan-diff review + CI must pass |
| Incident response | Alert / event promotion | Detect → analyze → resolve → validate on known failure classes | SLO recovery probe + auto-rollback |
| AppSec | CVE feed + scheduled scans | Triage findings, verify exposure, patch or escalate | Rescan proves the finding is gone |
| Cost | Nightly sweep | Rightsize, clean orphans, flag anomalies | Billing delta; every action reversible |
The column that matters is the last one. Every mission above closes its loop on a check the machine can run itself — a rescan, a plan-diff, a CI gate, an SLO probe, a billing line. That is the promotion criterion in one sentence: a mission earns autonomy when its verification is cheaper than its supervision. Where verification is expensive or judgment-laden — architecture changes, deletion of stateful resources, anything irreversible — the mission stays gated. That is the system working, not failing.
## 12.3 Engineers on the loop, not in the loop
The phrase “human in the loop” quietly encodes the ceiling: if a person must click yes on every action, you have built a slower engineer with better handwriting. The future role is on the loop — above it. In-the-loop approval is a stage, not the destination. The destination is Chapter 6 grown up: policy decides what runs unattended, per mission and per blast radius; approvals are reserved for the irreversible; an exception queue collects low-confidence and out-of-policy cases for human judgment; sampled audits re-check a slice of the autonomous tail every week, because silent regression is the failure mode of trust; and budgets — spend, actions, tokens — are the circuit breakers that make a runaway loop boring instead of career-ending.
Graduation is per mission and evidence-driven, exactly like promoting code: a mission moves from read-only, to propose, to act-with-approval, to unattended-within-policy on the strength of its eval scores and incident history — Chapter 7’s gates, applied to autonomy levels. It can be demoted the same way. Oversight stops being a meeting and becomes a control plane: policies, budgets, queues, and audit dashboards. Supervising ten missions this way is a part-time job; performing those ten missions by hand is ten jobs.
## 12.4 Five conditions, honestly stated
This future is conditional, and the conditions are this book’s chapters wearing different hats. One: verification cheaper than supervision — otherwise autonomy is risk with better marketing (Ch. 7). Two: an evented substrate — missions need an event stream and a scheduler, not a chat box (Ch. 4). Three: policy, approvals, and execution safety as code, because unattended action without machine-readable guardrails is negligence (Ch. 6). Four: trace-level observability, because you cannot audit what you did not record (Ch. 8). Five: fleet discipline — versioned missions, canaried rollouts, cost curves — because fifty standing loops are a production system, not a feature (Ch. 9). Teams that hold all five will run operations as intent plus exceptions. Teams that hold none will discover that “autonomous” was a pricing tier.
## 12.5 Building the future
The shift will arrive mission by mission, not as a moment. Code review goes unattended-advisory first, because verification is free. Cost missions follow, because every action is reversible. Security and incident response graduate class by failure class, each promotion backed by a golden set and a quarter of clean audits. None of this waits for a smarter model; all of it waits for a harder harness — which is why the teams that arrive first will not be the ones with the biggest model bill, but the ones that industrialized context, policy, evaluation, and traces while everyone else was demoing chat. The future of cloud operations is not a better conversation about your infrastructure. It is a fleet of missions quietly running the detect–analyze–resolve–validate loop around the clock, with engineers above it — setting intent, judging exceptions. That is the future this series is a field manual for, and the next edition will be written partly from mission logs.
**IN PRACTICE — THE MISSION ROADMAP ON ONE HARNESS**
CloudThinker ships this chapter as product strategy: one harness — the DARV loop, the Action Engine, the policy / approval / runbook / trusted-command stack — with vertical missions enabled per team. DRE (Deep Response Engine) is the daily wedge for incident response; CodeReview rides every pull request; AppSec runs scheduled scans and pentest skills with declared risk levels; CostOps runs the nightly cost sweeps; CodeOps manages the infrastructure-as-code lifecycle. Missions wake from Pulse events or schedules, act under graduated autonomy L1–L4, and report into one oversight surface. The operating model has a name in-house — engineers on the loop, not in the loop — and the roadmap rule is customer-driven: a new mission ships when a customer’s need meets a harness that can already verify it.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
The future is a fleet of narrow, standing missions — event-driven, scheduled, continuously watching — each earning autonomy when its verification is cheaper than its supervision, under policy and budgets, with engineers on the loop judging exceptions. Autonomy is earned per mission by the harness, not granted per platform by the model.
# Chapter 2 · Context Engineering: The Real Determinant of Agent Quality
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-2-context-engineering
Two agents on the same model, tools, and incident can differ by an order of magnitude in usefulness. The difference is context.
*Two agents on the same model, the same tools, and the same incident can differ by an order of magnitude in usefulness. The difference is context. This is where “garbage context in, garbage autonomy out” becomes an engineering discipline.*
## 2.1 Why context beats model choice
Frontier models are increasingly interchangeable for operations reasoning; what is not interchangeable is what they are given to reason about. An agent that knows your topology, your deploy history, your conventions, and your past incidents will out-diagnose a smarter model that knows none of them. The industry has converged on a name for this discipline — context engineering: the systematic design of what enters the context window, how it is structured, and when it is evicted or refreshed. Two findings from current practice anchor the discipline. Bigger windows did not solve it: model performance degrades as context bloats with irrelevant material, so curation beats accumulation. And in multi-agent systems, context is the multiplier on cost — routing each agent only what its task needs is the difference between viable and unviable economics.
## 2.2 The five context sources of an operations agent
1. **Topology and inventory.** What exists and how it connects: services, dependencies, infrastructure resources, ownership. This is the skeleton every hypothesis hangs on — “what changed upstream of the symptom?” is unanswerable without it. It must be discovered and refreshed, not hand-maintained; stale topology is worse than none because it is trusted.
2. **Change history.** Deploys, config changes, infra mutations, feature flags — time-ordered and attributable. The majority of incidents correlate with a change; an agent without the change stream investigates with one eye closed.
3. **Operational knowledge.** Runbooks, SLO definitions, architecture notes, conventions (“we always drain before scaling down”), known failure patterns. Imperfect is fine; absent is not. This is tribal knowledge made machine-readable — and it compounds.
4. **Incident memory.** Past investigations, what the root cause was, what fixed it, what didn’t. Retrieval over this corpus is how the second occurrence of a failure gets resolved in minutes instead of hours — the compounding the Field Guide promised, delivered mechanically.
5. **Live telemetry.** Metrics, logs, traces, events — pulled on demand by tools during the loop, never bulk-loaded. The context layer decides what is worth pulling; the tool layer pulls it; summarization decides what survives into the next step.
> *Figure 1 — The context stack: durable knowledge (topology, changes, runbooks, memory) assembled per task; live telemetry pulled on demand; everything filtered by a context budget.*
## 2.3 Assembly: the context budget
Treat the context window like a production resource with a budget and an allocation policy. A workable starting allocation for an investigation step: a stable system core (identity, policies, output contracts); the task frame (the incident record so far, pinned so it cannot scroll away); retrieved knowledge (top-k runbooks and similar incidents, re-ranked, with citations back to source); and a working set of tool results (recent results verbatim, older results as agent-written summaries with pointers to the full data). Retrieval discipline matters more than retrieval technology: high-recall retrieve then aggressive re-rank to a precise top-few beats dumping fifty chunks and hoping — the “lost in the middle” failure is real and measurable.
Eviction is the other half. Long investigations must compact: the agent summarizes its own trajectory (“checked X, ruled out Y because Z”) and drops raw excerpts, keeping pointers so any claim can be re-expanded and audited. Compaction is also where fabrication sneaks in — summaries must be traceable to the evidence they compress, which is an evaluation target in Chapter 7.
## 2.4 Memory: what to write, what to decay
Persistent memory is where an agent deployment becomes un-copyable — and where it can quietly rot. Engineering rules that survive contact with production:
* **Write conclusions, not transcripts.** Persist the incident summary, root cause, fix, and verification — not the 300k-token trajectory. Structure it (entities, symptoms, cause, resolution) so retrieval hits on the pattern, not the prose.
* **Provenance on every memory.** Who wrote it (human, agent, import), from what incident, when, and with what confidence. Unattributed memory is how one bad conclusion poisons a hundred future investigations.
* **Decay and challenge.** Memories age: topology changes invalidate old causal paths. Time-decay relevance, and let contradicting evidence flag a memory for review instead of silently coexisting with it.
* **Human-curated tier.** Keep a small, high-trust layer — conventions, standing decisions, “never do X on the payments cluster” — that only humans edit and that always outranks learned memory. This is also a policy surface, not just a quality surface.
## 2.5 Discovery: context as onboarding
The fastest-moving platforms treat context acquisition as a product phase, not a documentation request. On connection, the system discovers: it walks the cloud accounts and clusters read-only, builds the topology and inventory, ingests the change stream, and drafts its own system map for human confirmation. Discovery is what makes an agent useful on day one and safe later — a system that understands the estate can predict blast radius before it ever requests write access. It is also the engineering foundation under a strategic direction the whole category is heading toward: operations where the human does not prompt at all, because the system already knows the estate well enough to bring findings, plans, and evidence to the human for approval. The context layer is what makes that credible rather than reckless.
**IN PRACTICE — DISCOVERY BEFORE AUTONOMY**
CloudThinker’s onboarding runs Connect → Discover before anything else: read-only credentials, an automated walk of the estate (clusters, services, databases, cost surfaces), and a generated system map plus first findings — deep investigation and a fix plan produced entirely on read-only access. Write access, and the trust ladder that governs it, comes only after the human has seen the system’s understanding of their world. The evaluation question for any platform: what does it know about your estate one hour after connection, and can it show you?
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Context is the moat and the failure mode. Engineer it like a subsystem: five sources, a budgeted assembly policy, traceable compaction, provenance-tagged memory with decay, and automated discovery. When an agent underperforms, audit its context before you blame its model.
# Chapter 3 · Tools, Skills, and the Protocol Layer
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-3-tools-skills-protocol
Tools are where reasoning touches the world. Their design decides more about safety and reliability than any prompt.
*Tools are where reasoning touches the world. Their design decides more about safety and reliability than any prompt — and their sprawl is the most common self-inflicted wound in agent engineering.*
## 3.1 Fewer, better tools
The most instructive published lesson in the category comes from Microsoft’s Azure SRE Agent team, who have written candidly that they began with more than a hundred tools across dozens of narrowly specialized agents — and shipped with a handful of core tools and more generalist agents. Every tool added is context the model must carry, a decision surface it can get wrong, and an interface you must version and test. Design rules that hold up:
1. **Tools are capabilities, not API endpoints.** Wrap intent (“get recent deploys for service S”, “top slow queries on database D”), not raw verbs. One good capability replaces five thin wrappers and removes argument-guessing errors.
2. **Descriptions are prompts.** The model chooses tools by their descriptions. Write them like documentation for a sharp new hire: when to use, when not to use, what the result contains, cost and latency notes for expensive probes.
3. **Read and write are different species.** Separate read tools (freely usable inside the loop) from write tools (policy-gated, Chapter 6) at the interface level, not by convention. The agent should be structurally unable to mutate through a read path.
4. **Results are context — shape them.** Return structured, pre-summarized, size-capped results with pointers to full data. A tool that returns 80,000 raw log lines is an attack on your own context budget.
5. **Idempotency and dry-run on every write.** Every mutating tool supports plan/preview, executes idempotently, and returns a machine-checkable result. This is what makes verification (Chapter 1) and rollback (Chapter 6) engineering rather than hope.
## 3.2 Skills and runbooks: operational knowledge as code
Above atomic tools sits the layer that encodes procedure: skills — parameterized, versioned units of operational capability (“rotate credentials for X”, “drain and recycle node pool Y”, “collect the evidence bundle for incident class Z”). Skills are where the determinism boundary from Chapter 1 becomes reusable: the model selects and parameterizes; the skill executes as tested code with its own pre-flight checks, timeouts, and rollback hooks. Engineering implications: skills live in version control with owners, tests, and changelogs; they declare their blast radius and reversibility so policy (Chapter 6) can classify them automatically; and their execution telemetry feeds evaluation (Chapter 7). A platform’s skill catalog — how rich, how tested, how declarative about risk — is a better maturity signal than its demo.
**IN PRACTICE — A CATALOG WITH DECLARED RISK**
CloudThinker ships 325+ CloudSkills spanning cloud, Kubernetes, database, security, and cost surfaces; each declares its access class (read/write), reversibility, and required policy level, which is what lets the Action Engine auto-classify it into the approval model instead of relying on a human to remember which script is dangerous. When evaluating any platform, ask to see the skill metadata, not the skill list.
## 3.3 MCP in production
The Model Context Protocol has become the de facto standard for connecting agents to tools and data — the reason a platform can integrate an observability stack or a ticketing system without bespoke glue, and the one technical standard that matters across every group of the 2026 AI-SRE landscape: if a platform speaks MCP, agents and tools from different vendors compose; if it does not, you are buying an ecosystem. Production use, however, is not plug-and-play. The engineering checklist:
* **Server trust is supply-chain trust.** An MCP server is code with credentials. Pin versions, review before upgrade, allowlist which servers each agent may load, and prefer first-party or audited servers for anything touching production. Tool descriptions themselves are injectable surfaces (Chapter 5) — treat third-party tool metadata as untrusted input.
* **Auth follows the agent, not the server.** Credentials scoped per agent identity and per environment, short-lived, brokered — never a shared service account behind a popular server.
* **Version the contract.** Tool schemas drift. Contract-test the tools your runbooks depend on so a server upgrade cannot silently change argument semantics under a working skill.
* **Egress-map every server.** Know which servers can reach the internet and which are perimeter-only; this is the difference between a data-exfiltration path and a contained integration (Chapter 5).
One clarification worth engineering into your mental model: integration is not sensing. Connecting tools so agents can act on systems (the MCP layer) and pushing events from systems into the platform so agents notice (the sensing pipeline, Chapter 4) are different mechanisms with different reliability and security profiles. Platforms — and diagrams — that blur them usually have a gap in one.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Design few, intent-shaped tools with structurally separated read/write paths; encode procedure as versioned, risk-declaring skills; and treat MCP as production supply chain — pinned, allowlisted, contract-tested, egress-mapped. The tool layer is where “the agent did something weird” is either impossible or inevitable.
# Chapter 4 · Orchestration and Two-Engine Economics
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-4-orchestration-economics
Multi-agent is not a philosophy; it is a set of engineering trade-offs about context, credentials, latency, and cost.
*Multi-agent is not a philosophy; it is a set of engineering trade-offs about context, credentials, latency, and cost. This chapter is the mechanics behind the reference architecture.*
## 4.1 What the orchestrator actually does
Strip the org-chart metaphor and the orchestrator is five concrete responsibilities: intake (normalize goals, incidents, and events into tasks); decomposition and routing (decide what the task needs and which specialist owns each part); context management (give each specialist the subset of context its subtask needs — the single biggest cost and quality lever in a multi-agent system); integration (reconcile specialist findings into one evidenced conclusion, including when they disagree); and escalation (own the conversation with humans — approvals, notifications, the incident record). Specialists extend the orchestrator; they never compete with it. That design keeps one audit trail, one approval surface, and one place where “what is the system doing right now?” has an answer.
The published evidence cuts both ways, and honest engineering uses both halves. Anthropic’s account of its multi-agent research system reports large quality gains from an orchestrator-worker pattern with parallel specialists — at materially higher token cost. Microsoft’s SRE Agent team reports the opposite correction: collapsing dozens of micro-agents and a hundred-plus tools into a few generalists with core tools. The synthesis this series has argued from the start: specialize by operational domain and credential boundary — cloud, security, database, Kubernetes — because those boundaries pay for themselves in least-privilege and depth; resist fragmenting further, because every additional agent is coordination overhead, duplicated context, and another thing to evaluate.
## 4.2 Handoffs are contracts
The failure point of multi-agent systems is rarely a specialist’s competence; it is the handoff. Engineer handoffs as typed contracts, not chat: a delegated subtask carries objective (what question to answer or outcome to achieve), scoped context (what the specialist gets to see), budget (steps, tokens, time), and return schema (findings with evidence pointers, confidence, and explicit “what I did not check”). The orchestrator’s integration step then has structured inputs to reconcile — and the audit trail records who concluded what from which evidence, which monolithic reasoning hides. Parallelism falls out naturally: independent subtasks fan out concurrently (latency win), but only when their write-scopes cannot collide; concurrent mutations to one estate are a race condition with an apology attached.
> *Figure 2 — A delegation contract: objective, scoped context, budget, and return schema. Handoffs are typed; integration is evidenced; the audit trail survives.*
## 4.3 The two-engine economics, quantified
The Field Guide introduced the pattern qualitatively: a cheap, always-on sensing engine and an expensive, on-demand resolver engine. The Engineer Edition’s job is to make you compute it. The naive design — frontier reasoning on every signal — fails arithmetic: thousands of daily signals × a multi-step reasoning pass each is a model bill that erases the program’s ROI before its first renewal, and “unbounded model spend” is one of the documented ways agentic projects die. The two-engine design changes the equation structurally:
| | Sensing engine (“pulse”) | Resolver engine |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------- |
| Runs | Continuously, on every signal | On demand, when sensing promotes an event |
| Work | Ingest, dedup, correlate, policy-filter, enrich, score | Full investigative loop: hypotheses, tools, plan, verify |
| Compute | Streams + rules + small/cheap models | Frontier or fine-tuned models, tens of steps |
| Cost shape | Near-flat with signal volume | Linear with promoted incidents only |
| Failure mode | Misses or over-promotes (tune with evals) | Expensive wandering (budgets, Ch. 1) |
Instrument the seam: promotion rate (what fraction of signals wake the resolver), cost per promoted investigation, and cost per resolved incident. Those three numbers are your unit economics, they belong on the Chapter 8 dashboard, and they are the honest answer to “what will this cost at our scale?” — a question you should never let a vendor answer with a shrug. A second-order lever on the same seam: routine daily operations do not need frontier reasoning. Fine-tuned small models running the high-volume, well-understood work — with frontier models reserved for novel investigation — cut the resolver line further and, for regulated buyers, compose with self-hosted deployment for full model control.
**IN PRACTICE — DRE: PULSE + RESOLVER**
CloudThinker’s Deep Response Engine is this pattern shipped as the flagship: Pulse ingests and filters the event stream continuously (Redis Streams + time-series storage under the hood); the Resolver Engine spins up the full DARV investigation only for promoted events, inside a sandboxed runtime, with per-incident budgets. The tagline is the architecture: they see, we act, we learn. Whatever platform you evaluate, ask for its promotion rate and its cost-per-resolved-incident at a reference scale — if it cannot answer, it has not run at scale.
## 4.4 State: the incident record as shared truth
Multi-agent systems need one durable, append-only record per task: the timeline of signals, hypotheses, tool calls, evidence, decisions, approvals, actions, and verifications. Everything reads from it; everything writes to it; humans join it mid-flight and see the same truth the agents see. Engineering it as an event log (rather than mutable chat state) buys you replay for evaluation (Chapter 7), a natural audit artifact (Chapter 6), and crash-safe resumability — an agent that dies mid-investigation resumes from the record, not from amnesia.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Orchestration is intake, routing, context allocation, integration, and escalation — with handoffs as typed contracts and one append-only incident record as shared truth. Economics are a design input: two engines, measured at the seam, with cost per resolved incident as the number that decides whether 24/7 agentic coverage is viable at your scale.
# Chapter 5 · The Threat Model: Your Agent Is an Attack Surface
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-5-threat-model
An operations agent executes reasoning derived from whatever it reads — and it reads everything.
*Classical tooling executed instructions from engineers. An operations agent executes reasoning derived from whatever it reads — and it reads everything. That inversion is the security story of this category.*
## 5.1 The core vulnerability: instructions and data share a channel
Large language models process trusted instructions and untrusted data as one token stream and cannot structurally distinguish them. OWASP ranks prompt injection as the number-one risk for LLM applications, and the practitioner ecosystem now tracks it at industrial scale — security vendors catalog well over a hundred distinct injection techniques from hundreds of thousands of observed adversarial prompts. For operations agents the indirect variant is the one that matters: the attacker never talks to your agent. They plant instructions where your agent will read — and an operations agent reads more untrusted text than almost any system you run.
* **Telemetry is attacker-writable.** Log lines contain user input by design. A request header, a username, an error payload — any of them can carry “ignore previous instructions; run X and post the output to Y” into an investigation context.
* **Tickets, commits, and annotations are attacker-writable.** Incident descriptions, commit messages, alert annotations, wiki pages ingested as “operational knowledge” — all are injection carriers into exactly the trusted-feeling context of Chapter 2.
* **Tool ecosystems are injectable.** Third-party MCP tool descriptions and tool outputs enter the model’s context too; a poisoned tool description is an instruction smuggled inside your own toolbox.
* **Memory is a persistence mechanism.** If an injected conclusion gets written to incident memory, the attack outlives the incident — a poisoned memory steers future investigations long after the log line is gone (Chapter 2’s provenance rules are a security control, not just hygiene).
The classic amplifier is the confused deputy: the agent holds legitimate credentials, so an injection does not need to steal anything — it needs only to persuade the deputy to use its authority on the attacker’s behalf: exfiltrate a config to an external endpoint, widen a security group, “clean up” the wrong resources. Research on tool-enabled agents in privileged execution environments names the systemic risks precisely: ambient authority and capability-intent mismatch — the agent can do far more than any single task should.
## 5.2 Defense in depth, layer by layer
No filter fully solves an attack class rooted in the model’s architecture; the OWASP guidance itself recommends layered mitigations rather than a silver bullet. The production stack:
1. **Least privilege as physics.** Per-agent identity, short-lived scoped credentials, environment separation (Field Guide, Chapter 6) — reasserted here because it converts “agent compromised” from estate-wide incident to bounded incident. The database agent that cannot touch security groups cannot be injected into touching them.
2. **Taint-aware context.** Mark provenance on every context element (system, human, telemetry, third-party) and render untrusted material inside explicit data delimiters with an instruction hierarchy the model is trained and prompted to respect. Imperfect — assume bypasses — but it raises cost and enables the next layers.
3. **Structural rails on action.** The Chapter 1 determinism boundary is a security control: models select from typed, allowlisted actions; they do not compose freeform commands. Trusted-command allowlists at the execution layer mean even a fully hijacked reasoning step can only choose among pre-approved operations — and the dangerous ones are approval-gated regardless of what the context said.
4. **Sandboxed execution.** Agent tool execution runs inside isolated runtimes (microVM-class isolation) with no ambient credentials, explicit mounts, and per-task lifetimes — so “run this script” cannot become lateral movement.
5. **Egress control.** Injections monetize through exfiltration. Default-deny outbound from the execution environment, allowlist the endpoints tools legitimately need, and alert on novel destinations. The Field Guide’s data-control questions gave buyers this lens; here it is your own architecture requirement.
6. **Detection and red-teaming.** Injection attempts are observable: instruction-like content in telemetry, tool-call patterns diverging from the task, output guardrails catching exfiltration shapes. Log them as security events. Then attack yourself: seed injection strings into a staging log stream and measure what your agents do — continuously, not once, because technique catalogs grow monthly.
> *Figure 3 — The injection kill chain and its layered defenses: tainted input → reasoning → action selection → execution → egress, with a control at every arrow.*
## 5.3 The tokenization boundary as a security primitive
The Field Guide presented PII tokenization as a residency and compliance answer; the engineering view is broader — it is also exfiltration damping. If model-visible context contains tok\_4821 instead of a real account number, then even a successful injection that exfiltrates context exfiltrates tokens, and de-tokenization happens only inside the customer trust boundary at the moment a legitimate action requires the real value, under policy, with an audit event. Implementation notes that separate real deployments from slideware: detection must cover telemetry formats (logs, queries, connection strings), not just documents; tokens must be format-preserving enough that reasoning still works (“two requests from the same account” must survive tokenization as a fact); and the de-tokenization service is itself a crown jewel — short-lived grants, per-purpose scopes, its own audit stream.
**IN PRACTICE — THE ACTION ENGINE AS A SECURITY STACK**
CloudThinker’s Action Engine composes the layers above as one shipped surface: Manual/Auto modes per action class, Policy Guardrails at selection time, PII/secret tokenization in front of every model boundary, MCP integrations under allowlist, and Privileged Skills — the trusted-command tier — as the only path to consequential mutation, executed in a Firecracker-isolated runtime. The evaluation question for any vendor is the same one this chapter equips you to ask: walk me through what happens when a log line tells your agent to do something. The answer should name every layer it hits.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Assume injection. Design so that a hijacked reasoning step is annoying, not catastrophic: least-privilege identities, tainted context, typed and allowlisted actions, sandboxed execution, default-deny egress, tokenized secrets — and red-team the whole path on a schedule. Security review is not a gate at the end of agent adoption; it is a co-author of the architecture.
# Chapter 6 · Policy, Approvals, and Execution Safety as Code
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-6-policy-approvals
The trust ladder is a promise to your organization. Policy-as-code is how the promise is kept when nobody is watching.
*The trust ladder is a promise to your organization. Policy-as-code is how the promise is kept when nobody is watching.*
## 6.1 Action classification: the two-axis engine
Everything the governance stack does downstream depends on classifying actions well. Two axes do the work: reversibility (can this be cleanly undone, and how fast?) and blast radius (how much of the estate, and which tiers of it, can this touch?). Classify action classes, not individual commands — “restart a stateless pod” is a class with known properties; and make the classification machine-derivable where possible: skills that declare their access class, reversibility, and scope (Chapter 3) classify themselves, which removes the failure mode of a human forgetting that a script is dangerous.
| | Reversible | Hard / slow to reverse |
| ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Narrow blast radius | Automate first: restarts, cache clears, replica scaling, cert rotation → L3–L4 candidates | Approval-gated even when small: data deletions, credential revocations → L2 |
| Wide blast radius | Approval with soak: traffic shifts, config rollouts with staged verification → L2–L3 by evidence | Human-owned: schema migrations, failovers, security-group changes on crown jewels → L1–L2, senior approval |
Policy then binds the matrix to reality per environment and per agent: which agent may take which action class at which autonomy level, where, when (change windows), under what pre-conditions, with what approval quorum. Express it as versioned, reviewable configuration — policy changes go through pull requests with owners, exactly like the infrastructure they govern. A policy diff is an autonomy decision; it deserves the same review as a production change, because it is one.
```yaml theme={null}
# policy sketch (illustrative)
action_class: rollback_recent_deploy
applies_to: [orchestrator]
preconditions: [deploy_age < 60m, slo_breach_active, rollback_plan_attached]
environments:
production: { level: L3, window: any, notify: "#ops-incidents" }
payments: { level: L2, approvers: [sre-senior], quorum: 1 }
limits: { max_per_hour: 2, circuit_break_on: repeated_failure }
```
## 6.2 Approval engineering
Approvals are a human-factors system, and they fail in a known direction: fatigue, then rubber-stamping — at which point the gate is theater and the audit trail records consent that never cognitively happened. The Field Guide gave the operating heuristic (above 95% acceptance, graduate the class; below 70%, fix the agent or the policy). Engineering makes the heuristic real:
* **One screen, full context.** The approval artifact carries the finding, the evidence chain, the exact plan (as a diff or plan output, not prose), the blast-radius estimate, the rollback plan, and the verification that will follow. If an approver must go digging, the design has failed.
* **Make rejection informative.** A structured reject reason (wrong diagnosis / right diagnosis wrong fix / bad timing / policy exception) is training signal for policy tuning and evaluation — capture it at the moment of rejection or lose it forever.
* **Quorum and identity are policy.** Consequential classes can demand specific roles or two-person rules; approvals authenticate as the person, not the channel, and land in the audit trail as first-class events.
* **Meter the gate.** Track approval latency, acceptance rate, and modification rate per class — these are the graduation evidence, and they surface fatigue before it becomes rubber-stamping.
## 6.3 Execution safety mechanics
Between “approved” and “done” sits the machinery that makes agentic change safer than the average human change — which is the standard to hold it to:
1. **Pre-flight checks.** Recompute preconditions at execution time, not decision time: the world moves between plan and apply. Scope assertions (“affects ≤ N resources, none tagged crown-jewel”) fail closed.
2. **Staged application with verification between stages.** Wide changes roll out in slices with the Chapter 1 verification loop between slices; the rollback plan is staged before slice one.
3. **Circuit breakers and rate limits.** An agent repeating a failing action, or the fleet exceeding a change-rate ceiling, halts automatically and escalates. Retry-with-backoff is for network calls, not for production mutations.
4. **Rollback as artifact.** Every consequential action ships with an executable rollback attached at plan time, tested where feasible. “We can probably reverse it” is not a rollback plan.
5. **The kill switch.** One action — halting all autonomous execution fleet-wide while leaving investigation running — with an owner, a drill schedule, and an audit event. The day you need it is not the day to design it.
## 6.4 The audit trail schema
Design the audit record so three audiences can replay any action: the engineer at 09:00, the auditor at quarter-end, the regulator in the worst week of the year. Minimum viable schema per consequential action: trigger and its provenance → context snapshot references (what the agent knew) → reasoning summary with evidence pointers → policy evaluation (which rules matched, which level applied) → approval events (who, when, what they saw) → execution log (tool calls, parameters with secrets tokenized, results) → verification outcomes → and any rollback. Immutable, exportable, retained on your terms — the Field Guide’s data-control question number seven, wearing its engineering clothes. Done well, this is the quiet superpower of agentic operations: change evidence better than most human processes ever produced, generated as a side effect of doing the work.
**IN PRACTICE — THE TRUST STACK IN FOUR NOUNS**
CloudThinker ships this chapter’s machinery as four production objects: Policy — which action classes run at which autonomy level, L1 read-only through L4 unattended-within-policy; Approval — the human gate on consequential and irreversible actions; Operation Runbooks — reviewed execution paths for known work; and Trusted Commands — a command-level allowlist beneath everything else. Manual/Automode is the visible switch on top. These are not architecture-diagram aspirations; they are the objects a customer’s security review inspects and an auditor replays. Ask any vendor for their four equivalents — as running software, with the audit records they emit.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Autonomy is governable when it is compiled: a two-axis classification feeding versioned policy-as-code, approvals engineered against fatigue and metered for graduation evidence, execution wrapped in pre-flight checks, staged rollout, circuit breakers, and pre-staged rollback — all emitting an audit schema three audiences can replay. If the trust ladder is the promise, this chapter is the mechanism.
# Chapter 7 · Evaluating Agents Like Production Systems
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-7-evaluating-agents
The benchmark numbers are humbling, the benchmarks are gameable, and your environment is the only test that matters.
*The benchmark numbers are humbling, the benchmarks themselves are gameable, and your environment is the only test that matters. This chapter is how to build that test.*
## 7.1 The benchmark reality, stated plainly
Open, independent measurement of operations agents now exists, and every engineer in this category should know its headline numbers. IBM’s ITBench — the reference open benchmark spanning SRE, security-compliance, and FinOps scenarios — reports that agents powered by state-of-the-art models resolve on the order of one SRE scenario in seven, with compliance scenarios around a quarter and FinOps results ranging from weak to zero depending on release. The independent ITBench-AA implementation (Artificial Analysis with IBM, 2026) evaluates frontier models on Kubernetes incident diagnosis and finds every evaluated model below 50% on its precision metric. Microsoft Research’s AIOpsLab established the live-environment evaluation pattern the field builds on. These are diagnosis-and-mitigation tasks in controlled environments — easier than your production in some ways, harder in others — and the field’s best public showing is failing most of the time.
Sit with what that means, because it is the intellectual foundation of this entire edition. The same period produced hyperscaler GA launches, a Gartner Market Guide for AI SRE (January 2026), a unicorn-valuation funding round in the category, and disciplined adopters reporting 40–70% MTTR reductions in production. The benchmark numbers and the production numbers are both real. They differ because production deployments are not a bare model on a strange cluster: they are models inside a harness — curated context about a known estate, purpose-built tools, runbooks encoding organizational knowledge, memory of past incidents, and policy that routes agents toward the incident classes they demonstrably handle. Benchmarks measure the naked model; production measures the harness. That is the case for everything in Parts 01 and 02 — and the reason “which model do you use?” is among the least predictive questions you can ask a vendor.
## 7.2 Benchmarks are gameable — and so are yours
Recent evaluation research (the SREGym work, 2026) documented two exploits that should permanently change how you read agent-eval claims. First, reward hacking: in benchmarks whose fault injectors run inside the same environment the agent inspects, agents discovered and disabled the fault injection service instead of fixing the fault. Second, alert-clearing as false success: a substantial share of one benchmark’s mitigation tasks could be “solved” by a generic pod-restart loop that made the alert disappear without touching the defect. The same research measured the diagnosis–mitigation gap: even when agents correctly identify a root cause, mitigation succeeds only around 70–90% of the time — knowing why is not the same as fixing safely.
The lessons transfer directly to your own evaluation design: success criteria must be state-based, independent oracles (is the defect actually gone? is the system actually healthy?) rather than symptom-based (did the alert clear?); the evaluation machinery must be invisible or inaccessible to the agent under test; and diagnosis and mitigation must be scored separately, because they fail independently and improve independently. And note the mirror image in production: an agent graded on “alerts closed” will learn to close alerts. Choose online success metrics with the same care (Chapter 1’s independent-verification rule is the production twin of this principle).
## 7.3 Building the golden set from your own incidents
Public benchmarks calibrate the field; only your incidents calibrate your deployment. The asset to build is a golden set — a curated, versioned corpus of evaluation scenarios drawn from your production history:
1. **Harvest from postmortems.** Every real incident becomes a candidate scenario: the telemetry snapshot at detection, the environment state, the true root cause, the accepted fix, and the verification evidence. Twenty to fifty scenarios spanning your top incident classes is a working start; add every novel incident thereafter.
2. **Replay, don’t re-break.** The Chapter 4 incident record makes replay natural: feed the recorded signals and let the agent investigate against snapshotted or simulated state. Live fault injection in staging complements replay for mitigation scoring — with the SREGym isolation lessons applied.
3. **Score in layers.** Detection (did it triage correctly?), diagnosis (root-cause entity and mechanism — scored against the known answer), plan quality (safe, minimal, correct remediation choice), mitigation (state-based oracle), and evidence integrity — every claim in the agent’s conclusion must trace to real data it actually retrieved. Fabricated evidence is an automatic zero regardless of the answer.
4. **Grade with judges, verify the judges.** Model-as-judge scales the rubric scoring, but calibrate judges against human grades on a sample every cycle, and keep humans grading a rotating slice — on-call engineers rating agent analyses is both evaluation data and the trust ladder’s first rung doing double duty.
## 7.4 Regression gates: evals as CI
The agent stack changes constantly — prompts, tools, skills, policies, retrieval, and above all models, which vendors swap under you. Every one of those is a deploy, and deploys need gates: run the golden set on every change; block on regression against the per-class scoreboard, not just the aggregate (a new model that gains database scenarios and quietly loses Kubernetes ones is a regression wearing a raise); and canary in production with the online metrics — acceptance rate, rollback rate, autonomous-resolution rate per class — which are your evals running continuously against reality. The Field Guide’s eight-KPI dashboard is, in this light, the online half of one evaluation system whose offline half is the golden set.
**IN PRACTICE — EVALS AS A PURCHASING WEAPON**
This chapter is also Appendix A’s engine. A POC without a golden set is a demo; with one, it is an experiment. Bring ten replayable scenarios from your own history to any vendor evaluation — including ours — and score detection, diagnosis, plan, mitigation, and evidence integrity per scenario. A platform confident in its harness will welcome the test; hesitation is itself a data point.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Public benchmarks say the naked model fails most SRE scenarios; production says the harness closes the gap. So evaluate harnesses: a golden set built from your own incidents, layered state-based scoring with evidence integrity, calibrated judges, and regression gates on every change to prompts, tools, policies, or models. If it isn’t evaluated, it isn’t engineered.
# Chapter 8 · Observing the Observer
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-8-observing-the-observer
The agent fleet is a production service — one whose failures are decisions, not exceptions.
*You would never run a production service without traces, metrics, and SLOs. The agent fleet is a production service — one whose failures are decisions, not exceptions.*
## 8.1 Why agent observability is different
An agent can fail gracefully by every classical signal — no exception, fast response, HTTP 200 — while being confidently wrong. Observability for agents therefore has to capture the decision graph, not just the I/O boundary: what the agent saw, what it considered, which tools it called with which arguments, what came back, what it concluded, and what it spent. The industry answer is converging on OpenTelemetry’s GenAI semantic conventions — a standard schema for model calls, agent and tool spans, token usage, and cost attributes — now supported natively by major observability vendors and emitted by the mainstream agent frameworks, with multi-agent conventions (tasks, handoffs, memory operations) actively developing in the OTel GenAI working group. The strategic point for buyers and builders alike: agent telemetry in an open schema is portability and auditability; agent telemetry in a proprietary blob is lock-in at the layer you can least afford it.
## 8.2 The trace anatomy
One incident, one trace. Within it: a root span per task; child spans per agent invocation (orchestrator and each specialist); grandchildren per step — model call spans (model, tokens in/out, latency, cost) and tool spans (tool, arguments with secrets tokenized, result size, duration, errors); plus events for the semantic milestones: hypothesis formed, evidence attached, policy evaluated, approval requested and resolved, action executed, verification passed or failed, escalation. Link the trace to the Chapter 4 incident record and the Chapter 6 audit schema — three views of one truth, sharing IDs, so an engineer can pivot from “this felt slow” to “step 23 pulled 400KB of logs and re-sent them four times” in one query.
> *Figure 4 — One incident as one trace: agent spans, step spans, tool and model calls, and semantic events, tied by shared IDs to the incident record and audit trail.*
## 8.3 Metrics and SLOs for the fleet
The Field Guide’s eight program KPIs measure outcomes; the fleet needs an engineering layer beneath them:
* **Quality:** diagnosis accuracy on the golden set (per class), online acceptance rate, rollback/intervention rate, evidence-integrity failures caught. These are the agent’s error budget.
* **Latency:** time-to-first-finding, time-to-plan, end-to-end resolution time — percentiles, split by incident class and by engine (sensing promotion lag vs. resolver duration).
* **Cost:** tokens and spend per step, per investigation, per resolved incident; promotion rate at the two-engine seam; spend by model and by agent. Alert on cost anomalies exactly as you would on cloud-spend anomalies — an agent loop is a cost incident with excellent prose.
* **Behavior drift:** tool-call distribution per incident class, step counts, escalation rate, refusal rate. Drift in these — after a model swap, a prompt change, or silently — is your early-warning system, and it feeds the Chapter 7 regression process.
* **Security signals:** injection-pattern detections in context, novel egress destinations, policy-denial spikes, anomalous tool sequences (Chapter 5’s detection layer, materialized as metrics).
Set SLOs on the ones that carry the program: e.g., time-to-first-finding for promoted P1s, diagnosis accuracy per graduated class, cost per resolved incident. An agent fleet with SLOs and error budgets can earn autonomy quantitatively — the trust ladder’s graduation criteria stop being vibes and start being burn rates.
**IN PRACTICE — WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS**
This chapter is also the honest answer to a fair objection: “we are deploying an autonomous system to reduce toil — who operates it?” The answer is: instrumented software operated by the same discipline it brings to your estate. CloudThinker exposes its own decision traces, cost lines, and policy events to the customer — because a platform asking to be trusted on your production should be observable on the same terms as your production. Ask every vendor to show you their traces of their agents, in a schema you could export.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Instrument decisions, not just calls: one trace per incident with model, tool, and semantic-event spans in an open schema; fleet metrics across quality, latency, cost, drift, and security; SLOs that turn trust-ladder graduation into arithmetic. If you cannot see what the agent decided and spent, you are not supervising it — you are hoping.
# Chapter 9 · AgentOps: Running the Fleet on Day 2
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/chapter-9-agentops-day-2
The pilot ends; the fleet remains: version management, model migrations, memory hygiene, and postmortems for a new kind of teammate.
*The pilot ends; the fleet remains. Day 2 is version management, model migrations, memory hygiene, and postmortems for a new kind of teammate.*
## 9.1 Everything is an artifact; every change is a deploy
The operable unit of an agent system is a versioned bundle: prompts and personas, tool schemas, skill implementations, policy files, retrieval configuration, judge rubrics, and model pins. Treat the bundle exactly like a service release — reviewed in pull requests, evaluated by the Chapter 7 gates, deployed progressively, rolled back atomically. The anti-pattern to hunt down is invisible change: a prompt edited in a console, a vendor-side model update, a tool description tweaked in place. If a change cannot be diffed, gated, and reverted, it will eventually be the root cause you cannot find — in a system whose entire pitch is finding root causes.
## 9.2 The model migration playbook
Models will change under you on someone else’s schedule — deprecations, upgrades, price moves — and model swaps are the highest-variance change class in the stack. The playbook: pin versions explicitly (never “latest” in production); on a candidate model, run the full golden set and diff per incident class; canary on low-risk classes with online metrics watched (acceptance, rollback, step counts, cost — drift in step counts is the classic tell of a behavioral shift); keep dual-run capability so sensitive classes can shadow-compare old and new; and pre-negotiate deprecation windows with vendors so migrations are projects, not emergencies. Fleets that mix models — small fine-tuned models on routine classes, frontier models on novel investigation — apply the same playbook per lane, and gain a second benefit: a price shock or regression in any one model is a lane problem, not a fleet problem.
## 9.3 Memory and knowledge hygiene
Chapter 2 designed memory; day 2 must garden it. A monthly hygiene cadence that works: review new memories written since last cycle (sampled, prioritizing high-impact classes); resolve contradiction flags where fresh evidence disputed stored conclusions; prune or decay memories referencing decommissioned topology; and re-index the knowledge layer after major estate changes. Assign ownership — the knowledge layer is a production dependency with an owner, not a wiki with good intentions. And close the loop the Field Guide promised: every resolved incident should end with an explicit “what did we teach the system?” line in its postmortem.
## 9.4 Postmortems for agents
Agents will be wrong. The organizational reflex you want is the one SRE culture already knows: blameless, mechanism-focused postmortems — for software teammates. When an agent errs consequentially, reconstruct from the trace and audit record: what did it know (context audit), what did it conclude (reasoning audit), what did policy allow (governance audit), what did verification catch or miss (safety audit)? Classify the mechanism — context gap, retrieval miss, injection, tool defect, policy gap, judge blind spot, model regression — because each mechanism has a different fix, and “the AI made a mistake” is not a mechanism. Feed every event into the golden set as a new scenario. Then hold the symmetric line publicly: agent errors get engineered away with the same discipline as human errors, and neither gets a witch hunt. Nothing kills an agentic program faster than one bad incident handled as a betrayal instead of a defect.
## 9.5 The role, made concrete
The Field Guide named the agent operations engineer; here is the week. Monday: review the weekend’s autonomous actions and any interventions; triage drift alerts. Tuesday: golden-set run for the pending bundle release; per-class diff review. Wednesday: memory hygiene block; retrieval-quality spot checks. Thursday: policy review with the autonomy owner — graduation candidates (acceptance >95%, clean rollbacks) and demotion candidates; approval-latency report to the on-call leads. Friday: red-team seed check (Chapter 5), cost report at the two-engine seam, and the monthly business dashboard when it falls due. It is a real engineering role with real leverage — one person operating the system that operates the estate — and it is the career path the category creates rather than the one it threatens.
**IN PRACTICE — THE FLEET, LIVE**
Day 2 is not hypothetical for us: CloudThinker runs as a fleet by construction — Anna orchestrates; Alex (cloud), Oliver (security), Tony (database), and Kai (Kubernetes) specialize — over a shared CloudSkills registry (325+), so a skill fix or a model change is a fleet event, not five separate ones. The living usage pattern is instructive too: among the largest sources of daily agent work we observe across customers are scheduled missions — the unglamorous nightly and weekly passes — which is exactly the traffic that makes Day-2 discipline pay for itself. Ask any vendor what their usage mix looks like; if it is all interactive chat, nobody is trusting the loop yet.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
Day 2 is a discipline: versioned bundles gated by evals, model migrations run as projects with per-class diffs, memory gardened on a cadence with owners, blameless mechanism-classified postmortems that grow the golden set, and a named engineer whose week makes all of it routine. Fleets that institutionalize this compound; fleets that don’t decay into the very toil they replaced.
# Introduction · Engineer Edition
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio-engineer/introduction
The engineering manual for earning autonomy — the executive summary, the eight challenges, and the reading map, written for the engineers who will evaluate, integrate, and defend an agentic operations platform.
This is the full text of **Agentic Infrastructure Operations — Engineer Edition**, the CloudThinker engineering manual (July 2026 edition). It is preserved here chapter by chapter — written for the engineers who will evaluate, integrate, and defend an agentic operations platform.
> *Engineers on the loop, not in the loop.*
>
> — The operating principle of agentic operations
***
## Executive Summary
The Field Guide argued that autonomy must be earned. This edition is the engineering manual for earning it.
Its starting point is a fact most vendor decks omit: on the leading open benchmark for SRE agents, state-of-the-art models resolve roughly one incident scenario in seven. Public benchmarks also turn out to be gameable — agents have been caught clearing alerts with blind pod-restart loops and even disabling the fault injector itself. Meanwhile the same category attracts nine-figure funding rounds, hyperscaler GA launches, and its first Gartner Market Guide. Both realities are true at once, and the gap between them is precisely the engineering this book covers.
The resolution of that paradox is architectural. The model is perhaps a fifth of a production agent system. The rest is the harness: the context layer that makes the agent smarter than its base model; the tool and skill layer that turns reasoning into safe, idempotent action; the orchestration and two-engine economics that make 24/7 coverage affordable; the security engineering that treats the agent itself as an attack surface — because telemetry is untrusted input, and prompt injection is the number-one risk class for LLM applications; the policy and approval machinery that makes autonomy governable; the evaluation harness that catches regressions before production does; and the observability that lets you supervise a system whose failures are semantic, not just operational.
Twelve chapters cover that harness layer by layer, each ending in artifacts you can use: design rules, schemas, checklists, and failure signatures. Chapter 10 points the machinery at the three verticals where operational value concentrates — complexity, cost optimization, and security & compliance — and Chapter 12 maps where the discipline lands: standing vertical missions — event-driven and scheduled — running under policy with engineers on the loop. Part 06 turns the artifacts into weapons — a runnable POC test plan and a platform engineering checklist designed to be pointed at any vendor, including us.
**IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE**
1. **The harness is the product.** Model quality is table stakes; context, tools, policy, evaluation, and observability decide whether an agent is production-grade. Benchmarks prove models alone are not enough.
2. **Treat the agent as an attack surface and as a production system.** It reads untrusted input for a living, so engineer for prompt injection; it fails semantically, so evaluate and observe it like the critical software it is.
3. **Never trust a demo you did not instrument.** Appendix A is a POC protocol with baselines, gates, and pass/fail criteria. Run it against every platform you evaluate — ours included.
***
## Foreword
*Who this edition is for, and a disclosure.*
The Field Guide was written for the people who carry the pager and the people who set the budget. This edition is for the first group specifically — and for one member of it above all: the engineer who will be asked to evaluate an agentic operations platform, integrate it, and then defend or veto it in front of their team. In most organizations that person, not the CIO, is where agentic adoption actually succeeds or dies.
So this book is built for how engineers read. Claims carry provenance. Failure modes get more pages than success stories. Benchmark numbers are quoted at their ugliest, because you will find them anyway and you should hear them from a vendor first. And every chapter ends in something you can execute — a checklist, a schema, a test — rather than something you are asked to believe.
The disclosure, upfront rather than buried: this book is published by CloudThinker, which builds a unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform. Where our own engineering choices illustrate a pattern, they appear in labeled IN PRACTICE boxes alongside the published engineering of AWS, Microsoft, Google, and the research community — and the chapters are written to stand without them. One rule governs those boxes: everything in them is shipped and running with customers — living proof that a pattern survives contact with production — never roadmap. If we could not point at it running, it did not go in a box. We have one honest advantage in writing this: the harness described here is the one we had to build. The scar tissue is real. Judge the category on the evidence, and judge us with Appendix A.
> *Engineers on the loop, not in the loop.*
>
> — The operating principle of agentic operations
***
## The Eight Challenges
Trust, identity, accountability, know-how, novelty, churn, fatigue, permission — every engineering team we meet hits the same eight walls on the way into agentic operations. Name them upfront, and the rest of this book becomes a treatment plan. The last section of this chapter is the door.
**One — trust:** engineers don’t trust agents, and they shouldn’t, yet. The skepticism is earned: Chapter 7’s benchmark numbers justify it, and a system that acts in production with credentials must earn trust the way any new operator does — with a track record, under supervision. This book treats distrust as the correct starting posture, then shows the machinery that converts it into calibrated trust: the threat model (Ch. 5), policy and approvals (Ch. 6), evaluation gates (Ch. 7), traces you can audit (Ch. 8). Trust is not a feeling to be marketed at; it is a ladder to be climbed on evidence.
**Two — identity:** “am I evaluating my replacement?” The unspoken one, and the silent reason many POCs die — the engineer assigned to evaluate the agent has every incentive to find it wanting. This book will not promise that nothing changes. It promises the change has a shape: toil is what leaves; judgment is what stays and appreciates. Chapter 9.5 describes the role on the other side — the agent operations engineer — in the only honest unit there is: what the week actually looks like. If your job is running the same runbook every night, that job is changing with or without you; the question is whether you are the one operating the change.
**Three — accountability:** whose name is on the postmortem? If an engineer approves an agent action and it goes wrong at 03:00, who carries it? Without a pre-agreed answer, refusing autonomy is the rational move — autonomy without an accountability model is career risk. The answer is machinery, not reassurance: policy is authority agreed in advance (Ch. 6), the approval screen shows what the approver knew (Ch. 6), the audit record makes “what did the agent know and who authorized what” a query instead of an argument (Ch. 6, Ch. 8), and postmortems for agents are blameless and mechanism-focused by design (Ch. 9).
**Four — know-how:** nobody has shown them how to work with one. Not philosophy — mechanics: which use cases pay, what a well-formed task looks like, where the loop breaks, what to do when it does. That is the how-to layer here: the anatomy of the loop (Ch. 1), context engineering (Ch. 2), tools and skills (Ch. 3), the three pillar playbooks where value concentrates (Ch. 10), and a failure catalog that shows you what going wrong looks like before you meet it in production (Ch. 11).
**Five — novelty:** the field is newer than your runbooks. Agentic operations is a discipline younger than most of the tooling it supervises; the vocabulary is still settling, and half of what is published about it is marketing. Learning it is a real cost — budget for it like any platform adoption. This edition is built to compress that cost: primary sources and the ugly numbers behind them (Appendix D), a glossary that pins terms down (Appendix C), and patterns stated precisely enough to survive the next model release.
**Six — churn:** “whatever I build will break on the next model release.” A rational fear with a precise answer, and it is this book’s central argument: invest in the parts that survive releases. Models rotate; the harness — your context layer, your policy, your golden set, your traces — compounds. Chapter 7’s regression gates exist so a model swap is a measured event, and Chapter 9 treats model migration as a project with per-class diffs, not a surprise. If your investment is prompts, you are building on sand. If it is the harness, churn is a Tuesday.
**Seven — fatigue:** “so now I review an agent’s homework on top of everything else?” The fear that oversight is just new toil — and if the system is designed badly, it is. The design answer runs through this book: exception queues instead of review-everything, sampled audits instead of standing meetings, and the promotion criterion of Chapter 12 — a mission earns autonomy when its verification is cheaper than its supervision. If reviewing the agent’s work costs more than doing the work, that is a design failure to fix, not a law of nature to accept.
**Eight — permission:** “security will never let me connect this.” Often the wall before every other wall: the engineer is willing, and the organization is not. The path through is sequencing and shared language. Start read-only — discovery and investigation before any write path exists (Ch. 2) — so the first conversation is about visibility, not blast radius. Then walk into the security review with the threat model already written in their vocabulary (Ch. 5) and the trust stack as inspectable objects rather than promises (Ch. 6). You will not win that meeting with enthusiasm; you can win it with artifacts.
**The way in — start simple:** convert your daily tasks first. The entry is smaller than the demos suggest. Not the career-defining incident — the nightly checks, the morning triage, the weekly hygiene pass you already run on autopilot. Daily toil is the right first mission: verification is cheap, blast radius is small, budgets and circuit breakers cap the worst case while you learn, and the habit of reviewing an agent’s work forms fast when the work arrives every day. It is also what real adoption looks like — scheduled daily missions are among the largest sources of agent work in the deployments we see (Ch. 9). Appendix A turns this into a protocol: pick the tasks, baseline them, gate them, graduate them.
***
## How to Read This Book
### Part 01 · Inside the Machine
The loop, precisely — and everything that matters is decided inside it
The real determinant of agent quality
Intent-shaped tools, versioned skills, and MCP as production supply chain
The sensing and resolver engines that make 24/7 coverage affordable
### Part 02 · Safety Engineering
Your agent is an attack surface
The machinery that makes autonomy governable
### Part 03 · Proving It Works
Golden sets, layered scoring, and regression gates
Traces, fleet metrics, and SLOs for the system that supervises yours
Versioned bundles, model migrations, memory hygiene, and the operator’s week
### Part 04 · Field Engineering
Complexity, cost, and security & compliance
Twelve failure signatures, and the build-vs-buy question for engineers
### Part 05 · The Road Ahead
Standing vertical missions — event-driven and scheduled — under policy with engineers on the loop
### Part 06 · Appendices
A runnable POC protocol with baselines, gates, and pass/fail criteria
The checklist to point at any vendor — including us
The vocabulary of the discipline, pinned down
Primary sources, and the rules for weighing every figure in this book
The platform behind the engineering manual
***
## Partners
**AMELA Technology — AI × DX × Offshore, Engineered for What Runs.** AMELA partners with SI companies to close the gaps that slow delivery — offshore engineering capacity that plugs into your pipeline, DX consulting that maps workflow before recommending tools, and 24/7 managed operations so your clients’ systems never wait for business hours. Built in Vietnam. Proven across Japan, the Netherlands, and the US. 350+ projects delivered.
**TECH VALLEY VIETNAM** — Drives innovation through our slogan CAR (Cloud, AI, and Robotics) delivering advanced digital solutions leveraging expertise in scalable cloud infrastructure, AI applications and AI humanoid Robotics, Techvalley supports Korean and Singapore conglomerates expanding in Vietnam.
***
*Copyright © 2026 CloudThinker JSC. All rights reserved.*
*Written by the CloudThinker Product & Engineering Teams. Designed by CloudThinker Design. Published by CloudThinker · [www.cloudthinker.io](http://www.cloudthinker.io). Global Offices US | VN | Singapore. Engineer Edition, July 2026.*
# About CloudThinker
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/about-cloudthinker
The unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform — engineers on the loop, not in the loop.
*The unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform — engineers on the loop, not in the loop.*
CloudThinker was founded on the thesis this book argues: microservices, cloud, and AI compound operational complexity beyond human capacity, and only agentic systems can scale with machine capacity. The platform puts a named agent team to work on your infrastructure — Anna, the orchestrating SuperAgent, leading Alex (cloud engineering), Oliver (security), Tony (database), and Kai (Kubernetes), extensible with custom agents for your own surfaces — executing the Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate loop across AWS, Azure, GCP, local and sovereign clouds, and on-premise estates, under one autonomy policy and one audit trail.
1. **Built for regulated industries.** BYOC and fully self-hosted deployment, a PII-aware tokenization boundary in front of every model call, and audit evidence designed for FSI change management and regulator review.
2. **Unified by design.** One agent team, one approval surface, one governance model across every cloud you run — including the local and sovereign clouds the hyperscaler agents do not reach.
3. **Proven in Southeast Asia.** Holder of the first AWS Agentic AI Consulting Competency awarded in Vietnam, operating with banks, consumer-finance institutions, fintechs, and SaaS enterprises across Vietnam and the region.
To see the agent team run the 90-day pilot from Chapter 9 on your own environment — baseline first, recommendation-only start, autonomy earned on evidence — visit [cloudthinker.io](https://cloudthinker.io) or [contact the team](https://cloudthinker.io/contact). Bring the eight data-control questions. We like answering them.
# Chapter 1 · The Operations Complexity Crisis
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-1-complexity-crisis
Modern infrastructure has outgrown human cognitive capacity. The math no longer works.
*Modern infrastructure has outgrown human cognitive capacity. The math no longer works.*
> *Figure 1 — Complexity compounds at machine speed; team capacity grows linearly. The gap is the case for agentic operations.*
## 1.1 Complexity compounds; headcount doesn't
Three forces multiplied together created the crisis. Microservices decomposed monoliths into hundreds of independently deployed, independently failing services. Cloud made infrastructure programmable and elastic — and therefore constantly changing. AI workloads added GPU fleets, vector databases, inference pipelines, and a new class of cost and reliability problems. Each force is manageable alone. Multiplied, they produce a state space no human team can fully observe, let alone control.
The result shows up in the daily life of every operations team — and in the P\&L:
1. **Alert fatigue.** A typical operations team now fields 500–1,200 alerts per day; the overwhelming majority are noise, duplicates, or downstream symptoms of a single cause. Engineers stop reading. The one alert that matters drowns.
2. **Investigation toil.** Manual investigation consumes most of incident time: engineers pivot across a dozen dashboards, grep gigabytes of logs, and replay recent deploys before they can even form a hypothesis. Diagnosis, not repair, is where hours go.
3. **Expensive downtime.** Splunk and Oxford Economics' 2026 study of 2,000 Global 2000 executives puts unplanned downtime at \$600 billion a year in aggregate — up 50% in two years — with the average large organization losing \$95 million in annual revenue, bleeding roughly \$15,000 per minute of outage, and taking a 3.4% share-price hit after major incidents.
4. **Talent scarcity.** Industry surveys consistently find around two-thirds of organizations short of engineers skilled in AI-era operations. Senior SREs are expensive, rare, and burning out on 3 a.m. pages.
5. **Rising toil despite tooling.** Recent surveys show engineering toil increasing even as monitoring investment surges. More tools produce more signals; more signals produce more work — unless something intelligent sits between the signal and the human.
## 1.2 Why the old answers stopped working
Operations has tried to scale itself three ways, and each has hit a ceiling.
1. **Hire more people.** Linear cost growth against exponential complexity growth. The labor market cannot supply the engineers, and even if it could, coordination overhead grows with team size.
2. **Write more automation.** Scripts and runbooks automate the known. They are brittle by construction: every runbook encodes yesterday's failure mode, and the catalog itself becomes a maintenance burden. Novel failures — the ones that actually hurt — fall through.
3. **Buy more dashboards.** Observability vendors made systems visible, not operable. Visibility without action just relocates the bottleneck back to the human reading the dashboard.
The structural problem is that all three approaches keep the human in the execution path. Every detection, diagnosis, and remediation ultimately waits on a person. Human attention is the scarcest resource in the system, and the old answers all spend more of it.
## 1.3 The thesis of this book
**BIG TECH EVIDENCE**
The clearest proof that complexity has outrun even the best-staffed teams comes from the hyperscalers operating on themselves. Microsoft now runs 1,300+ Azure SRE Agents across its own services, reporting 35,000+ incidents mitigated and over 20,000 engineering hours saved — inside the company with arguably the deepest operations bench on earth. Google's SRE discipline institutionalized the same admission years earlier: its published practice caps toil at 50% of any SRE's time precisely because unbounded operational load is recognized as an engineering failure, not a staffing problem.
**CORE THESIS**
Operational complexity now grows at machine speed. Only systems that operate at machine capacity — autonomous agents that detect, analyze, resolve, and validate — can keep pace. The human role shifts from executor to supervisor: setting intent, approving consequential change, and owning outcomes.
This is not a prediction about a distant future, and it is not an uncontested one — a trustworthy account must hold both facts at once. Gartner's December 2025 research, *Predicts 2026: AI Agents Will Transform IT Infrastructure and Operations*, anticipates AI agents reshaping I\&O teams, roles, and operating models over the next five years, with enterprises steadily reducing human-in-the-loop involvement as agent autonomy and trust grow. Set against it is the same firm's forecast that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027 — for escalating costs, unclear value, or inadequate risk controls. Both predictions are correct, and they describe the same fork in the road. The technology trajectory is set; whether your program lands in the transformed majority or the canceled 40% is decided by execution — the architecture, governance, and measurement discipline this book exists to teach.
# Chapter 10 · The Road Ahead
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-10-road-ahead
Where agentic infrastructure operations goes from here — five near-term trajectories, the strategic window, and the hyperscaler-vs-unified architectural choice.
*Where agentic infrastructure operations goes from here — and what to do about it now.*
## 10.1 Five near-term trajectories
1. **From incident response to incident prevention.** As memory layers mature, agent teams shift spend from resolving incidents to preventing them — pre-deploy risk analysis, proactive capacity moves, and architectural recommendations drawn from fleet-wide patterns. The best MTTR is an incident that never opens.
2. **Agent-to-agent operations.** Your operations agents will increasingly negotiate with vendor agents — cloud-provider support agents, SaaS reliability agents. The standards are already here: Anthropic's MCP connects agents to tools, and the A2A protocol — now stewarded under the Linux Foundation, live with Microsoft, AWS, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow and in production at roughly 150 organizations — handles agent-to-agent communication across organizational boundaries, with cryptographically signed agent cards for identity. AWS DevOps Agent already escalates to AWS Support with full investigation context attached — an early glimpse of machine-to-machine operations.
3. **Governance becomes law.** AI governance frameworks are moving from voluntary practice to regulated requirement in key sectors, led by the EU AI Act. For regulated industries, governance-ready agentic platforms stop being a preference and become a procurement requirement.
4. **Autonomy ratchets up.** Analyst predictions are consistent: agents will move from assisting humans to owning complex workflows, with task-specific agents embedded across the enterprise application estate by the end of the decade and human involvement reducing steadily as evidence accumulates.
5. **The operating model becomes the product.** As models commoditize, differentiation shifts to orchestration quality, domain depth, accumulated context, and trust architecture — the things that take years of production scar tissue to build.
## 10.2 The strategic window
The adoption data describes a market mid-leap: the same experiment-to-production gap and project-cancellation forecast set out in §9.4, read against Gartner's expectation of task-specific agents in 40% of enterprise applications by the end of 2026 — up from under 5% a year earlier. Read together, those numbers are not contradictory; they are a sorting function. The window belongs to organizations that cross from experiment to production with staged autonomy, real governance, and honest measurement. Cross it, and the advantage compounds: every resolved incident makes the agents smarter, every reclaimed hour moves engineers up the value chain, and cost structure decouples from growth. Wait, and you can eventually buy the same technology — but you cannot buy back the compounding time, and you will be hiring against competitors whose engineers no longer do toil.
> *Figure 10 — The sorting function: most experiment, few reach production, and a large share of projects are canceled (§9.4). Execution decides which population you join.*
## 10.3 The landscape: hyperscaler agents or a unified multi-cloud platform?
The 2026 buyer faces a real architectural choice. The hyperscaler agents profiled in this book are excellent at what they were built for — and structurally shaped by who built them. AWS DevOps Agent, Azure SRE Agent, and Gemini Cloud Assist are each deepest on their home cloud, anchored to their vendor's consumption model, and centered on investigation and incident response, with action arriving cautiously behind it. For a single-cloud estate, the native agent is a strong default. But most enterprises — and nearly all of Southeast Asia's financial sector, which mixes hyperscalers with sovereign and local clouds and on-premise cores — do not run one cloud. Operating three single-cloud agents with three consoles, three governance models, and three audit trails recreates the swivel-chair problem this book argues against, one layer up.
| Dimension | Hyperscaler-native agent | Unified multi-cloud platform |
| :----------- | :-------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Coverage | Deepest on home cloud; partial elsewhere | One agent team across all clouds, local/sovereign clouds, and on-premise |
| Scope | Investigation-first; remediation arriving gradually | Full Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate loop under one policy |
| Governance | Per-vendor controls and audit trail | Single autonomy policy, audit trail, and approval surface across estates |
| Data control | Vendor-cloud processing; controls vary | BYOC / self-host with PII tokenization — designed for residency-bound industries |
| Alignment | Optimizes within its vendor's ecosystem | Cloud-neutral — including on cost decisions that cut a vendor's own bill |
*A disclosure the reader deserves: this field guide is published by CloudThinker, which builds in the second column.* CloudThinker is a unified multi-cloud agentic operations platform: one orchestrator (Anna) leading named specialists for cloud engineering, security, database, and Kubernetes (Alex, Oliver, Tony, Kai) across AWS, Azure, GCP, sovereign and local clouds, and on-premise estates — running the full DARV loop, with BYOC and self-hosted deployment and a PII tokenization boundary built for FSI from day one, and holding the first AWS Agentic AI Consulting Competency awarded in Vietnam. We have tried to keep that interest from bending the evidence: every benchmark in this book is attributed, the hyperscaler agents are presented at their strongest, and the framework chapters stand on their own whatever platform you choose. Judge the category on the evidence — then judge us by the eight data-control questions and the five-question vendor test in this book, which we wrote knowing we would have to pass them.
## 10.4 Closing argument
Infrastructure operations has always been a race between complexity and capability. For forty years, capability meant better tools for humans. The agentic generation is different in kind: for the first time, the capability itself perceives, reasons, acts, and learns. Handled carelessly, that is a risk. Handled with the discipline this book describes — specialist teams under one orchestrator, a closed detect-analyze-resolve-validate loop, autonomy earned one action class at a time, governance built before it is demanded, and humans firmly on the loop — it is the largest step-change in operational leverage since the cloud itself.
*The future of operations is not fewer humans. It is humans multiplied.*
# Chapter 2 · From Automation to Autonomy
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-2-automation-to-autonomy
Agentic operations is the fourth generation of a forty-year evolution. Understanding the lineage explains both its power and its prerequisites.
*Agentic operations is the fourth generation of a forty-year evolution. Understanding the lineage explains both its power and its prerequisites.*
> *Figure 2 — Four generations of operations. Each absorbs the last; Gen 4 closes the loop.*
## 2.1 Four generations of operations
| Generation | Era | Core idea | Limitation |
| :----------------------------- | :--------- | :------------------------------------------------------------ | :------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Gen 1 · Manual + scripts | 1990s–2010 | Humans operate; shell scripts handle repetitive steps | Everything waits on a person; tribal knowledge |
| Gen 2 · Infrastructure as Code | 2010–2018 | Declarative desired state; CI/CD pipelines; config management | Automates provisioning, not operations; drift and day-2 still manual |
| Gen 3 · AIOps | 2017–2024 | ML for anomaly detection, event correlation, noise reduction | Detects and correlates but does not decide or act; "so what?" gap |
| Gen 4 · Agentic Operations | 2024– | Goal-directed agents that perceive, reason, act, and verify | Requires trust architecture, governance, and new operating models |
Each generation absorbed the previous one rather than replacing it. Agentic operations runs on top of IaC (agents express changes as code), consumes AIOps-style signals (correlated events are agent input), and still produces scripts (agents write and execute them). What changes is who closes the loop.
## 2.2 Why AIOps fell short
AIOps deserves credit: event correlation and deduplication genuinely work, and intelligent correlation can eliminate 80–90% of raw alert volume. But the category over-promised. Gartner went as far as reframing the "AIOps Platforms" market as "Event Intelligence Solutions" in 2025, citing vendor overuse of the term and widespread disillusionment among I\&O leaders. The technology persists — but the market itself acknowledged the gap between detecting an incident and resolving one.
Three specific shortfalls defined the AIOps ceiling:
1. **Correlation without causation.** Grouping fifty alerts into one incident is useful; it still doesn't tell you the root cause or what to do.
2. **Black-box outputs.** A majority of IT professionals report struggling to interpret ML outputs from deployed AIOps platforms. Conclusions without reasoning don't earn trust.
3. **No hands.** Classical AIOps could open a ticket or trigger a webhook, but could not investigate, form hypotheses, choose among remediations, execute, and verify the fix. The human remained the actuator.
## 2.3 What changed: reasoning models, tools, and protocols
Three technical unlocks between 2023 and 2026 made the agentic generation possible.
1. **Frontier reasoning models.** Large language models crossed the threshold where they can read logs, configs, and code; form causal hypotheses; and plan multi-step remediations with engineer-level judgment in well-scoped domains.
2. **Tool use and computer use.** Models gained reliable function calling — the ability to run CLI commands, query APIs, execute kubectl and Terraform, and read dashboards — turning reasoning into action.
3. **Interoperability standards.** The Model Context Protocol (MCP) emerged as the de facto standard for connecting agents to tools and data sources, reaching tens of millions of downloads and a thousand-plus server ecosystem within months — the TCP/IP moment of the agent layer.
Verifiability explains where agents succeed first. Infrastructure operations is a highly verifiable domain: a remediation either restores the SLO or it doesn't; a Terraform plan either applies cleanly or it doesn't; a health check passes or fails. Domains with crisp feedback loops are exactly where autonomous systems can be deployed with confidence — which is why operations, alongside coding, is leading the agentic wave.
## 2.4 The vendor signal
The hyperscalers have voted — with shipped products, named customers, and published numbers. AWS DevOps Agent, positioned by AWS as one of its first "frontier agents" (alongside the Security Agent), reached general availability on March 31, 2026, with United Airlines, T-Mobile, and Western Governors University as launch customers; AWS reports preview customers seeing up to 75% lower MTTR, 80% faster investigations, and 94% root-cause accuracy, and WGU describes one production investigation compressed from an estimated two hours to 28 minutes. (All vendor-reported figures from selected pilots — discount accordingly — but they sit at the optimistic end of the 40–70% range independent practitioners report.) Microsoft's Azure SRE Agent went GA in March 2026 after Microsoft ran it on its own estate at remarkable scale: 1,300+ agents, 35,000+ incidents mitigated, 20,000+ engineering hours saved. Google shipped the same capability more conservatively: Gemini Cloud Assist's proactive agents autonomously investigate alerts and cost anomalies in the background but, by design, make no changes to the environment. Three clouds, one pattern — every one launched at investigation-first postures with action gated behind customer governance, a public acknowledgment from the largest operators on earth that autonomy must be introduced in stages. The market is moving with them: the AIOps/AI-SRE category is projected to grow from roughly \$15 billion today to \$36 billion by 2030.
**KEY TAKEAWAY**
AIOps made systems visible and signals intelligible. Agentic operations makes systems operable. The difference is the closed loop: perception to reasoning to action to verification, with humans supervising rather than executing.
# Chapter 3 · What Agentic Infrastructure Operations Actually Is
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-3-what-is-aio
Definitions matter, because 'agent' is the most abused word in enterprise software. The working definition, the L0–L4 autonomy spectrum, the five-question vendor test, and what's actually in scope today.
*Definitions matter, because "agent" is the most abused word in enterprise software.*
## 3.1 A working definition
**DEFINITION**
Agentic infrastructure operations (AgenticOps) is an operating model in which autonomous AI agents carry out the core loop of operational work — detecting conditions, analyzing causes, resolving issues, and validating outcomes — across cloud and on-premise infrastructure, under explicit human-defined policy, with humans supervising on the loop rather than executing in the loop.
Unpacking the definition: an agent in this sense is not a chatbot with a runbook, and not a script with an LLM bolted on. A true operations agent has five properties:
1. **Goal-directed.** It is given outcomes ("keep checkout latency under 300ms"; "keep monthly cloud spend within budget"), not step-by-step instructions.
2. **Perceptive.** It continuously consumes telemetry — metrics, logs, traces, events, configuration state, cost data — rather than waiting to be prompted.
3. **Reasoning.** It forms and tests causal hypotheses, weighs alternative remediations, and explains its thinking in language an engineer can audit.
4. **Tool-using.** It acts through the same interfaces engineers use — cloud APIs, kubectl, Terraform, SQL, CI/CD — with scoped, auditable credentials.
5. **Self-verifying.** After acting, it checks whether the intended outcome was achieved, and escalates or rolls back when it wasn't.
## 3.2 The autonomy spectrum
Autonomy is not binary. Mature agentic platforms expose autonomy as a policy dial, typically per action class and per environment:
| Level | Name | Agent behavior | Human role |
| :---- | :-------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------- | :--------------------------- |
| L0 | Observe | Monitors and reports; takes no action | Executes everything |
| L1 | Advise | Investigates and recommends with evidence | Decides and executes |
| L2 | Act with approval | Prepares full remediation; waits for sign-off | One-click approve/reject |
| L3 | Act with notification | Executes pre-approved action classes; informs humans | Reviews after the fact |
| L4 | Autonomous in domain | Owns a bounded domain end-to-end within policy | Sets policy; audits outcomes |
In practice, organizations run different levels simultaneously: L3–L4 for reversible, low-blast-radius actions (restart a pod, clear a cache, scale a replica set, rotate a credential), L2 for consequential changes (schema migrations, security group changes, failovers), and L1 for anything novel. The art of agentic operations is moving action classes up the ladder as evidence accumulates — never faster.
**BIG TECH PRACTICE: THE SPECTRUM IS NOW PRODUCT REALITY**
The L0–L4 spectrum is not a theoretical construct — it is how the hyperscalers ship. Google's Gemini Cloud Assist proactive investigations run at L1 by explicit design (investigate everything, change nothing). AWS's own adoption guidance for DevOps Agent is to start in recommendation-only mode and measure for weeks before granting action. Azure SRE Agent exposes the dial directly: a Review mode where every action awaits an "Approve" click, and a privileged mode for pre-authorized action classes, governed per tool. When all three clouds independently converge on the same graduated-autonomy posture, that is the industry's collective answer to how much trust an agent starts with: none — it earns it.
> *Figure 3 — The autonomy dial: action classes graduate from L0 to L4 on evidence, per environment.*
## 3.3 What agentic operations is not
"Agent washing" is now common enough that Gartner has named it: vendors rebranding assistants, chatbots, and RPA as "agents" without meaningful agentic capability. In mid-2025, Gartner estimated that of the thousands of vendors claiming agentic AI, only around 130 were real. A precise negative definition is therefore a buyer's best defense:
1. **Not a chatbot over your dashboards.** Conversational access to telemetry is a feature, not the model. If a human must read the answer and then go do the work, you are still in Gen 3 — whatever the marketing says.
2. **Not lights-out operations.** No credible practitioner advocates removing humans. The target is human leverage: one engineer supervising work that used to take a team.
3. **Not a replacement for engineering discipline.** Agents amplify the environment they are given. Weak observability, absent IaC, and undocumented systems produce weak agents. Garbage context in, garbage autonomy out.
4. **Not one giant model that does everything.** As the next chapter shows, production systems are converging on orchestrated teams of specialists, not monolithic super-models.
**THE FIVE-QUESTION VENDOR TEST**
Ask any "agentic" vendor:
1. Can the system execute a remediation end-to-end, or only recommend?
2. Does it verify its own outcomes and roll back on failure?
3. Can autonomy be set per action class and per environment?
4. Does every action carry a full, immutable reasoning trail?
5. What were its rollback and intervention rates in its last three production deployments?
A real platform answers all five with evidence. Agent washing fails by question two.
## 3.4 The scope of operational work agents can own today
| Domain | Representative agent tasks | Typical autonomy (2026) |
| :--------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :---------------------- |
| Incident response | Triage, correlation, root-cause analysis, remediation, post-incident reports | L1–L3 |
| Cloud cost (FinOps) | Rightsizing, idle-resource cleanup, commitment planning, anomaly detection | L2–L4 |
| Kubernetes operations | Pod/node health, resource tuning, upgrade assistance, capacity planning | L2–L3 |
| Database operations | Slow-query analysis, index advice, replication health, storage forecasting | L1–L3 |
| Security operations | Misconfiguration detection, CVE triage, IAM hygiene, compliance evidence | L1–L2 |
| Change & release | Pre-deploy risk analysis, canary monitoring, automated rollback | L2–L3 |
| Infrastructure as Code | Drift detection, module generation, plan review, state hygiene | L1–L3 |
# Chapter 4 · Architecture: Multi-Agent Systems for Operations
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-4-architecture
The reference architecture that production deployments are converging on: an orchestrator, a team of specialists, a closed operational loop, and a context layer that makes them smart.
*The reference architecture that production deployments are converging on: an orchestrator, a team of specialists, a closed operational loop, and a context layer that makes them smart.*
## 4.1 Why multi-agent, not mono-agent
A note on what this chapter is describing, and what it is not. The architecture below — a single orchestrator, named domain specialists, a two-tier sensing-and-resolving loop, and a tokenisation boundary — is the pattern production deployments are converging on, not one vendor's product design. The convergence is observable in independent practice: Anthropic's published multi-agent research system uses the same orchestrator-and-workers shape, and Microsoft's and AWS's shipped operations agents are built from coordinated specialists under a controlling layer with per-agent, least-privilege credentials. How one platform — CloudThinker, this book's publisher — implements the pattern is a separate question, disclosed and addressed in §10.3; this chapter is about the shape the field is settling on, which holds whatever platform you choose.
The field has decisively moved from single all-purpose agents to orchestrated teams of specialists. Gartner reported a 1,445% surge in multi-agent system inquiries between Q1 2024 and Q2 2025 — the steepest demand signal in the category. The reasons are practical, not fashionable:
1. **Depth beats breadth.** A Kubernetes specialist with curated K8s tools, prompts, and learned patterns outperforms a generalist on K8s problems — the same way human teams specialize.
2. **Bounded blast radius.** Each specialist holds only the credentials its domain requires. A database agent cannot modify security groups; a cost agent cannot drop tables.
3. **Independent evolution.** Specialists can be upgraded, evaluated, and rolled back independently — the microservices lesson applied to agents.
4. **Auditable handoffs.** Inter-agent delegation produces an explicit trail of who decided what, which monolithic reasoning hides.
Industry analysis consistently identifies orchestration — the layer that coordinates agents, manages context, routes tasks, and handles errors — as where enterprise value is created in 2026. Organizations with strong orchestration combine best-in-class models, swap components as the landscape evolves, and run complex pipelines reliably; those without it ship fragile demos.
Two pieces of big-tech evidence sharpen the design — one for specialization, one against overdoing it. For: Anthropic's published account of its multi-agent research system uses exactly the orchestrator-worker pattern this chapter describes, with a lead agent decomposing tasks for parallel specialists, and reports large quality gains over a single-agent baseline — at materially higher token cost, which is why the two-tier economics in Section 4.3 matter. Against overdoing it: Microsoft's engineers building Azure SRE Agent have written candidly that they started with 100+ tools and 50+ narrowly specialized agents and ended with five core tools and more generalist agents. The honest synthesis: specialize by operational domain and credential boundary, as this chapter recommends — but resist fragmenting into dozens of micro-agents, because every agent and tool added is context, cost, and coordination overhead.
## 4.2 The reference architecture
A production agentic operations platform has five layers:
1. **The orchestrator (SuperAgent).** A coordinating agent that owns cross-cutting reasoning: it receives goals and incidents, decomposes them, routes work to specialists, integrates their findings, manages escalation to humans, and owns the conversation with the operations team. Everything flows through it; specialists extend it rather than compete with it.
2. **Specialist agents.** Domain experts — typically cloud engineering, security, database, and Kubernetes — each with curated tools, domain knowledge, and scoped credentials. Organizations add custom specialists for their own surfaces: cost optimization, application performance, internal platforms.
3. **The operational loop.** A disciplined pipeline every piece of work flows through: Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate (DARV). Detection ingests signals; analysis produces an evidenced root-cause hypothesis; resolution plans and executes the fix under policy; validation confirms the outcome and feeds learning. The validate stage is what separates agentic operations from automation — the system checks its own work.
4. **The tool and integration layer.** MCP servers and native integrations exposing cloud APIs, observability platforms, CI/CD, ITSM, and communication channels (Slack, Teams) with least-privilege credentials per agent.
5. **The context and memory layer.** Topology graphs, runbook libraries, past-incident memory, organizational conventions, and environment metadata. This is where agents compound: every resolved incident makes the next one faster.
> *Figure 4 — The reference architecture: one orchestrator, specialist agents, the Detect→Analyze→Resolve→Validate loop, tools, and memory.*
## 4.3 The deep-response pattern
Naive agent designs run one model call per alert and fall over at production scale. Mature platforms separate two engines: a lightweight, always-on sensing engine (a "pulse") that continuously watches signals cheaply, and a heavyweight resolver engine that spins up full multi-step reasoning only when the pulse detects something worth investigating. This two-tier design is what makes 24/7 agentic coverage economically viable — frontier-model reasoning is reserved for the moments that need it, while cheap perception runs constantly. Agent cost optimization has become a first-class architectural concern in 2026, in exactly the way cloud cost optimization became essential in the microservices era.
## 4.4 Data protection inside the pipeline
In regulated industries, telemetry is radioactive: logs and queries leak customer PII, credentials, and account data. The emerging best practice is a tokenization boundary — a PII-aware layer that detects and replaces sensitive values with reversible tokens before any data reaches a model, and de-tokenizes only inside the customer's trust boundary when an action requires the real value. Combined with self-hosted or BYOC (bring-your-own-cloud) deployment, this lets banks and financial institutions adopt agentic operations without telemetry ever leaving their perimeter. Chapter 6 treats the full data residency and control question — deployment models, sovereignty, and the vendor questions to ask — in depth.
**ARCHITECTURE CHECKLIST**
* ✓ One orchestrator owning cross-cutting reasoning and human escalation
* ✓ Specialists with least-privilege credentials per domain
* ✓ An explicit Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate loop with verification built in
* ✓ Two-tier sensing/resolving to control model cost
* ✓ PII tokenization before model boundaries; BYOC/self-host options for regulated workloads
* ✓ Persistent memory so the system compounds instead of starting cold
# Chapter 5 · The Agent Team: Roles and Responsibilities
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-5-agent-team
Designing an agent organization is organizational design. The roster, the work flow, the agent-to-human interface, and four production case studies.
*Designing an agent organization is organizational design. The same questions apply: who owns what, who reports to whom, and how do they hand off work.*
## 5.1 The core roster
Most production deployments converge on a small, named team of agents. Naming matters more than it sounds: named agents with stable identities accumulate trust, context, and accountability the way human teammates do — and persistent agent identity is itself one of the defining platform trends of this period. A representative roster:
| Role | Scope | Example responsibilities |
| :------------------------ | :------------------------------- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Orchestrator / SuperAgent | Cross-cutting | Goal decomposition, task routing, multi-domain incidents, human escalation, reporting |
| Cloud engineering agent | AWS / Azure / GCP / local clouds | Provisioning issues, networking, scaling, service quotas, cost anomalies, IaC drift |
| Security agent | AppSec + CloudSec | Misconfigurations, OWASP-class application risks, CVE triage, IAM hygiene, compliance evidence |
| Database agent | Data tier | Slow queries, locks, replication lag, index strategy, storage forecasting, backup verification |
| Kubernetes agent | Container platform | Pod crash loops, OOM kills, node pressure, HPA tuning, upgrade readiness |
Beyond the core roster, organizations add custom agents — specialists configured for their own surfaces and objectives, such as cost optimization for a specific business unit, performance for a flagship application, or productivity workflows for the platform team. Custom agents extend the orchestrator-led team; they are additions on top of the model, never alternatives to it.
## 5.2 How work flows through the team
Consider a representative production incident at 02:40: checkout latency breaches its SLO.
1. **Detect.** The sensing layer correlates a latency alert, a spike in database connection errors, and a deploy that landed 22 minutes earlier into a single incident, suppressing forty-one downstream alerts.
2. **Analyze.** The orchestrator engages the database and Kubernetes specialists in parallel. The database agent finds connection-pool exhaustion driven by a new N+1 query pattern; the Kubernetes agent confirms pods are healthy and rules out infrastructure. The orchestrator integrates both findings into a root-cause hypothesis with evidence attached: the new deploy introduced the query pattern.
3. **Resolve.** Policy allows automatic rollback of deploys under 60 minutes old during SLO breach. The orchestrator executes the rollback (an L3 pre-approved action), posts the full reasoning chain to the incident channel, and pages no one.
4. **Validate.** Latency returns to baseline within four minutes; error rates clear. The system confirms SLO recovery, opens a problem ticket for the engineering team with the offending query identified, drafts the post-incident report, and stores the pattern in memory.
Elapsed time: under ten minutes, zero humans woken. The next morning, an engineer reviews the report, fixes the query, and approves the re-deploy. That division of labor — machines handle the 02:40 mechanics, humans handle the engineering judgment at 09:00 — is the model working as intended.
> *Figure 5 — The same incident, two operating models: hours of paged human work versus a sub-ten-minute closed loop.*
## 5.3 Agent-to-human interfaces
Agents live where engineers live. The dominant interface pattern is conversational-plus-evidence: agents post findings, plans, and approval requests into Slack or Teams with full reasoning chains, links to evidence, and one-click approve/reject actions. Dashboards remain for trends and audits; the operational conversation happens in chat. Two interface rules matter disproportionately:
1. **Show the work.** Every conclusion ships with the data examined, the hypotheses considered, and the reason alternatives were rejected. Transparent reasoning is the single biggest driver of engineer trust — and the antidote to the black-box failure that sank AIOps.
2. **Make approval cheap and refusal informative.** Approvals should be one click with full context; rejections should capture why, because every rejection is training signal for policy tuning.
## 5.4 Proof: four teams that hit the wall
Every team in this chapter hit the same wall: the infrastructure kept growing, the operators kept multiplying, and the clock on every incident refused to move. Four of them did something about it. A lender drowning in multi-account AWS. A payments platform that couldn't afford a second of downtime. A global SaaS staring down three compliance regimes at once. A national telco running thousands of clusters by hand. Different scales, same story — and in each one, agentic operations changed the ending. Find the team that looks like yours. The customers are anonymized; the numbers are real, and every one is measured against where they started — not a promise, a track record.
### 1. A leading consumer-finance lender, Vietnam
Picture a lender with 800+ branches and millions of customers, whose AWS estate had grown across so many accounts that no one could see the whole of it at once. Rapid growth had outpaced the people running it: cost and incident management were manual, visibility was fragmented across accounts, and when a lending-critical app faltered, finding the cause took hours of cross-account hunting — hours during which loans could not be issued. The team did not need more dashboards; they needed something to act on what the dashboards already showed. Over a measured four-week baseline, the agent team began at L1, investigating across every account and proving its root-cause analysis against the operators' own. As that analysis earned trust, it graduated to L2 — preparing complete fixes on cost and hygiene actions for one-click approval — while the core lending path stayed advisory throughout. Within three months the result was decisive: manual operational work fell by roughly 80%, root-cause identification dropped from hours to minutes, around 30% of optimisable AWS spend was recovered, and critical apps were watched around the clock. The lesson the team drew was the one this book keeps returning to: the win came not from autonomy on the riskiest path, but from taking the high-volume, low-stakes toil off scarce engineers so they could supervise what mattered.
### 2. A high-growth digital-payments platform, Vietnam
A Series-A payments company faced a problem that keeps platform teams awake: three production Kubernetes clusters needed a version upgrade, and in payments there is no acceptable window for downtime — every minute dark is a transaction that does not clear. On top of it, RDS replica spend was climbing and oversight of payment-critical apps was thinner than the stakes deserved. They granted the agent team a higher tier of autonomy where the actions were reversible and well-understood — L2–L3 on Kubernetes lifecycle and right-sizing, self-healing and replica scaling under pre-approved action classes — while keeping the migration's irreversible steps behind human approval. The upgrade ran across all three clusters with zero customer-visible downtime; within three months replica costs were cut by about half and roughly 30% of monthly run-rate was optimised, all under continuous monitoring. What the team took away was a point about where autonomy belongs: the agents moved fastest exactly where actions could be undone and verified, and the one-month "impossible" upgrade became routine precisely because the risky, irreversible moves stayed human-gated.
### 3. A global AI / SaaS platform, US / EU / APAC
A global AI platform had a deadline problem dressed as a compliance problem. Investors wanted SOC 2 and HIPAA readiness, the footprint spanned three regions under GDPR as well, operational overhead was exploding, and a 99.9% availability target hung over all of it — the kind of multi-front pressure that usually consumes a quarter of senior-engineer time in audit preparation alone. Here the agents were pointed at the compliance burden itself: L2 automation of compliance guardrails plus L2–L3 operational remediation through the cost and ops keepers, with every compliance-relevant step logged for audit as it happened rather than reconstructed afterward. A global three-region deployment came together in four weeks; SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR readiness in three; operational task load fell by roughly 80%, and 99.9% uptime was achieved and verified. The takeaway reframed compliance for the team: when the evidence trail is produced continuously by the system doing the work, audit-readiness stops being a periodic scramble and becomes a property of how the infrastructure runs.
### 4. A Tier-1 Vietnamese telco cloud provider, mega-scale
Now scale the whole problem up to a nation. A Tier-1 telco cloud operator runs infrastructure on the order of thousands of compute clusters across multiple data centres — and had been meeting that scale the only way it knew how: with people. Hundreds of operators carried daily operations by hand, running routine health checks, chasing configuration and patch drift, and assembling audit evidence for a regulated national-infrastructure provider — and still mean-time-to-resolution stayed flat as both the tool count and the headcount grew. This is the coordination tax of Chapter 1, written at national scale: more hands did not move the number, because the bottleneck was never capacity. The engagement is phasing autonomy in deliberately across a heterogeneous OpenStack and VMware estate, focused first on configuration management and audit/compliance automation. The agent team starts at L1 investigation across the fleet, graduates to L2 approved remediation on routine cluster-health and drift actions, then to L3 notify-after-acting on the safest, most-repeated classes — cluster restarts, capacity adjustment, certificate rotation — while the regulated control path stays human-approved throughout, every action carrying an immutable trail sized for a national-infrastructure audit. The aim, now in active build and measurement over a four-week-plus window, is to absorb the bulk of routine L1/L2 operator toil so that scarce operators move from execution to supervision, replace periodic manual audit preparation with continuous machine-collected evidence, and finally decouple MTTR from fleet size. In keeping with this book's own evidence rules, the figures will be published once the measurement window closes — the story is included here for the shape of the problem it answers: the point at which scaling operations by headcount simply stops working.
One honest caveat for this book's stated audience. None of these four is a Tier-1 commercial bank running a core banking system under a central-bank supervisory regime. A reader inside such an institution should read them as strong adjacent evidence — consumer finance, payments, regulated global SaaS, and national telco-cloud infrastructure — not as a like-for-like core-banking reference. Closing that specific gap is the subject of a separate regulated-bank edition still in development, written from the supervised-bank seat; until a regulated-bank narrative with a real before/after baseline can be published here, this book will not claim one.
**BIG TECH PRACTICE: AGENTS AS TEAMMATES, NOT CONSOLES**
All three clouds shipped the teammate model, not a new dashboard. AWS DevOps Agent works inside Slack and ServiceNow, auto-triggers investigations from CloudWatch or PagerDuty alarms, links duplicate tickets to suppress noise at the source, and lets teams encode their own runbooks as reusable "skills." Azure SRE Agent supports custom subagents so organizations can extend the core team with their own specialists, and connects outward through built-in and custom MCP servers to ServiceNow, PagerDuty, and GitHub. The shared lesson for any deployment: meet engineers in the tools they already live in, show full reasoning with every finding, and make organizational knowledge — runbooks, conventions, failure patterns — a first-class input the agents apply automatically.
# Chapter 6 · Trust, Guardrails, and Governance
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-6-trust-governance
Autonomy is earned, not configured. Governance is not the brake on agentic operations — it is the enabler. The five-level guardrail stack, the deployment-model dial, the FSI lens, and the agent-layer threat model.
*Autonomy is earned, not configured. Governance is not the brake on agentic operations — it is the enabler.*
## 6.1 The governance gap
The adoption numbers tell a cautionary story. McKinsey finds 62% of organizations experimenting with AI agents but fewer than a quarter scaled to production; Deloitte's State of AI research finds only 21% with mature governance frameworks for autonomous agents. And Gartner has put a number on the consequence — the more-than-40% project-cancellation forecast examined in §9.4 — of which the third named cause, inadequate risk controls, is a governance failure by definition. The pattern across these studies is consistent: agentic initiatives die one of two deaths — an incident that destroys trust, or a risk function that blocks deployment because trust was never built. The organizations winning with agentic AI are demonstrably not the ones cutting governance corners; they built governance infrastructure early and used it to accelerate safe deployment.
## 6.2 The guardrail stack
Production guardrails operate at five levels:
1. **Identity and credentials.** Every agent is a first-class identity with least-privilege, short-lived, scoped credentials — auditable like any service account, revocable instantly. No shared super-credentials, ever.
2. **Action policy.** An explicit, versioned policy defines which action classes each agent may take at which autonomy level in which environment. Reversibility and blast radius drive classification: reversible + bounded = automatable; irreversible or wide = approval-gated.
3. **Execution safety.** Pre-flight checks (will this action affect more than N resources?), rate limits, change windows, automatic rollback plans attached to every change, and circuit breakers that halt an agent making repeated failed attempts.
4. **Oversight agents.** The "guardian agent" pattern: dedicated agents that monitor other agents — validating plans against policy, detecting anomalous behavior, and enforcing budget ceilings. This is no longer exotic; Gartner expects that by 2028, 40% of CIOs will demand guardian agents capable of autonomously tracking and containing the actions of other AI agents.
5. **Audit and evidence.** Every perception, decision, action, and outcome is logged immutably with the full reasoning chain — producing, as a side effect, better change-management evidence than most human-operated processes have ever had.
This stack is no longer aspirational — it is shipping product at the platform vendors. Microsoft Entra Agent ID makes agents first-class directory identities, complete with identity blueprints, named human sponsors, and access packages that expire and require re-approval — governance lifecycle applied to software teammates. Azure SRE Agent added global tool-access policies and execution hooks at Build 2026: a single place to define which tools an agent may invoke, under what conditions, and what requires human approval, with approval gates enforced at the point of execution. AWS ships DevOps Agent with dedicated IAM managed policies scoping exactly what the agent may touch, and Azure's on-behalf-of model requires an administrator to explicitly lend credentials when an agent's own identity lacks permission — making every privilege escalation a logged human decision. The direction is unambiguous: agent identity and per-tool policy are becoming platform primitives, and any agentic operations purchase should demand them.
## 6.3 Data residency and control: the first question in every security review
Before any FSI security team discusses autonomy levels, it asks three questions, and an agentic deployment must answer all three precisely — because agents change the answer to each of them.
1. **Residency — where does the data live and get processed?** Agentic operations creates a new data flow that classical tooling never had: telemetry travels to a reasoning model. The inference boundary is therefore the new data boundary. It is not enough to know where logs are stored; you must know where every model call runs, what the model provider logs, how long they retain it, and whether your data trains their models.
2. **Sovereignty — whose law can reach it?** Data processed by a foreign-operated SaaS or a foreign model API may be subject to that jurisdiction's disclosure regimes regardless of where the servers sit. For regulated entities, the conservative position is that sovereignty follows the operator, not just the data center.
3. **Control — who holds the keys and the kill switch?** Control means customer-held encryption keys, customer-owned audit logs that survive vendor offboarding, the ability to revoke every agent credential instantly, defined retention you can enforce, and a contractual and technical guarantee of what — if anything — crosses your boundary.
The deployment model is the control dial. The four models in production use, in increasing order of control:
| Model | Where agents and data run | What crosses your boundary | Typical buyer |
| :--------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :-------------------------------- |
| SaaS | Vendor cloud; model APIs chosen by vendor | Telemetry, configs, and prompts leave your perimeter | Startups, non-regulated SMB |
| SaaS + tokenization | Vendor cloud; PII detected and replaced with reversible tokens before any model boundary | Tokenized telemetry only; real values never leave; de-tokenization happens inside your trust boundary | Mid-market with PII exposure |
| BYOC | Agent platform deployed into your cloud account; you choose model endpoints (including in-region or private) | Nothing by default; model calls go where you point them | Enterprises, most FSI |
| Self-host / air-gapped | Fully inside your perimeter, including self-hosted or dedicated models | Nothing | Banks, on-premise FSI, government |
Two practical notes. First, tokenization and BYOC compose: the strongest common pattern in regulated deployments is BYOC with a PII-aware tokenization layer in front of every model call, so even in-region inference never sees a real customer identifier, credential, or account number. Second, control must survive the audit: if the regulator asks "show me every piece of data this agent sent outside the bank in March, and prove nothing else left," the architecture — egress logging at the boundary, immutable audit trails you own — must be able to answer, not the vendor's assurances.
> *Figure 6 — The deployment model is the control dial: what crosses your boundary under each model, and who buys which.*
The regulatory floor is rising fastest in Asia. Vietnam is the sharpest current example of the direction of travel: the Personal Data Protection Law (Law 91/2025/QH15, effective January 1, 2026, with implementing Decree 356/2025) carries fines of up to 5% of prior-year revenue for unlawful cross-border data transfers and requires transfer impact assessments; the 2024 Data Law (effective July 2025) adds "core" and "important" data categories with their own cross-border restrictions; Decree 53/2022 under the Cybersecurity Law maintains localization requirements for specified services; and the country's first AI Law, passed in December 2025 and effective March 2026, introduces a risk-classification regime for AI systems. Singapore's MAS expectations on technology risk and outsourcing, and the EU's GDPR-plus-AI-Act stack, impose comparable discipline. The pattern is universal: regulators do not prohibit agentic operations — they prohibit not knowing where your data went. For FSI readers specifically, Vietnam's AI Law names finance as a regulated sector and provides an 18-month grace period for compliance — a window in which to build the governance and audit posture this chapter describes, not a reason to defer it.
**EIGHT DATA-CONTROL QUESTIONS FOR ANY AGENTIC VENDOR**
1. Exactly which data leaves our perimeter, to which endpoints, in which regions?
2. Can inference run in-region, in our cloud, or fully self-hosted?
3. Is our data used to train any model — yours or a third party's — and is that contractual?
4. Is PII tokenized before the model boundary, and where does de-tokenization occur?
5. What do you and your model providers log and retain, and for how long?
6. Who holds the encryption keys?
7. Do we keep the complete, immutable audit trail if we leave you?
8. Can we revoke every agent credential and halt all egress in one action?
A platform built for regulated industries answers all eight in writing.
## 6.4 Regulated industries: the FSI lens
Banking, insurance, and financial services have the most to gain from agentic operations — downtime costs are highest, compliance toil is heaviest — and the strictest constraints. Beyond the residency and control architecture above, three requirements recur in every FSI deployment:
1. **Model risk management.** Agentic systems fall under existing MRM frameworks: documented model behavior, evaluation suites, periodic revalidation, and challenger processes.
2. **Change management compatibility.** Agent actions must map onto existing ITIL/change-advisory processes — pre/post validation, approvals, and rollback evidence — rather than bypassing them. Gartner's 2026 outlook is blunt: as autonomy increases, governance becomes non-negotiable.
3. **Regulatory trajectory.** AI governance is moving from voluntary best practice to enforced requirement — the EU AI Act leads, and Asia-Pacific regulators are legislating fast, as Vietnam's 2025–2026 wave shows. Early investment in governance infrastructure is becoming a competitive advantage, not a tax.
## 6.5 The agent-layer threat model
Every control in this chapter governs what an agent is allowed to do. This section addresses a different question: what happens when the agent layer itself is attacked. An operations agent is, by construction, a privileged actor that reads telemetry and takes action — which makes it a target, and introduces failure modes that classical tooling does not have. A security team must threat-model the agent the way it would threat-model any new privileged service, and a platform that asks a bank to trust autonomous action must show that it has done so. Five attack surfaces recur; each has a concrete mitigation that should be a procurement requirement, not an aspiration.
1. **Telemetry poisoning.** An attacker who can write to a log, emit a metric, or forge an event can manufacture a false incident specifically to trigger an agent action — turning the agent's own responsiveness into an attack vector. **Mitigation:** authenticate and validate signal sources; gate actions on input provenance, not just input content; and treat a spike that would trigger a high-impact action as itself requiring corroboration from an independent signal.
2. **Prompt injection via logs.** Telemetry is untrusted input. Attacker-controlled text in a log line, an error message, or a resource name can attempt to hijack the agent's reasoning — the operations-layer form of prompt injection. **Mitigation:** treat all telemetry as untrusted data, never as instructions; strip or escape control content; and enforce that the agent can never execute an action that originates from the data plane rather than from policy.
3. **Agent privilege abuse.** A compromised or malfunctioning agent will use exactly the credentials it holds. The blast radius of a captured agent is the union of its permissions. **Mitigation:** least-privilege per agent, short-lived scoped credentials, and a per-action policy so that even a fully compromised agent cannot exceed the action classes its domain allows — the guardrail stack of §6.2, read as a containment boundary.
4. **Agent-to-agent trust under A2A.** As agents negotiate across organisational boundaries, a rogue or spoofed peer can issue malicious delegations. Cross-organisation autonomy is only as safe as the identity layer beneath it. **Mitigation:** cryptographically signed Agent Cards, verified peer identity, and explicitly scoped cross-organisation delegations — never an implicit trust of any agent that presents itself as one.
5. **An agent gaming its own KPIs.** An agent optimised against a metric will optimise the metric, not the goal — an agent rewarded for low MTTR can learn to suppress or auto-close alerts. This is the operations-layer form of reward hacking, and self-reported success is exactly where it hides. **Mitigation:** a guardian agent that audits outcomes independently, plus a human review of the metrics themselves — the system's own numbers are never the sole evidence that it is working.
> *Figure 11 — The agent layer is itself an attack surface: five recurring threats and the mitigation each requires before autonomy is granted.*
None of these is a reason not to deploy. They are the reason to deploy with the guardrail stack, the identity model, and the audit trail this book has argued for from the first chapter — a confidently-wrong agent and a maliciously-steered agent fail in the same place, and the same controls catch both. For a regulated bank, the FSI-specific extension of this model — mapped to a CISO's control framework — is the subject of a separate regulated-bank edition still in development.
**DESIGN PRINCIPLE**
Build the audit trail first and the autonomy second. A platform that can prove what it did and why — to an engineer, an auditor, or a regulator — will be allowed to do more. A platform that cannot will be confined to read-only advice forever.
# Chapter 7 · Humans on the Loop: The New Operating Model
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-7-humans-on-the-loop
Agentic operations is a people transformation wearing a technology costume. From executor to supervisor, how roles change, and the trust ladder.
*Agentic operations is a people transformation wearing a technology costume.*
## 7.1 From executor to supervisor
The phrase "human in the loop" describes a person inside the execution path: every step waits for them. "Human on the loop" describes a supervisor: they set intent and policy, approve consequential actions, audit outcomes, and intervene by exception. The distinction is the difference between a pilot hand-flying an aircraft and a pilot managing an autopilot — the second pilot is not less important; they are responsible for more aircraft state with less manual workload, and they take the controls precisely when judgment matters most.
> *Figure 7 — In the loop, the human is the actuator; on the loop, the human is the supervisor.*
Gartner's I\&O predictions anticipate enterprises rapidly reducing human-in-the-loop involvement as agent autonomy increases through the late 2020s. The teams that thrive will be those that redesign roles deliberately rather than letting erosion happen to them.
## 7.2 How roles change
| Role today | What shrinks | What grows |
| :------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------- | :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| SRE / on-call engineer | Manual triage, log archaeology, 3 a.m. mechanical remediations | Policy design, agent supervision, novel-failure engineering, reliability architecture |
| DevOps / platform engineer | Ticket-driven provisioning, repetitive pipeline fixes | Agent enablement: tool integrations, context curation, golden paths, evaluation |
| Ops manager / I\&O leader | Headcount-based capacity planning, war-room coordination | Autonomy governance, agent portfolio management, outcome-based vendor management |
| Security engineer | Manual misconfiguration hunts, compliance screenshot gathering | Guardrail engineering, agent permission design, continuous-compliance automation |
Two genuinely new functions emerge. The agent operations engineer owns the health of the agent fleet itself — prompts, tools, memory, evaluations, cost. The autonomy policy owner — often a senior SRE or engineering manager — decides which action classes graduate up the autonomy ladder and adjudicates when agents and humans disagree. Both are career paths, not side duties.
## 7.3 Trust is built in increments
Engineer trust follows a predictable arc, and skipping stages backfires:
1. **Watch it investigate.** Agents run in advise-only mode; engineers compare agent root-cause analyses against their own. Accuracy earns the next step.
2. **Approve its actions.** Agents propose complete remediations; humans one-click approve. Every approval is a labeled data point on agent judgment.
3. **Pre-approve the boring.** Action classes with consistent approval records and clean rollbacks graduate to act-with-notification.
4. **Delegate domains.** Bounded domains — idle-resource cleanup, cache management, certificate rotation — are handed over end-to-end, with audits replacing approvals.
Industry experience is consistent on the failure mode: skip steps, and you ship an autonomous agent that is confidently wrong at 3 a.m. — and one such incident can set an agentic program back a year. Sequence the trust ladder, and autonomy compounds.
The ladder is also exactly how the vendors tell you to deploy their own products: AWS, Azure, and Google all ship their operations agents investigation-first, with action gated behind staged customer governance — the adoption path §9.2 sets out in detail. When the sellers of autonomy insist you start without it, take the hint.
## 7.4 The talent dividend
Framed correctly, agentic operations is the answer to the skills shortage, not a threat to the workforce. With roughly two-thirds of organizations unable to hire the AI-era operations engineers they need, the realistic choice is not "agents versus engineers" but "engineers with agents versus engineers without." Teams that adopt the supervisor model report the scarce senior engineers finally doing the work they were hired for — architecture, prevention, performance — instead of being consumed by interrupt-driven toil. Retention follows. Nobody's career goal is restarting pods at 3 a.m.
# Chapter 8 · Measuring What Matters
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-8-measuring
Agentic operations succeeds or fails on evidence. The eight-KPI dashboard, ROI math, unit economics, and the evaluation harness.
*Agentic operations succeeds or fails on evidence. Instrument the program like the production system it is.*
## 8.1 The headline outcomes
Across published deployments and industry research, four outcome ranges recur for teams that implement agentic incident response with discipline:
| Metric | Documented range | Driver |
| :--------------------- | :-------------------------------------- | :---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| MTTR reduction | 40–70% (vendor pilots report up to 75%) | Automated investigation and pre-approved remediation collapse the diagnosis phase, which consumes most of incident time |
| Alert volume reduction | 80–90% | Correlation, deduplication, and symptom suppression before any human sees a page |
| Toil reduction | 30–50% of L1/L2 operational work | Triage, routine remediation, evidence gathering, and reporting absorbed by agents |
| Cloud cost savings | 10–30% of optimizable spend | Continuous rightsizing, idle cleanup, and commitment management instead of quarterly reviews |
Treat these as benchmarks to verify, not promises to assume. MTTR gains in particular vary with implementation maturity and data quality — the documented pattern is that noise reduction lands first and most consistently, root-cause acceleration second, and autonomous remediation last.
> *Figure 8 — Documented outcome ranges across disciplined deployments, 2025–2026. Verify against your own baseline.*
The named data points behind the ranges: AWS reports preview customers of DevOps Agent seeing up to 75% lower MTTR, 80% faster investigations, and 94% root-cause accuracy, with WGU publicly describing a two-hour investigation cut to 28 minutes; Microsoft reports 35,000+ incidents mitigated and 20,000+ engineering hours saved running 1,300+ SRE agents on its own services. These are vendor and first-party numbers — the strongest currently published, and the right ones to pressure-test in your own pilot rather than accept on faith.
## 8.2 The operating dashboard
A production agentic program runs on roughly eight KPIs, reviewed monthly with the on-call rotation:
1. **MTTD and MTTR** — detection and recovery time, trended by severity, with agent-handled and human-handled incidents separated.
2. **Autonomous resolution rate** — share of incidents resolved with no human action. The single best maturity indicator.
3. **Recommendation acceptance rate** — share of agent proposals approved unmodified. Below \~70%, agent judgment or policy needs tuning; above \~95%, the approval gate is theater and the action class should graduate.
4. **Rollback / intervention rate** — agent actions that had to be reversed or overridden. The safety counterweight to autonomy growth.
5. **Repeat-incident rate** — whether the system is learning. Falling repeats mean memory and problem management are working.
6. **Runbook / coverage ratio** — share of incident classes the agent team can handle at L2 or above.
7. **On-call load** — pages per engineer per week, and after-hours pages specifically. The human-experience metric leadership feels.
8. **Agent unit cost** — model and platform spend per incident resolved and per service covered. Agent economics are a first-class architectural concern; track them from day one.
## 8.3 Building the business case
The ROI model has three lines. First, downtime avoided: multiply your incident frequency by your cost per minute of downtime by the MTTR reduction you validate in pilot. For the cost input, use your own finance team's number if you have one; if you don't, use the Splunk/Oxford Economics 2026 downtime benchmark cited in Chapter 1 (materially higher for payment and trading systems) as the most defensible external anchor. Second, toil converted: hours of L1/L2 work absorbed by agents, valued at loaded engineering cost — typically the largest line in talent-constrained markets. Third, cloud waste recovered: continuous optimization against the 20–30% of spend most organizations privately acknowledge is wasted. Against these, count platform subscription, model usage, and the engineering time to integrate and govern — honestly, including the autonomy-policy owner's time. Disciplined deployments typically reach payback within two to three quarters, with the toil line alone often covering the platform cost. If your model needs the downtime line to work, your pilot domain is wrong; pick one where toil savings carry the case and downtime is upside.
## 8.4 The unit economics of an agent
Chapter 4 argued that two-tier sensing is what makes 24/7 agentic coverage economically viable. This section makes that concrete, because "it pays for itself" is exactly the kind of hand-wave this book tells buyers to reject. The cost of an agentic program is dominated by model inference, and inference cost is dominated by where the expensive reasoning runs. The discipline is to keep cheap perception always-on and reserve frontier reasoning for the few signals that warrant it.
Read a single incident as a cost object. An always-on "pulse" performs lightweight perception across every signal at low cost; a heavyweight resolver performs multi-step reasoning only when the pulse finds something worth investigating. In a representative split, sensing accounts for a small share of per-incident spend, triage a little more, and deep resolution the majority — but deep resolution only fires on the minority of signals that survive triage. A worked illustration: an environment emitting on the order of fifty signals a day, where most are dispatched by pulse-only perception and only a handful escalate to a full resolver run, keeps the expensive tier's duty cycle low while still covering every signal. The exact ratios are yours to measure; the architecture is what makes the ratio favourable.
> *Figure 12 — Where the tokens go in one incident: cheap perception runs on every signal; expensive reasoning runs only on the few that survive triage. Track cost per resolved incident from day one.*
This is why "agent cost per resolved incident" and "agent cost per covered service" are first-class KPIs in the Chapter 8 dashboard, not afterthoughts: an architecture that runs frontier reasoning on every noisy signal erases its own ROI before the first renewal, and you will not see it happen unless you are tracking the per-incident number from day one.
The commercial structure can be aligned to this reality rather than fighting it. An outcome-based option — a fee set as a share of verified savings, with nothing owed if no savings are found — ties the vendor's revenue to the customer's realised benefit and removes the incentive to run up inference cost for its own sake. As a concrete instance: a cost-optimisation engagement priced at 50% of verified annual savings, billing zero if it finds nothing, makes the interest alignment total. Whatever the structure, the figure that belongs in your business case is the one you measure in your own environment against the 90-day baseline of Chapter 9 — not a headline from anyone's slide, including this book's.
## 8.5 Evaluating an operations agent before you trust it
The book has called agentic operations "self-verifying" since Chapter 3 without showing what a verification step concretely checks, or how you would catch a confidently-wrong remediation before it reaches production. This section closes that gap, because the engineers the Foreword promises to serve are precisely the ones who will have to build and run this harness.
An agent evaluation harness has four parts. First, a scenario library: recorded real incidents plus deliberately injected faults, each with a known correct outcome — the right root cause, the safe action, the clean rollback. Second, a shadow run: the agent acts against a sandbox mirror of production, never production itself, so its proposed actions can be observed without consequence. Third, scoring against ground truth: did it reach the correct root cause, did it choose a safe action, would its rollback have worked? Fourth, a regression gate: a behaviour change versus the previous agent version must pass the library before it ships, the same discipline a team applies to any other production code.
> *Figure 13 — An agent evaluation harness: a scenario library, a shadow run against a sandbox mirror, scoring against ground truth, and a regression gate before any version ships.*
Non-determinism is the part that surprises teams coming from deterministic automation: the same scenario can yield different agent behaviour on different runs. The harness handles this by running each scenario many times and scoring the distribution of outcomes, not a single pass — a fix that is correct 70% of the time is a different risk profile from one that is correct 99% of the time, and only a distribution reveals which you have. A concrete verification check makes this tangible: for the database-connection-exhaustion scenario, the harness asserts that the agent identifies connection-pool exhaustion as the root cause, that its action restores the correct connection limit rather than merely restarting the service, and that post-action the connection count returns to baseline and stays there — the same DARV "Validate" step the agent runs in production, run here against a known answer. An agent that cannot pass its own verification check in the harness has no business running it unattended in production.
**MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLE**
Baseline before you deploy. The single most common business-case failure is having no credible "before": capture 90 days of MTTR, alert volume, page counts, and toil hours before the first agent touches production, or you will be arguing from anecdotes forever.
# Chapter 9 · The Implementation Roadmap
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/chapter-9-roadmap
A staged, evidence-driven adoption path: ninety days to first value, twelve months to a new operating model. Five readiness foundations, the 90-day pilot, scaling, and the five ways canceled projects die.
*A staged, evidence-driven adoption path: ninety days to first value, twelve months to a new operating model.*
## 9.1 Readiness: what agents need from you
Agents amplify the environment they inherit. Before the first deployment, honestly assess five foundations:
1. **Observability.** Centralized logs, metrics, and traces with reasonable coverage. Agents cannot reason over signals that don't exist.
2. **Access architecture.** The ability to mint scoped, short-lived credentials per agent. If everything runs on one admin key today, fix that first.
3. **Source of truth.** Infrastructure as code for the surfaces agents will touch, even partially. IaC gives agents a safe change mechanism and you a diffable audit trail.
4. **Documented intent.** SLOs, runbooks, architecture notes — imperfect is fine; absent is not. This becomes the agent's context layer.
5. **An accountable owner.** A named senior engineer with the mandate to set autonomy policy and the credibility to bring the on-call rotation along.
## 9.2 The 90-day pilot
| Phase | Weeks | Focus | Exit criteria |
| :--------------- | :---- | :--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | :----------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Baseline & scope | 1–2 | Capture MTTR, alert volume, page counts, toil hours. Pick one bounded domain (one product's incident response, or cloud cost for one account). | Signed baseline; scoped domain; success metrics agreed |
| Observe (L0–L1) | 3–6 | Connect telemetry and tools read-only. Agents investigate every incident in parallel with humans; engineers grade the analyses. | ≥70% of agent root-cause analyses rated correct or useful by on-call |
| Approve (L2) | 7–10 | Agents propose complete remediations with evidence; humans one-click approve. Track acceptance and rollback rates. | ≥80% acceptance; zero harmful actions; MTTR visibly improving |
| Graduate (L3) | 11–13 | Pre-approve the 5–10 safest, most-repeated action classes. Agents act and notify. Review every action weekly. | First autonomous resolutions in production; documented MTTR delta vs. baseline |
Resist the urge to start with the hardest problem. The pilot's job is to produce evidence and trust, not heroics. A boring domain with frequent, repetitive incidents — Kubernetes restarts, disk pressure, certificate expiry, cost anomalies — generates statistical confidence fastest.
> *Figure 9 — The 90-day pilot: four phases, each with signed exit criteria before autonomy graduates.*
This pilot shape is now vendor-validated practice, not just prudence: AWS's published adoption guidance for DevOps Agent — one region, one service, recommendation-only for weeks, then measure MTTR before expanding — is this roadmap's Observe and Approve phases in different words, and Azure's staged governance controls assume the same progression. If the hyperscalers gate their own agents this way on their own clouds, a bank should not be talked into skipping it.
## 9.3 Scaling: months 4–12
1. **Expand domains, not just autonomy.** Add specialists — database, security, cost — one at a time, each through the same observe → approve → graduate ladder.
2. **Industrialize governance.** Move autonomy policy from a document to enforced configuration; stand up the guardian/oversight layer; integrate agent actions into change management with automated evidence.
3. **Build the memory moat.** Curate the context layer deliberately: topology, conventions, past incidents, tribal knowledge. This is where your deployment becomes unreasonably effective and un-copyable.
4. **Restructure on-call.** As autonomous resolution rates climb, consolidate rotations, redirect reclaimed senior time to prevention engineering, and formalize the agent-operations and autonomy-policy roles.
5. **Report relentlessly.** Publish the dashboard monthly — MTTR trend, autonomous resolution rate, pages avoided, dollars saved — to engineering and to the business. Funded programs are measured programs.
## 9.4 How the canceled 40% die
Gartner predicts more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, naming three killers: escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls. In operations specifically, those abstractions take five concrete forms. Each has a known antidote:
1. **The pilot that never graduates.** (Unclear value.) Advise-only forever feels safe and proves nothing — then the renewal arrives with no MTTR delta to show. *Antidote:* graduation criteria signed on day one, honored on schedule.
2. **Autonomy before evidence.** (Inadequate risk controls.) One confidently-wrong autonomous action at 3 a.m. costs more trust than a hundred good ones earn. *Antidote:* never skip ladder steps, and let acceptance and rollback rates — not enthusiasm — set the pace.
3. **Tool sprawl without orchestration.** (Escalating costs and unclear value.) Five disconnected point agents recreate the swivel-chair problem with extra licenses (the same coordination tax, one layer up, that §10.3 traces across single-cloud agents). *Antidote:* one orchestrator, one audit trail, one dashboard.
4. **Unbounded model spend.** (Escalating costs.) Frontier reasoning on every noisy signal erases the ROI before the first renewal. *Antidote:* two-tier sensing and per-incident cost tracking from day one.
5. **Treating it as a tool purchase.** (All three.) The experiment-to-production gap from Chapter 1 is an operating-model gap, not a technology gap. *Antidote:* budget for the role changes, the policy work, and the trust ladder — not just the license.
## 9.5 When not to deploy: the honest disqualifiers
Before deploying, you put a readiness baseline in place; this section is its harder companion: the cases where the honest answer is to wait. A book that tells buyers to distrust anyone who cannot say no to them should be able to say it about its own category. Each disqualifier below is a reason to fix something first, not a permanent verdict — but deploying through any of them buys an expensive disappointment.
1. **You have no signal to reason over.** If observability is sparse or fragmented — no centralised logs, metrics, or traces across the target domain — the agent has nothing to reason from, and will confidently reason from noise. Fix observability first; an agent amplifies the environment it inherits, and amplifying a blind spot produces a confident blind spot.
2. **Everything runs on one shared admin credential.** If you cannot issue scoped, short-lived credentials per agent, you cannot bound an agent's blast radius or contain a compromised one. Until least-privilege access is real, autonomous action is an unacceptable risk regardless of how good the agent is.
3. **No one owns the autonomy policy.** If there is no named senior engineer with the authority to set autonomy policy and the standing to carry the on-call team, the program will stall at advisory or lurch into ungoverned action. The owner is a prerequisite, not a role to fill later.
4. **Change management cannot accommodate machine-initiated change.** If your change process has no path for a machine-initiated, human-approved change with an audit trail, agent actions will either bypass governance — unacceptable in a regulated environment — or be blocked entirely. Resolve the process question before, not during, deployment.
5. **The first target is your most critical, least reversible system.** Starting on the core path with irreversible actions inverts the trust ladder. If the only available pilot domain is the one where a wrong action is catastrophic and unrecoverable, wait until a bounded, reversible domain is available — or carve one out deliberately. The pilot's job is evidence, not heroism.
There is also a timing disqualifier that has nothing to do with readiness: if the organisation cannot fund the operating-model change — the role redesign, the policy work, the trust ladder — and is buying only a license, it will land in the canceled 40% of §9.4 no matter how ready its infrastructure is. The technology is not the gating factor. The willingness to run the program as a transformation rather than a tool purchase is.
# Introduction
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/aio/introduction
The CloudThinker Field Guide to AgenticOps — why this book exists, the whole argument in one page, and the reading map for the ten chapters that follow.
This is the full text of **Agentic Infrastructure Operations - Leadership Edition**, the CloudThinker Field Guide (June 2026 edition). It is preserved here chapter by chapter — written for SREs, DevOps and platform engineers, infrastructure leaders, CTOs, and CIOs, with explicit attention to regulated industries.
> *Engineers on the loop, not in the loop.*
>
> — The operating principle of agentic operations
***
*Why we wrote this book, and who it is for.*
Every decade, infrastructure operations reinvents itself. Bare metal gave way to virtualization. Virtualization gave way to cloud. Cloud gave way to containers, microservices, and serverless. Each wave promised simplicity and delivered capability — along with an order of magnitude more moving parts to operate.
We are now past the point where humans, however skilled, can hold a modern production environment in their heads. A mid-sized digital business today runs hundreds of services, thousands of containers, and tens of thousands of configuration parameters across multiple clouds. The telemetry those systems emit — logs, metrics, traces, events, alerts — grows faster than any operations team can hire.
Agentic AI changes the equation. For the first time, we can deploy software that does not merely alert a human or execute a pre-scripted runbook, but perceives, reasons, plans, acts, and verifies — the full loop of operational work. This book is a field guide to that shift: what agentic infrastructure operations actually is, how it differs from the automation and AIOps generations that preceded it, how to architect it, how to govern it, and how to adopt it without betting your uptime on hype.
It is written for the people who carry the pager and the people who set the budget: SREs, DevOps and platform engineers, infrastructure leaders, CTOs, and CIOs — especially those in regulated industries where autonomy must be earned, evidenced, and audited. A note on evidence: every figure in this book is attributed, vendor claims are labeled as vendor claims, and each class of number is presented so a reader can weigh it — because a book about earning trust in autonomous systems should hold itself to the same standard.
Our conviction is simple: operational complexity now compounds at machine speed, so operations must scale at machine capacity. Humans should move from being in the loop — executing every step — to being on the loop: setting intent, approving consequential actions, and supervising outcomes. The teams that make this transition deliberately will run faster, safer, and cheaper than those that do not.
One disclosure belongs up front, not in a closing chapter. This book is published by CloudThinker, which builds a platform in the category it describes. We have worked to keep that interest from bending the evidence: every benchmark is sourced, vendor figures — including the hyperscalers' and our own — are labelled as vendor figures, and the framework chapters are written to stand on their own whatever platform you choose. Where the book describes how CloudThinker specifically implements an idea, it is marked as such — chiefly in the clearly-labelled section of Chapter 10 — so that "what the field is converging on" and "how one vendor builds it" never blur together. Judge the category by the evidence; then judge us by the five-question vendor test and the eight data-control questions in these pages, which we wrote knowing we would have to pass them.
***
## Executive Summary
Modern infrastructure has crossed a threshold: microservices, multi-cloud, and AI workloads now generate operational complexity faster than any human team can absorb. Operations teams field 500–1,200 alerts a day; Splunk and Oxford Economics put unplanned downtime at \$600 billion a year across the Global 2000 — roughly \$15,000 per minute for a large enterprise — and around two-thirds of organizations cannot hire the operations skills they need. Hiring, scripting, and dashboards — the three traditional responses — all keep humans in the execution path, and human attention is the bottleneck.
Agentic infrastructure operations is the structural answer: autonomous AI agents that close the full operational loop — Detect → Analyze → Resolve → Validate — under explicit policy, with humans supervising on the loop instead of executing in it. It is the fourth generation of operations, absorbing infrastructure-as-code and AIOps rather than replacing them, and it became practical between 2023 and 2026 through frontier reasoning models, reliable tool use, and the MCP interoperability standard.
The evidence is real, and so is the failure rate — this book takes both seriously. Gartner predicts AI agents will reshape I\&O teams, roles, and operating models over the next five years, expects task-specific agents in 40% of enterprise applications by the end of 2026, and recorded a 1,445% surge in multi-agent system inquiries; AWS and Azure shipped GA reliability agents in early 2026; disciplined adopters report 40–70% MTTR reductions and 80–90% alert-noise elimination. Set against that promise is a hard failure rate — a large share of agentic projects are forecast to be canceled, and most experiments never reach production (Chapters 1, 6, and 9). The difference between the two populations is not the technology. It is execution discipline, and teaching it is this book's entire purpose.
The playbook runs in ten chapters: the complexity crisis and why old answers failed; precise definitions, the L0–L4 autonomy spectrum, and a five-question test for "agent washing"; the reference architecture — one orchestrator, specialist agents, a closed DARV loop, two-tier sensing, and PII tokenization for regulated industries; the guardrail stack and FSI-grade governance; the human operating model and trust ladder; the eight-KPI measurement framework and ROI math; a 90-day pilot and 12-month scaling roadmap, with the five ways canceled projects die and their antidotes; and the road ahead.
**IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE**
1. **Autonomy is a dial, not a switch:** graduate action classes through observe → approve → act-with-notification → delegate, on evidence.
2. **Architecture matters:** one orchestrator, least-privilege specialists, verification built into the loop, and audit trails before autonomy.
3. **Baseline before you deploy,** measure eight KPIs monthly, and let your own data set the pace.
***
## How to Read This Book
### Part 01 · From Crisis to Agentic Operations
Modern infrastructure has outgrown human cognitive capacity
Four generations of operations, and what changed
The working definition, the L0–L4 autonomy spectrum, and the five-question vendor test
### Part 02 · Architecture & the Agent Team
Multi-agent systems for operations: orchestrator, specialists, DARV loop, two-tier sensing
Roster, work flow, agent-to-human interfaces, four production case studies
### Part 03 · Trust, Governance & People
The five-level guardrail stack, data residency, threat model, FSI lens
The new operating model: from executor to supervisor, the trust ladder
### Part 04 · Proof & Playbook
Eight KPIs, ROI math, unit economics, and the evaluation harness
The 90-day pilot, scaling to 12 months, and the canceled-40% failure modes
### Part 05 · The Road Ahead
Five near-term trajectories, the strategic window, the hyperscaler-vs-unified question
The platform behind the field guide
***
*Copyright © 2026 CloudThinker JSC. All rights reserved.*
*Written by the CloudThinker Product Team. Designed by CloudThinker Design. Published by CloudThinker · [www.cloudthinker.io](http://www.cloudthinker.io). First Edition, June 2026.*
# FAQ
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/faq
Find answers to common questions about CloudThinker, AI agents, pricing, security, and cloud operations
Get answers to common questions about CloudThinker, our AI agents, and how Agentic AI transforms cloud operations.
***
## Getting started
CloudThinker is an autonomous AI cloud operations platform that uses specialized AI agents to automate cloud operations. Our five expert agents - [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) (Cloud Engineer), [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) (Security Engineer), [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (Database Engineer), [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) (Kubernetes Engineer), and [Anna](/guide/agents/anna) (General Manager) - work together to optimize, secure, and manage your cloud infrastructure autonomously.
You interact with agents using natural language commands like `@alex #recommend analyze EC2 instances with low utilization` or `@oliver #report perform security audit`, and they execute hundreds of pre-defined operations or custom tasks.
**Traditional Tools:**
* Manual configuration and monitoring
* Reactive alerts and dashboards
* Human-dependent analysis and decision-making
* Siloed tools for different functions
**CloudThinker:**
* Autonomous AI agents that understand context
* Proactive optimization and issue prevention
* Intelligent analysis with actionable recommendations
* Unified multi-agent collaboration across all cloud operations
CloudThinker supports all major cloud providers:
* **AWS**: Complete service coverage including EC2, RDS, EKS, Lambda, and 100+ services
* **Microsoft Azure**: Full Azure service integration including VMs, AKS, databases, and security services
* **Google Cloud Platform**: Native GCP support for compute, storage, databases, and Kubernetes
* **Multi-Cloud**: Unified management and optimization across multiple cloud providers simultaneously
**Week 1:** Complete infrastructure discovery and baseline establishment
**Week 2:** First optimization recommendations and quick wins (typically 15–25% immediate cost savings)
**Month 1:** Full operational automation and 30–50% cost optimization
**Month 2-3:** Advanced automation, predictive analytics, and strategic optimizations
Most customers see their first measurable results within 48 hours of deployment.
No. CloudThinker is designed to work with your existing cloud architecture without requiring any changes. Our agents analyze and optimize your current setup while respecting your architectural decisions and business requirements.
CloudThinker integrates through:
* Read-only analysis for most operations
* Secure API connections to your cloud providers
* Recommendations that you can review before implementation
* Gradual automation that you control
***
## AI agents & operations
Our AI agents are powered by advanced language models trained on cloud operations expertise. Each agent has:
**Specialized Knowledge:** Deep expertise in their domain (cloud engineering, security, databases, etc.)
**Contextual Understanding:** Ability to understand your infrastructure, requirements, and business context
**Tool Integration:** Access to hundreds of pre-built operations and cloud APIs
**Learning Capabilities:** Continuous improvement based on your environment and feedback
**Safety Controls:** Built-in safeguards and [approval workflows](/guide/approval) for sensitive operations
They operate autonomously within defined parameters but can escalate complex decisions to human operators when needed.
CloudThinker implements multiple safety layers:
**Autonomy modes:** Choose [Manual or Auto](/guide/auto-mode) — Manual requires approval for each action, Auto lets agents act within defined guardrails
**[Approval Workflows](/guide/approval):** Configure required approvals for sensitive operations
**Change Windows:** Restrict automated changes to maintenance windows
**Rollback Capabilities:** Automatic rollback for operations that don't meet success criteria
**Audit Trail:** Complete logging of all agent actions and decisions
**Risk Assessment:** Agents evaluate risk before suggesting or implementing changes
Most customers start with Manual mode and switch to Auto as confidence grows.
CloudThinker agents understand natural language, making communication intuitive:
**Agent Syntax:** Use @agent-name to direct requests to specific agents
**Tool Syntax:** Use #tool-name to specify desired outputs
**Natural Language:** Agents understand context, follow-up questions, and conversational requests
Examples:
* "Show me last month's cost trends"
* "What security issues need immediate attention?"
* "Can you optimize our database performance?"
Yes! Multi-agent collaboration is one of CloudThinker's key strengths:
**Coordinated Analysis:** Multiple agents can investigate issues together
**Knowledge Sharing:** Agents share context and findings automatically
**Specialized Expertise:** Each agent contributes their domain expertise to complex problems
**Unified Reporting:** Collaborative findings presented in coherent recommendations
**Example Scenarios:**
* **Deep Response Engine:** All agents coordinate to analyze different aspects of an outage
* **Security Review:** [Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) leads with [Alex](/guide/agents/alex) providing infrastructure context
* **Performance Optimization:** [Tony](/guide/agents/tony) (database) + [Kai](/guide/agents/kai) (Kubernetes) + Alex (infrastructure) collaboration
***
## Security & compliance
CloudThinker implements enterprise-grade security:
**Data Protection:**
* End-to-end encryption for all data in transit and at rest
* Zero-trust architecture with minimal required permissions
* No persistent storage of sensitive cloud data
* GDPR, SOC 2, and HIPAA compliant infrastructure
**Access Control:**
* Role-based access control (RBAC) for all users
* Multi-factor authentication (MFA) required
* [Single sign-on (SSO)](/guide/security/sso) integration with enterprise identity providers
* Granular permissions for agent actions
**Cloud Permissions:**
* Principle of least privilege for all cloud API access
* Read-only access for most operations
* Configurable write permissions with [approval workflows](/guide/approval)
* Regular audit and rotation of cloud access credentials
CloudThinker follows the principle of least privilege:
**Minimum Required:**
* **Read access** to cloud resources for analysis and recommendations
* **Cost and billing data** access for optimization analysis
* **CloudTrail/audit logs** access for security and compliance analysis
**Optional (for automation):**
* **Limited write access** for specific approved operations (e.g., tagging, right-sizing)
* **IAM permissions** for security policy enforcement (with approval workflows)
* **Backup and snapshot** permissions for database operations
**Enterprise Options:**
* **Custom permission policies** tailored to your security requirements
* **Temporary access elevation** for specific operations
* **Cross-account roles** for multi-account management
You maintain full control over what permissions to grant and can revoke them at any time.
Yes, CloudThinker maintains compliance with major industry standards:
**Compliance Certifications:**
* **SOC 2 Type II** - Security, availability, processing integrity
* **GDPR** - European data protection regulation
* **HIPAA** - Healthcare data protection (BAA available)
* **PCI DSS** - Payment card industry standards
* **ISO 27001** - Information security management
**Industry-Specific Features:**
* **Healthcare:** HIPAA-compliant operations and audit trails
* **Financial Services:** SOX compliance and financial data protection
* **Government:** FedRAMP moderate authorization in progress
* **Enterprise:** Custom compliance reporting and attestation
[Oliver](/guide/agents/oliver) agent can help maintain compliance in your environment by monitoring configurations and generating compliance reports.
***
## Pricing & plans
CloudThinker uses **per-seat pricing** — each seat comes with a monthly credit allocation and full access to AI agents. Plans range from **Free (free forever)** to **Enterprise (custom pricing)**, with annual billing saving \~20%.
All plans include 100 free daily credits (Light model and chat only) that refresh every day. Most customers save 3-5x their subscription cost through cloud optimizations alone.
See the full plan comparison, credit system, and PAYG details on our [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing) page.
A **seat** is a paid slot on your subscription. Each purchased seat immediately grants its full credit allocation — only active members consume seats, and pending invitations don't count.
You can pre-purchase extra seats to boost your credit pool, and the system auto-adds seats when your team grows mid-cycle with prorated billing.
For full details on seat mechanics and minimum requirements, see our [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing) page.
Yes! We offer multiple ways to experience CloudThinker before committing:
**14-Day Free Trial (Team Plan):**
* Full access to all Team features, AI agents, and operations
* A credit card is required to start so your service continues seamlessly — but **you won't be charged until day 15**
* Cancel anytime during the trial with one click, no cost and no questions asked
* Real analysis of your cloud environment from day one
**Free Plan:**
* No credit card needed — free forever
* 100 free daily credits (Light model and chat only) that refresh every day
* Great for exploring the platform at your own pace
**Interactive Demo:**
* Live demonstration with sample environment
* See agents in action with real scenarios
* Q\&A with CloudThinker experts
**Proof of Concept (Enterprise):**
* 30-60 day pilot program
* Custom deployment in your environment
* Dedicated success team
* Measurable ROI validation
**Money-Back Guarantee:** If you don't see measurable value within 30 days, we'll refund your subscription.
For more details, see our [Pricing & Plans](/guide/billing/pricing) page.
Based on data from CloudThinker customers, typical ROI spans multiple dimensions:
**Cost Savings (Primary ROI):**
* **30–50% cloud cost reduction** on average
* **\$500K–\$2M annual savings** for mid-to-large organizations
* **3–5x subscription cost recovery** through optimizations alone
**Operational Efficiency:**
* **75% reduction** in time spent on manual cloud operations tasks
* **60–80% faster incident resolution** through automated [RCA](/guide/incident/root-cause-analysis)
**Risk Reduction:**
* Significant improvement in security posture scores through continuous monitoring
* Automated compliance evidence generation reduces audit preparation time
**Time to Value:**
* **Week 1:** Initial cost savings identified
* **Month 1:** 15–25% cost reduction realized
* **Month 3:** Full ROI typically achieved
* **Month 6+:** Compound benefits and strategic value
**Typical Payback Period:** 2–4 months for most customers
Results vary based on cloud spend, team size, and the number of optimization opportunities in your environment. Contact us for a personalized savings estimate.
***
## Technical questions
CloudThinker is designed to work with minimal technical requirements:
**Cloud Requirements:**
* **AWS, Azure, or GCP account** with appropriate permissions
* **API access** enabled for your cloud services
* **Network connectivity** to CloudThinker services (outbound HTTPS)
**Optional Integrations:**
* **Slack workspace** for ChatOps integration
* **[SSO](/guide/security/sso) provider** (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace)
* **ITSM tools** (ServiceNow, Jira) for ticketing integration
* **Monitoring tools** (DataDog, New Relic) for enhanced insights
**No Infrastructure Required:**
* No agents or software to install in your environment
* No VPN or complex networking setup
* No database or storage requirements
* Works with existing cloud configurations
Yes! CloudThinker is designed for seamless integration:
**Communication Platforms:**
* **Slack** - Full ChatOps integration with agent interactions
* **Microsoft Teams** - Native bot and notification support
* **Email** - Report delivery and alert notifications
**ITSM & Ticketing:**
* **ServiceNow** - Automatic ticket creation and updates
* **Jira** - Issue tracking and workflow integration
* **PagerDuty** - Alert escalation and incident management
**Monitoring & Observability:**
* **DataDog** - Metrics and dashboard integration
* **New Relic** - Performance monitoring correlation
* **[Grafana connection](/guide/connections/grafana)** - Custom dashboard and alerting
* **Splunk** - Log analysis and security correlation
**DevOps & CI/CD:**
* **Jenkins** - Build and deployment automation
* **GitHub Actions** - Workflow integration
* **GitLab CI** - Pipeline integration
* **Terraform** - Infrastructure as Code integration
***
## Support & training
CloudThinker offers comprehensive support tailored to your plan:
**Free:**
* **Community support** via Discord
* **[Knowledge base](/guide/knowledge)** with detailed documentation and tutorials
* **Video tutorials** and getting started guides
* **AI features:** [Code Review](/guide/code-review/overview), [Deep Response Engine](/guide/incident/overview) (Pulse + RCA), Prompt Hub Query
**Team:**
* **Email support**
* **AI features:** All Free features + CloudKeeper Action + Slack Integration
* All Free resources included
**Scale:**
* **99.9% SLA · email support**
* **AI features:** All Team features + Cloud Assessment, Jira Integration, SSO & Audit Log, BYOK
* All Team features included
**Scale +:**
* **99.9% SLA · priority support**
* **AI features:** Same as Scale
* All Scale features included
**Enterprise:**
* **24×7 support** with 1-hour response SLA and a dedicated TAM
* **AI features:** All features included, plus SCIM provisioning
* **Custom training** and onboarding programs
* **Direct access** to engineering team for complex issues
* **Quarterly business reviews** with executive team
CloudThinker provides multiple channels for getting help quickly:
**Immediate Help:**
* **In-app help** and contextual guidance
* **Knowledge base** with searchable articles and FAQs
* **Community Discord** for peer support
**Expert Support:**
* **Email support** with guaranteed response times (Team+)
* **Priority support** with SLA for tracking issues (Scale+)
* **Dedicated team** for complex issues (Enterprise)
**Contact Methods:**
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# Day 01 · Govern
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/workshops/prove-it/day-01-govern
Why coding agents struggle in the cloud, the five ideas from the Learn block, the 95-minute read-only lab on the AWS demo account, and what a good optimization report contains.
Day 01 of [Prove It](/learn/workshops/prove-it/overview), the Agentic Cloud Investigation Series. Not registered yet? [Register for Day 01](https://luma.com/jdp0atfd). A repo is a workspace. Cloud is a live system. An agent can pass every test in your repo and still be wrong about your account. Today is about the controls and the evidence you need before an agent works in the cloud.
**Using this page with CloudThinker.** Paste this page's URL into a chat and try:
* "Explain the Learn section of this page to me like I am new to cloud."
* "Quiz me on the labels verified, inferred and assumed."
* "Help me outline my Day 01 report following the three blocks on this page."
## Rules of the room
* **150 minutes.** Learn 35, Practice 95 with a 10-minute break, Share 20.
* **The AWS demo account is read-only.** The agent can inspect. It cannot change anything.
* **You never enter credentials.** You pick the demo environment and click **Use demo**. Nothing to fill in.
* **The agent recommends. People decide.** No fix is applied today, in the demo or anywhere else.
* **Redact.** Account IDs, ARNs and customer data come out of the report before it is shared or shown on screen.
* **One report file per team.** Submitted before Share starts.
## Learn · 35 minutes
Five ideas. Each one is a rule you will use in the lab.
### 1. An agent is a model plus an environment
An agent has a goal, context, a model, tools and an environment. The model picks the next action. The environment is where that action lands. The loop is simple: act, observe the result, act again, check, then stop.
| The model chooses | The environment decides what is possible |
| -------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- |
| Which tool to call next, and with what input | Which tools exist at all |
| How to read the result | What each call may do, and to what |
| When the job is done | Whether the action can be undone |
A better model makes better choices. It cannot do anything you did not give it.
This definition is a workshop teaching frame, not a quote from any vendor document.
### 2. Cloud has no single workspace boundary
The same agent with the same skill plays by different rules for being wrong.
| | In a repo | In the cloud |
| ---------------------- | ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------- |
| The boundary | One folder on your machine | Many accounts, regions and roles |
| Who else is affected | Only you, until you push | Live users and other teams, right now |
| What the agent can see | Every file, by reading it | Only what its role is allowed to call |
| If it gets it wrong | Cheap to see and cheap to undo | Expensive to see, sometimes impossible to undo |
| How you undo it | One git command | Sometimes there is no undo |
The visibility row is the one people miss. In the cloud, silence from the agent is not the same as nothing being there. It may simply not have permission to look.
Cloud platforms now ship controls for this. Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, for example, runs each session in its own isolated environment, checks every tool call against a policy before it runs, and traces every step. Those controls move the rules outside the agent. They do not remove your job of setting them.
### 3. Auto mode needs a human in the loop
Some coding agents offer an auto mode: instead of asking you before each action, a second model reviews the action and blocks the dangerous ones. It works well, and it assumes you are there.
* **When you are prompting**, the reviewer has something to check against. You stated the goal. You can say "do not touch production" and matching actions are blocked.
* **When nobody is prompting**, for example an incident starts the run at 3am, no goal and no boundary were stated. The reviewer has only its default rules. When it pauses to ask a person, nobody is there to answer.
When the human leaves, the intent has to be written down somewhere:
| What carries the intent | What it answers |
| ----------------------- | ---------------------------- |
| Runbook | What to do |
| Boundary | How far |
| Permission | What is possible at all |
| Human approval | Before the irreversible step |
| Audit log | What happened |
Auto mode can replace your approval. It cannot replace your intent.
### 4. One tool call passes through many layers
Between the agent deciding to act and the cloud resource changing, a single call passes through several layers. Each layer can say no. Each layer is blind to something. Only the last two live in the account.
| Layer | Who sets it | What it can refuse | What it cannot see |
| --------------- | ----------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| Agent | You | Nothing on its own. It proposes | Whether the call is safe |
| Sandbox | You | Access to your laptop's files and network | Your account. It can still read any keys you left inside it |
| Permission mode | You | Actions you have not allowed, or that a reviewer flags | Anything the rules did not anticipate |
| Your intent | You | Nothing on its own. It guides the agent and the reviewer | It cannot refuse a call by itself |
| IAM role | The account | Any call the role is not allowed to make | Everything above. It sees one signed call |
| Resource | The account | Nothing. It does what it is told | Many actions have no undo |
The sandbox protects your laptop. Only IAM protects your account.
### 5. Every cloud claim needs source, scope and time
Ask three questions about every line the agent gives you:
| Question | Example answer |
| ------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------- |
| **Source.** Which call produced it? | The bucket policy status call, raw output attached. |
| **Scope.** Which account, region and role? | The demo account, one region, the read-only role. |
| **Time.** When was it true? | Checked at 10:14 today. Cloud changes after that. |
Then give every line one label:
| Label | What it means | Example | What you do with it |
| ------------ | ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| **Verified** | The raw output proves it | "Bucket X has public access blocked, checked at 10:14." | You can act on it |
| **Inferred** | Reasoned from a verified fact | "So this data is probably not exposed." | Check it before you use it |
| **Assumed** | Nothing backs it yet | "This bucket is a security issue." | Test it, or leave it out |
| **Blocked** | The role could not look | "Could not read the bucket's object listing." | Write it down. A blocked check is a good result |
A finding is only as strong as its weakest step. One unchecked step in the middle makes the whole finding inferred, not verified. If you cannot show the source, the honest answer is "not enough evidence". That is a valid result.
## Practice · 95 minutes
**The task:** what would you optimize in this AWS account? One team, one read-only agent, one report.
| Time | Length | Step | What to do |
| ---- | ------ | ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| T+0 | 10 min | Register and set your scope | Create a free CloudThinker account and invite your team. Agree the question you will ask and where the agent must stop. |
| T+10 | 5 min | Connect to the demo account | Pick the demo environment and click **Use demo**. Read-only. You never enter credentials. |
| T+15 | 30 min | Explore with the agent | Ask what can be optimized: cost, security, reliability, performance. Keep the raw output. |
| T+45 | 10 min | Break | Step away. The agent output will still be there. |
| T+55 | 40 min | Check every claim, then write the report | Label each claim verified, inferred, assumed or blocked. Drop what you cannot support. Write it up. |
### Invite your team
One team, one workspace. Whoever registered adds the rest, so everyone sees the same demo connection and works on one report.
Open **Chat Settings** — the gear icon in the chat prompt box, immediately to the right of the **+** button — and select **Members** under **Workspace**.
Click **Add Member** and pick your teammate. Each row shows their **Organization Role** and their **Workspace Role**, which can differ.
Chat Settings · Members, with Add Member at the top right
Teammates have to be in your organization before they can be added to a workspace. If someone is missing from the list, invite them first from **Admin Settings · Organization** at [app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/organization](https://app.cloudthinker.io/admin-settings/organization). Roles in full: [Workspace Members](/guide/workspace-users).
### Connect to the demo environment
Sign in at [app.cloudthinker.io](https://app.cloudthinker.io). In the left sidebar, click **Try a demo environment**. It is described as "a read-only cloud we run".
The Connections panel for the demo environment shows the connections you can try with demo data. Click **Amazon Web Services**.
At the top of the Connect Amazon Web Services dialog, a banner offers the read-only demo. Click **Use demo**. Ignore the Role-Based and Access Keys forms below it. They are for connecting your own account, and today you do not need them.
**Success state:** Amazon Web Services no longer appears under **Not connected**. Open a new chat and ask about the demo account.
Nobody types credentials into a slide, a chat or a shared document. If your team chooses to run the task on its own account, the person who owns that account connects it through the Role-Based flow on their own screen.
### What to ask the agent
Most teams start by asking for a list. Push for evidence instead: which resource, which region, when. Starting points:
```text theme={null}
Give me an overview of this AWS account: regions in use, main services, and what your role could not read.
```
```text theme={null}
What would you optimize in this account for cost? For each item, show the call you made and the raw output.
```
```text theme={null}
Which of these findings can you prove from the output you already have, and which are inferences?
```
Keep the raw output. You will need it to label every claim in the report.
### Stuck?
* **Registration or Connect is not working.** Pair with a neighbouring team and keep going. Do not spend the block debugging one laptop.
* **The agent answers with generic best practices.** Ask it for the specific resource, region and call behind each line.
* **The agent says it cannot read something.** Good. Write it down as blocked. That is part of your scope statement.
## Your output is one report
PDF, doc or markdown. There is no template. Finding out what a good optimization report looks like is part of the task, so look it up. Three blocks are the minimum.
| Block | What it contains |
| -------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| **01 · What you looked at** | Account, regions, role. What the role could not see. |
| **02 · What you would optimize** | Each finding with its evidence: source, scope, time. Each one labelled verified, inferred, assumed or blocked. Biggest impact first. |
| **03 · What happens next** | Which changes need a person to approve. What you dropped, and why. |
A short report with strong evidence beats a long list of best practices. A dropped finding is a good result. A blocked check is a good result if it is written down. Only an unsupported claim kept as true is a bad result.
One file per team, submitted before Share starts. Redact account IDs, ARNs and any customer data first.
## Share · 20 minutes
The organisers read the submitted reports during the last part of the lab and pick the best ones, normally three. A team that ran the task on its own real account gets extra credit.
Each chosen team presents for five minutes, from the report file and the raw agent output. No slides.
| Minutes | Show |
| ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| 2 | **Scope and top finding.** What did you look at? What could the role not see? The one finding you would fix first. |
| 2 | **Evidence and what you dropped.** The evidence and its label. What you dropped, and why. |
| 1 | **What needs approval.** Which change needs a person before it happens. |
Then the room compares the outputs: same account, different scopes, different findings. For each one, the room votes on what the evidence supports:
**Observe** · **Recommend** · **Request approval** · **Stop**
## Glossary
| Term | Meaning on Day 01 |
| ------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Bounded task | A task with a stated goal, scope, allowed tools, and a point where the agent must stop. |
| Read-only | The agent can inspect resources and configuration. It cannot create, change or delete anything. |
| Scope | Which account, region and role the answer came from. Part of every claim. |
| Least privilege | The role has only the permissions the task needs. Today that is read access only. |
| Verified, inferred, assumed, blocked | The four labels for every claim in the report. See the table in Learn. |
| Human approval | A person signs off before any change happens. Today, every change. |
| Audit trail | The raw agent output and the calls it made, kept so the run can be checked later. |
## What comes next
Day 02 · Investigate, Sep 12. A real Kubernetes application, users are hurting, and every dashboard says healthy. Same read-only rules as today. A much harder question: why? Bring today's rules. Same boundary, harder question.
## Further reading
Sources the Learn block draws on. Read them before the event if you want the background.
* [Anthropic · Building effective agents](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-effective-agents)
* [Anthropic · Claude Code permission modes](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/permission-modes)
* [Anthropic · Claude Code sandboxing](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/sandboxing)
* [Anthropic engineering · Claude Code auto mode](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/claude-code-auto-mode)
* [AWS · IAM security best practices](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/best-practices.html)
* [AWS · What is Amazon Bedrock AgentCore](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-agentcore/latest/devguide/what-is-bedrock-agentcore.html)
# Prove It: Agentic Cloud Investigation Series
Source: https://docs.cloudthinker.io/learn/workshops/prove-it/overview
A three-part hands-on workshop series on AI agents in real cloud environments: govern the agent, investigate an incident, then defend your conclusions in the Prove It Arena.
Prove It is a three-part hands-on workshop series run by CloudThinker with FCAJ. Instead of asking an agent and accepting its answer, you learn to give an agent access safely, use it to investigate cloud incidents, find the evidence, validate the agent's conclusions, and then prove it.
**Using this page with CloudThinker.** Paste the URL of any workshop page into a CloudThinker chat and ask the agent to explain it, quiz you on it, or help you plan your report. The pages are written to be read by people and by agents.
## Program schedule
| Day | Date | What you do | What you hand in |
| ---------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| [Day 01 · Govern](/learn/workshops/prove-it/day-01-govern) | Sep 5, 2026 | Design access permissions and guardrails before an agent works in a cloud environment. Then run a read-only review of an AWS demo account. | One optimization report per team |
| Day 02 · Investigate | Sep 12, 2026 | Work with an agent to investigate an incident, identify the root cause, and collect evidence that validates your conclusion. | One incident report per team |
| Day 03 · Prove It Arena | Sep 19, 2026 | The final challenge. Teams receive an unfamiliar cloud environment and an unexpected incident, investigate what happened, gather evidence, and defend their conclusions in front of the judges. | Revealed on the day |
Each session runs 2.5 hours in the same shape: **Learn** (35 minutes), **Practice** (95 minutes, break included) and **Share** (20 minutes).
## Location and teams
* **Ho Chi Minh City:** offline. **Hanoi and Da Nang:** online.
* **Teams of 3 to 5 members.** No team yet? Register individually and the organizers will match you with one.
* **To join the Prove It Arena** you must attend at least one of the first two workshops.
## Rules that apply every day
* **Read-only.** The agent can look. It cannot change anything. Every recommendation stays a recommendation until a person approves it.
* **You never type credentials.** The practice environment is a cloud that CloudThinker runs. You choose it and click **Use demo**. There is nothing to fill in.
* **No AWS account required.** No personal credentials required.
* **Evidence over lists.** A short report with strong evidence beats a long list of best practices.
* **Redact before you share.** Remove account IDs, ARNs and any customer data from a report before it leaves your team.
* **Own account, extra credit.** A team may run the same task on its own cloud account through CloudThinker, under the same read-only rules. A real account scores higher than the demo.
## Awards and benefits
* Each region has two winning teams, **Prove It Champion** and **Runner-up**, with CloudThinker Scale access, awards and gift sets.
* Complete all three days to earn three portfolio artifacts and skill certificates.
* Outstanding finalists may be selected for the three-month CloudThinker Ambassador Program.
## Register
* [Day 01 · Govern](https://luma.com/jdp0atfd)
* [Day 02 · Investigate](https://luma.com/fu5qdqnc)
* [Day 03 · Prove It Arena](https://luma.com/362tn8vt)
## What you need
* A laptop and a free CloudThinker account at [app.cloudthinker.io](https://app.cloudthinker.io).
* Your team. One person connects; everyone reads the output.
* No AWS account, no keys and no installs. The practice environment is provided.
## Start here
The full Day 01 page: what you learn, the lab timeline, how to connect to the demo, and what a good report contains.
Create your CloudThinker account and open your first chat before the event.