aws.el

Emacs major modes wrapping the AWS CLI.

aws.el is a magit style interface to the AWS command line client. It makes heavy use of of the transient package and tabulated-list-mode to make the AWS command line interface as discoverable, easy and fast to navigate as possible.

Install

This is a free time projects of mine, which is still in the very beginning and I currently add functionality as I see use cases for it in my day to day life. Therefore I don't want to add it to a package repository like melpa yet, because I see it as pre-alpha software at the moment.

However you could either use straight.el or directly clone it from Github and load it via use-package like I do:

(use-package aws-mode
  :bind ;; some functions which make sense to bind to something
  ("C-c a a" . aws)
  ("C-c a l" . aws-login)
  ("C-c a n" . aws-organizations-get-account-name)
  ("C-c a i" . aws-organizations-get-account-id)
  :load-path "~/.emacs.d/packages/awscli"
  :custom
  (aws-login-method 'sso) ;; options: 'profile, 'vault, 'sso (default: 'profile)
  (aws-output "json") ;; optional: yaml, json, text (default: yaml)
  (aws-bedrock-model "eu.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-0-v1:0") ;; bedrock model for chat
  (aws-organizations-account "root")) ;; profile of organizations account. organizations commands are automatically executed against this account, when specified

(use-package aws-evil
  :after (aws-mode evil)
  :load-path "~/.emacs.d/packages/awscli")

Design

The general design is to have a tabulated list view for every AWS CLI supported service, which lists up the existing resources of that service.

You should be able to interact with each element of the list via different key presses. Flags and additional arguments should be easily activated in transient views (See screenshot).

You should also always be able to press ? in every tabulated list view to get a help menu (See screenshot), which shows all the possible actions and the respective shortcut.

This general Emacs Mode design should make it possible to learn the package just by navigating around and typing ?. As you get familiar with shortcuts you should be able to navigate and do actions a lot faster then typing out the commands in the AWS CLI itself.

Features

• Switch between your configured profiles
• Login to the AWS UI via aws-vault login or aws-sso login
• Works with the --profile flag as well as aws-vault and aws-sso sessions
• Bedrock
  • Chat interface with configurable AI models
  • Send messages with C-<return>
  • Conversation history maintained within session
• CloudFormation
  • List Stacks
  • Delete Stack
• CloudWatch
  • List CloudWatch Alarms in Account
    • Enable/Disable ActionsEnabled field
• Lambda
  • List Lambda Functions in Account
  • Describe Lambda Function
  • Invoke Lambda Function and see last invocation result
  • Get latest logs
  • Get all Log Groups
  • List Event Source Mappings
    • Describe Event Source Mapping
    • Update Event Source Mapping
• Logs
  • List Log Groups in Account
  • Get Log Streams of a Log Group
    • Describe Log Stream
    • Get Log Events
• S3
  • List S3 Buckets
  • Create Bucket

Features Showcases

Main View with Switch Profile Auto Completion open

Help Menu Lambda

Transient View Lambda Function Invoke

Update Inline Policy of a Group

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/3718461/178152037-154b9d7f-01a3-49f3-a6a9-f3041b77fa5c.mp4

AWS Bedrock Chat

Configuration

Configure AWS Login Method

Set aws-login-method to choose how to authenticate with AWS:

• 'profile (default) - Use the standard aws --profile flag of the AWS CLI
• 'vault - Use aws-vault exec to manage credentials
• 'sso - Use aws-sso exec to manage SSO sessions

Example:

(setq aws-login-method 'sso)

Configure Bedrock Model

Set aws-bedrock-model to choose which AI model to use for Bedrock chat:

(setq aws-bedrock-model "eu.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-0-v1:0")

Default is "eu.anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929-v1:0". Other options include Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3 Haiku, or any other Bedrock model available in your region. To get a list of enabled models use this command for now: aws bedrock list-foundation-models --query 'modelSummaries[].modelId' --output text and override the variable with the foundation-model-id you want to use. Later it's planned to change the model within aws-mode.

Current Limitations

AWS-Vault MFA Shell Prompts don't work in aws.el

For now set the AWS_VAULT_PROMPT environment variable to a UI utility like osascript.

Inspirations

This project is inspired by other great Emacs packages like:

• magit
• kubel