alicloud-compute-ecs

What This Skill Does

The alicloud-compute-ecs skill is a professional-grade integration for OpenClaw, enabling seamless interaction with Alibaba Cloud's Elastic Compute Service (ECS). It provides a robust interface for managing cloud infrastructure components, including virtual machine instances, storage disks, security groups, key pairs, and Elastic Network Interfaces (ENIs). By leveraging the official Alibaba Cloud Python SDK, the skill automates complex administrative tasks such as provisioning instances, monitoring resource health, performing lifecycle management (start/stop/reboot), and executing troubleshooting workflows. It simplifies the complexity of RPC-style API calls, abstracting manual signing and parameter management into reliable, repeatable code execution sequences.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, utilize the OpenClaw management CLI. Ensure you are operating within a virtual environment to manage dependencies properly without interfering with system-level packages. Execute the command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/cinience/alicloud-compute-ecs. After installation, configure your Alibaba Cloud credentials via environment variables (ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID, ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET) or the shared ~/.alibabacloud/credentials file to enable authorized API access.

Use Cases

• Automated Provisioning: Quickly deploy fleets of ECS instances based on predefined launch templates or specific configuration parameters.
• Operational Maintenance: Perform bulk actions like scheduled reboots or systematic service restarts during maintenance windows.
• Inventory Auditing: Generate real-time reports of all active resources across different regions to monitor infrastructure sprawl and costs.
• Troubleshooting: Diagnose connectivity issues by inspecting security group rules, checking ENI configurations, or querying the latest instance status codes.
• CI/CD Integration: Integrate infrastructure state verification into deployment pipelines to ensure required resources exist before application deployment.

Example Prompts

1. "List all running instances in the cn-hangzhou region and export their IDs and statuses to the output directory."
2. "Stop the instance with the ID i-bp1234567890abcdef and confirm when the state changes to Stopped."
3. "Check the current configuration of security group sg-bp987654321 and list all attached instances."

Tips & Limitations

• Pagination Matters: Always implement pagination logic (NextToken/MaxResults) for environments with high resource counts to avoid truncated query results.
• Permissions: Ensure your RAM user has the minimum required permissions (Read-only for inventory, Full Access for management). Use DryRun to test permissions without affecting live infrastructure.
• Region Specificity: Most API operations strictly require the RegionId parameter. Always verify the region context before executing actions to prevent performing operations in the wrong data center.