Pulumi Agent Skills: Best practices and more for AI coding assistants

AI coding assistants have transformed how developers write software, including infrastructure code. Tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot can generate code, explain complex systems, and automate tedious tasks. But when it comes to infrastructure, these tools often produce code that works but misses the mark on patterns that matter: proper secret handling, correct resource dependencies, idiomatic component structure, and the dozens of other details that separate working infrastructure from production-ready infrastructure.

We built Neo for teams that want deep Pulumi expertise combined with organizational context and deployment governance. But developers have preferred tools, and we want people to succeed with Pulumi wherever they work. Some teams live in Claude Code. Others use Cursor, Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, or other platforms. That is why we are releasing Pulumi Agent Skills, a collection of packaged expertise that teaches any AI coding assistant how to work with Pulumi the way an experienced practitioner would.

What are agent skills?

Skills are structured knowledge packages that follow the open Agent Skills specification. They work across multiple AI coding platforms including Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, VS Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI. When you install Pulumi skills, your AI assistant gains access to detailed workflows, code patterns, and decision trees for common infrastructure tasks.

Available Pulumi skills

We are launching a set of skills organized into two plugin groups: migration and authoring. You can install all skills at once or choose specific plugin groups based on your needs.

Migration skills

Convert and import infrastructure from other tools to Pulumi. This plugin includes four skills covering complete migration workflows, not just syntax translation.

• Terraform to Pulumi walks through the full migration workflow. It handles state translation, provider version alignment, and the iterative process of achieving a clean pulumi preview with no unexpected changes.

• CloudFormation to Pulumi covers the complete AWS CloudFormation migration workflow, from template conversion and stack import to handling CloudFormation-specific constructs.

• CDK to Pulumi covers the complete AWS CDK migration workflow end to end, from conversion and import to handling CDK-specific constructs like Lambda-backed custom resources and cross-stack references.

• Azure to Pulumi covers the complete Azure Resource Manager and Bicep migration workflow, handling template conversion and resource import with guidance on achieving zero-diff validation.

Authoring skills

This plugin includes four skills focused on code quality, reusability, and configuration.

• Pulumi best practices encodes the patterns that prevent common mistakes. It covers output handling, component structure, secrets management, safe refactoring with aliases, and deployment workflows. The skill flags anti-patterns that can cause issues with preview, dependencies, and production deployments.

• Pulumi Component provides a complete guide for authoring ComponentResource classes. The skill covers designing component interfaces, multi-language support, and distribution. It teaches assistants how to build reusable infrastructure abstractions that work across TypeScript, Python, Go, C#, Java, and YAML.

• Pulumi Automation API covers programmatic orchestration of Pulumi operations. The skill explains when to use Automation API versus the CLI, the tradeoffs between local source and inline programs, and patterns for multi-stack deployments.

• Pulumi ESC covers centralized secrets and configuration management. The skill guides assistants through setting up dynamic OIDC credentials, composing environments, and integrating secrets into Pulumi programs and other applications.

How to install

Claude Code plugin marketplace

For Claude Code users, the plugin system provides the simplest installation experience:

claude plugin marketplace add pulumi/agent-skills
claude plugin install pulumi-migration     # Install migration skills
claude plugin install pulumi-authoring     # Install authoring skills

You can install both plugin groups or choose only the ones you need.

Universal installation

For Cursor, GitHub Copilot, VS Code, Codex, Gemini and other platforms, use the universal Agent Skills CLI:

npx skills add pulumi/agent-skills

This works across all platforms that support the Agent Skills specification.

Using skills

Once installed, skills activate automatically based on context. When you ask your assistant to help migrate a Terraform project, it draws on the Terraform skill’s workflow. When you are debugging why resources are being recreated unexpectedly, the best practices skill helps the assistant check for missing aliases.

In Codex and Claude Code, you can invoke skills directly via slash commands.

/pulumi-terraform-to-pulumi

Or describe what you need in natural language:

“Help me migrate this CDK application to Pulumi”

“Review this Pulumi code for best practices issues”

“Create a reusable component for a web service with load balancer”

The assistant will follow the skill’s procedures, ask clarifying questions when needed, and produce output that reflects Pulumi best practices rather than generic code generation.

Get started

We expect this collection to grow. If you have Pulumi expertise worth packaging, whether provider-specific patterns, debugging workflows, or operational practices, we welcome contributions. See the contributing guide for details.

The skills are available now at github.com/pulumi/agent-skills. Install them in your preferred AI coding environment and let us know what you build.