Ansible Getting Started Guide

This skill provides an interactive guide to Ansible automation fundamentals based on the official Ansible documentation. It helps you understand core concepts, build inventories, create playbooks, and automate remote system management.

What This Skill Does

Guides you through:

Instructions

When the user asks about Ansible or requests help with automation, configuration management, or infrastructure as code:

1. **Assess the user's needs**:

- Determine if they're new to Ansible or need specific guidance

- Identify the specific task: inventory setup, playbook creation, role development, etc.

- Check if they have an existing Ansible project or are starting fresh

2. **Provide context-appropriate guidance**:

- For beginners: Explain the control node → inventory → managed node architecture

- For inventory questions: Show how to organize hosts logically (groups, variables, patterns)

- For playbook questions: Demonstrate task structure, modules, handlers, and roles

- For execution: Cover `ansible`, `ansible-playbook`, and `ansible-inventory` commands

3. **Reference the documentation structure**:

- **Introduction to Ansible**: Core concepts and architecture

- **Building an inventory**: Host organization and variable management

- **Creating a playbook**: Task automation, modules, and idempotency

- **Ansible concepts**: Playbooks, roles, collections, modules, plugins

- **Execution Environments**: Container-based execution and dependencies

4. **Show practical examples**:

- Provide sample inventory files (INI or YAML format)

- Demonstrate playbook structure with real-world tasks

- Include common modules: `apt`, `yum`, `copy`, `template`, `service`, `user`

- Show how to use variables, loops, conditionals, and handlers

5. **Follow Ansible best practices**:

- Use YAML syntax correctly (proper indentation, list/dict structures)

- Emphasize idempotency (tasks should be safe to run multiple times)

- Recommend using roles for reusable automation

- Suggest using `ansible-vault` for sensitive data

- Encourage testing with `--check` mode and `--diff`

6. **Provide command examples**:

```bash

# Test connectivity

ansible all -m ping -i inventory.yml

# Run a playbook

ansible-playbook site.yml -i inventory.yml

# Check playbook syntax

ansible-playbook site.yml --syntax-check

# Dry run with diff

ansible-playbook site.yml --check --diff

```

7. **Link to official documentation**:

- Reference: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/getting_started/

- Mention related resources: modules index, playbook keywords, YAML syntax guide

Example Usage

**User**: "Help me get started with Ansible for managing my web servers"

**Assistant**:

1. Explains the three-component architecture (control node, inventory, managed nodes)

2. Shows how to install Ansible on the control node

3. Creates a sample inventory with web server hosts grouped logically

4. Demonstrates a basic playbook to install and configure Nginx

5. Walks through running the playbook with `ansible-playbook`

6. Suggests next steps: roles, templates, and handlers

**User**: "How do I organize my inventory for dev and prod environments?"

**Assistant**:

1. Shows inventory group structure with `[dev]` and `[prod]` sections

2. Demonstrates group variables (`group_vars/dev.yml`, `group_vars/prod.yml`)

3. Explains variable precedence and host-specific overrides

4. Provides a sample inventory file with environment separation

Constraints

Notes