AWS OpsWorks

Name: AWS OpsWorks API
Brand: AWS OpsWorks
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentDeveloper ToolsCi Cdhmac74 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Manage Chef-based application stacks on EC2 — provision stacks, layers, instances, deploy apps, run Chef recipes, and orchestrate time- and load-based scaling.

Connect the AWS OpsWorks to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the AWS OpsWorks, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with AWS OpsWorks API.

Provision Stacks on top of a VPC and define Layers (web, app, db, custom) with per-layer Chef recipes

Add EC2 instances to layers and manage their lifecycle with start, stop, restart and reboot calls

Deploy Apps to a stack via Deployments that run setup, configure, deploy and shutdown Chef recipes

Attach Elastic IPs, EBS volumes, RDS instances, and ECS clusters to a stack as managed resources

GET STARTED

Start building with AWS OpsWorks API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for AWS OpsWorks, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for AWS OpsWorks, keeping it validated and agent-ready. AWS OpsWorks Stacks is a Chef-based configuration-management service for application stacks on EC2 — Stacks group Layers (web, app, db), each Layer hosts Instances, and Apps deploy code via Chef recipes. The 74 endpoints cover CRUD on Stacks, Layers, Instances and Apps, Deployments and lifecycle commands (start/stop/restart), Elastic IPs, Volumes, RDS instance attachment, ECS cluster registration, plus user permissions, time/load-based instance scaling and stack summaries.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use AWS OpsWorks API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Manage Long-Running Chef-Based Application Stacks

Operations teams that already run Chef cookbooks for their applications can use OpsWorks Stacks as the managed orchestrator. CreateStack, CreateLayer, CreateInstance, and CreateApp wire up a full deployment topology with built-in recipes for Rails, Node.js, PHP, Java and static layers, plus support for arbitrary custom recipes referenced from S3 or git. The agent can then call CreateDeployment to roll out new app versions through the standard Chef lifecycle.

Call CreateStack with a VpcId and Chef configuration, CreateLayer with Type=rails-app, CreateInstance and CreateApp, then CreateDeployment with Command.Name=deploy

Lifecycle Control for Instances Across a Stack

Cost and reliability work needs the ability to stop and restart whole environments out-of-hours or after configuration changes. OpsWorks exposes per-instance and stack-level lifecycle commands — StartStack, StopStack, RebootInstance, RestartInstance — and surfaces the resulting Chef run state via DescribeInstances. An agent can pause non-production stacks at end of day and bring them back up the following morning to save EC2 costs.

Call StopStack on the dev stack at 19:00, then StartStack at 07:00 the next morning, polling DescribeInstances until Status=online

Automate Migration Off OpsWorks Stacks

AWS has announced End-of-Life for OpsWorks Stacks, so existing customers need an inventory and migration path. The DescribeStacks, DescribeLayers, DescribeInstances and DescribeApps endpoints give a full inventory that an agent can read, transform into Systems Manager or CloudFormation equivalents, and use to drive a phased migration. The same endpoints support audit reporting on what is still running on the OpsWorks platform.

Call DescribeStacks, then for each stack call DescribeLayers, DescribeInstances and DescribeApps, and write a CSV mapping each component to its target replacement service

AI Agent Integration for Stack Operations

Through Jentic, an agent can drive OpsWorks Stacks from natural-language intents — provision, deploy, lifecycle, audit — without learning the per-resource layout of the API. Jentic returns each operation's input schema and brokers SigV4 credentials, so legacy Chef-based estates can be inventoried, paused and migrated with LLM tool calls.

Resolve the intent 'deploy an app to an OpsWorks stack' via Jentic search, load CreateDeployment, and execute it with stackId, appId and Command.Name=deploy

Key Endpoints

74 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for aws opsworks, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateStack

Create a new OpsWorks stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateLayer

Add a layer to a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateInstance

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateApp

Define an app to deploy to a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateDeployment

Run a Chef command across a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.StartStack

Start all instances in a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.StopStack

Stop all instances in a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.DescribeInstances

Describe instances by stack, layer, or id

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateStack

Create a new OpsWorks stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateLayer

Add a layer to a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateInstance

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateApp

Define an app to deploy to a stack

POST

/#X-Amz-Target=OpsWorks_20130218.CreateDeployment

Run a Chef command across a stack

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

AWS access keys are stored encrypted in the Jentic MAXsystem vault. Jentic signs each OpsWorks control-plane request with SigV4 on the agent's behalf, so an agent driving stack lifecycles never touches raw IAM credentials.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search by intent (e.g., 'deploy an app to an OpsWorks stack') and Jentic returns the matching OpsWorks operation with its input schema, so the agent can call CreateDeployment, StartStack or DescribeInstances without browsing the AWS docs.

Time to first call

Direct OpsWorks integration: 3-5 days for IAM and stack-permissions wiring, deployment polling and Chef recipe layout. Through Jentic: a day — search, load schemas, chain operations.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate / Puppet Enterprise

OpsWorks CM hosts managed Chef Automate or Puppet Enterprise servers rather than the OpsWorks Stacks abstraction

Choose OpsWorks CM when an existing Chef Automate or Puppet Enterprise estate needs a managed control plane on AWS. Use OpsWorks Stacks for the older AWS-managed Chef abstraction.

Complementary

Amazon EC2

EC2 hosts the underlying instances that an OpsWorks stack registers and lifecycles

Use directly when migrating off OpsWorks — OpsWorks Stacks abstracts EC2, but raw EC2 plus Systems Manager is the AWS-recommended successor.

Alternative

AWS CodeDeploy

CodeDeploy is AWS's modern application-deployment service for EC2, Lambda, and ECS targets

Choose CodeDeploy for new deployment automation. Use OpsWorks only for legacy Chef-based stacks that have not yet migrated.

Complementary

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

EC2 Auto Scaling provides modern scaling primitives that replace OpsWorks time- and load-based scaling

Use as the migration target for OpsWorks layer scaling rules when moving an estate off OpsWorks Stacks.

FAQs

Specific to using AWS OpsWorks API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for AWS OpsWorks?

AWS does not publish an OpenAPI specification. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call AWS OpsWorks via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the AWS OpsWorks API use?

OpsWorks is signed with AWS Signature Version 4 using IAM access keys. Each stack additionally has its own permissions model — SetPermission grants a user SSH and sudo access on instances inside a stack. Through Jentic, AWS credentials live in the MAXsystem vault and are used to sign each control-plane call on the agent's behalf.

Can I deploy an app across all instances with a single API call?

Yes. CreateDeployment takes a stackId, an optional appId, an optional list of instanceIds, and a Command (Name=deploy, undeploy, configure, restart, execute_recipes, etc.). If you omit instanceIds, OpsWorks runs the command across the whole stack and returns a deploymentId you can poll with DescribeDeployments.

What are the rate limits for OpsWorks?

OpsWorks applies per-account throttling on the control plane. Long-running operations like CreateInstance + StartInstance run Chef recipes that can take several minutes per instance, so always poll DescribeInstances rather than retrying the create call.

How do I deploy an app through Jentic?

Use the Jentic search query 'deploy an OpsWorks app', load CreateDeployment, and execute it with stackId, appId and Command.Name=deploy. Jentic signs the request with SigV4 against your stored AWS credentials and returns the deploymentId, which the agent can then check with DescribeDeployments.

Is AWS OpsWorks Stacks being deprecated?

AWS has communicated that OpsWorks Stacks will reach End-of-Life. The control-plane API remains available for existing customers, but new workloads should target Systems Manager, CloudFormation, or container-based services. The Describe* endpoints are particularly useful for inventorying existing stacks ahead of migration.