Amazon Web Services announced on October 1, 2026 the public preview of AWS Well-Architected Agent, an AI-powered service that the company says analyzes a customer's AWS environment and returns contextual recommendations for cost, security, performance and resilience. AWS said the preview is available in three US regions and is delivered by AWS Support.
What AWS announced
AWS said the agent "analyzes your infrastructure, understands unique business goals, and delivers contextual recommendations with ready-to-implement fixes," and that it works without manual audits or generic checklists.
According to the company, the service automatically correlates utilization metrics, resource configurations and application topology, and analyzes them against Well-Architected best practices across more than 65 AWS services. AWS said recommendations are aligned to goals customers declare themselves, and that the agent surfaces cross-pillar trade-offs.
How the recommendations work
AWS described three main features: goal-aligned intelligence, three-level recommendations, and optionality in remediation. Customers declare business objectives and share application context, and the agent prioritizes findings by impact and effort against those goals, the company said.
The three levels, as AWS described them, are individual resource findings with specific dollar impact where applicable and step-by-step remediation; consolidated findings across multiple resources scoped to an application; and broader architectural patterns with the Infrastructure as Code changes needed to align with Well-Architected best practices.
For remediation, AWS said customers can choose console walk-throughs, updated IaC changes for architecture-level recommendations, or AWS Command Line Interface commands. Recommendations are delivered through the console and an API, and AWS pointed to the AWS MCP Server and plugins for programmatic interaction from AI coding tools.
Setup, scope and caveats
Getting started involves creating an agent profile that defines which AWS accounts, Regions, applications and optimization pillars the agent covers, plus customer-managed IAM roles that let it read resource configurations, utilization metrics and application topology. AWS said resource and application recommendations will be generated within 24 hours after profile creation.
Customers can also review pre-deployment workloads by uploading a .zip file containing a Terraform, AWS CloudFormation or AWS Cloud Development Kit project and selecting a Well-Architected lens, the company said.
AWS warned that generative AI capabilities produce the recommendations, "which may contain errors or incomplete information," and said customers are responsible for evaluating them in their own context and implementing appropriate oversight and safeguards. The existing AWS Well-Architected Tool remains available for manual evaluation with user-defined lenses.
Availability
AWS said access to the agent and its recommendations is available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio) and US West (Oregon), while workloads can be onboarded from any AWS commercial Region.
The service is delivered by AWS Support and available to AWS customers with an AWS Support plan, the company said, inviting feedback through usual AWS Support contacts.
What to do
- AWS says to start in the AWS Well-Architected console by choosing Get started with Well-Architected Agent and creating an agent profile that specifies the AWS accounts or Regions and applications to monitor, the optimization pillars to focus on, and the required permissions.
- Set goals for each pillar you select: cost optimization, performance, resilience and security, according to AWS.
- Provision the customer-managed IAM roles the agent uses to read resource configurations, utilization metrics and application topology; AWS points to its IAM prerequisite documentation for the agent.
- To review pre-deployment workloads, AWS says to choose Conduct architecture review in the dashboard, upload a .zip file containing an IaC project or repository file, and select which Well-Architected lens to use.
- Add application context by choosing Add application context in the dashboard and supplying accounts, Regions, services, tags and application details, which AWS says improves the relevance of recommendations.
- Open a specific recommendation to see the reasoning, impacts and trade-offs, then choose Start remediation and pick the console, an updated IaC template or CLI commands; AWS says to roll out the instructions and verify the result.
- Teams wanting programmatic use can configure API access or use the AWS MCP Server and plugins with their preferred AI coding tool, AWS says.
- AWS advises evaluating each recommendation in your own context and applying oversight and safeguards, since the output is generated by AI and may be wrong or incomplete.
Key facts and where they come from
- AWS announced the public preview of AWS Well-Architected Agent on October 1, 2026.
Today, we're announcing the public preview of AWS Well-Architected Agent, an AI-powered service that analyzes your AWS environment
- The agent checks environments against Well-Architected best practices across more than 65 AWS services.
analyzes against Well-Architected best practices across 65+ AWS services
- Recommendations appear within 24 hours of creating an agent profile.
Resource and application recommendations will be generated within 24 hours after profile creation.
- Remediation options include console walk-throughs, updated IaC changes and CLI commands.
the console walk-throughs, updated IaC changes for architecture-level recommendations, and AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands
- Pre-deployment reviews accept Terraform, CloudFormation or CDK projects uploaded as a .zip file.
uploading an IaC project in Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) to be analyzed
- AWS says the generative AI recommendations may contain errors and customers must evaluate them.
Generative AI capabilities produce this recommendation, which may contain errors or incomplete information.
- Preview access is limited to three US regions and requires an AWS Support plan.
available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon)
- The service is delivered by AWS Support.
AWS Well-Architected Agent is delivered by AWS Support and available to AWS customers with an AWS Support plan.