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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.

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The 30-second syntax

Talk to agents in plain language. The full pattern is:
  • @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 for the full syntax.
1

Register

Sign up at app.cloudthinker.io.
  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 for plan limits.
2

Connect AWS

Go to Settings → Connections → New Connection → AWS, then pick an authentication method:For the IAM Role path, CloudThinker shows you the External ID to paste into the trust policy and the minimum permissions to attach. The full AWS Console walkthrough — with CloudShell commands and trust-policy JSON — is in the AWS connection guide.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 — 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 below.
3

Verify discovery

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.
4

Run your first prompt

Click New chat and paste:
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.
5

Try a tool command

For richer output shapes, prefix the prompt with a #tool:
Alex returns an interactive dashboard (charts you can sort/filter) instead of a text answer.Other tools worth trying once you’re connected:
Success state: the dashboard renders inline; recommendations include both the change and the projected monthly delta.

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You’re done when…

  • You can see your AWS resource count in the Infrastructure tab and it matches reality
  • @alex returned a summary that named specific instances or services you recognize
  • 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.

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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.
  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.

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Next steps

AgenticOps quick wins by role

Find your role, copy a prompt, get a real result in under a minute

Connect more tools

Bring in Datadog, GitHub, Kubernetes, Postgres, Slack — agents activate as connections appear

Invite your team

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Upgrade your plan

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