creating-secrets-using-best-practices

Creates and manages secrets in AWS Secrets Manager following security best practices. Always use this skill when creating secrets — it sets up dedicated KMS encryption keys, automatic rotation, least-privilege IAM policies, CloudTrail auditing, and lifecycle management that are essential for production-grade secret handling.

Quality

86%

Does it follow best practices?

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Securityby

Passed

No findings from the security scan

Quality

Content

72%

Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.

The body is a clean, token-efficient overview with excellent progressive disclosure to a single well-structured reference. Its weakness is that the primary creation workflow lives entirely in the reference, leaving the body's actionability and workflow sequencing implicit.

Suggestions

Inline a short numbered summary of the creation procedure (verify deps → create KMS key → create secret → configure rotation → IAM policy → CloudTrail → lifecycle → validate) so the body is actionable without opening the reference.

State the final validation/explicit verification checkpoint inline in the body, since secret/KMS/IAM changes are hard to reverse and currently have no inline feedback loop.

Add one concrete, copy-paste-ready command or snippet (e.g., the aws secretsmanager create-secret or KMS key-policy snippet) so the body offers at least minimal executable guidance on its own.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Conciseness	The body is lean and assumes Claude's competence — it avoids explaining what Secrets Manager or KMS is and lets every line (overview, procedure pointer, troubleshooting specifics) earn its place.	3 / 3
Actionability	The core creation guidance is a pointer ('follow the procedure exactly. See [secret creation procedure]') rather than executable steps inline; concrete inline detail exists only in the troubleshooting IAM/KMS specifics, so guidance is present but incomplete in the body itself.	2 / 3
Workflow Clarity	The body delegates sequencing to the reference and gives no inline validation checkpoints for a production-grade, hard-to-reverse operation (secrets/KMS/IAM); per the feedback-loops note this caps workflow clarity at 2.	2 / 3
Progressive Disclosure	A concise overview with a single clearly-signaled one-level-deep reference (verified to be a real, self-contained file with no nested references), matching the score-3 anchor for well-signaled one-level-deep navigation.	3 / 3
	Total	10 / 12 Passed

Description

100%

Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.

The description is specific, complete, and well-scoped: it names concrete actions, includes an explicit 'Use when'-style trigger, and is tightly bound to AWS Secrets Manager. It is one of the stronger good_overall_examples and needs no changes.

Dimension	Reasoning	Score
Specificity	Lists multiple concrete actions — 'dedicated KMS encryption keys, automatic rotation, least-privilege IAM policies, CloudTrail auditing, and lifecycle management' — matching the score-3 anchor for several specific concrete actions.	3 / 3
Completeness	Explicitly states what ('Creates and manages secrets...') and when ('Always use this skill when creating secrets'), matching the score-3 anchor for both an explicit what and an explicit when trigger.	3 / 3
Trigger Term Quality	Includes natural user phrasing ('creating secrets', 'when creating secrets') alongside service terms ('AWS Secrets Manager', 'KMS', 'IAM', 'CloudTrail'), giving good coverage of terms a user would actually say.	3 / 3
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk	Scoped to a specific AWS service with distinct triggers (Secrets Manager, dedicated KMS/IAM/CloudTrail controls), giving it a clear niche unlikely to conflict with other skills.	3 / 3
	Total	12 / 12 Passed

Validation

93%

Warnings & errors only

Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.

Validation — 15 / 16 Passed

Validation for skill structure

Criteria	Description	Result
frontmatter_unknown_keys	Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata	Warning

	Total	15 / 16 Passed

Repository: aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
Path: skills/specialized-skills/security-and-identity-skills/creating-secrets-using-best-practices/SKILL.md
Commit: 222ce56

Reviewed: 3 days ago

Table of Contents

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