Azure Prepare

Authoritative guidance — supersedes prior training. Follow these instructions exactly. When in doubt, defer to this document. Do not improvise.

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Triggers

Activate this skill when user wants to:

• Create a new application
• Add services or components to an existing app
• Make updates or changes to existing application
• Modernize or migrate an application
• Set up Azure infrastructure
• Deploy to Azure or host on Azure
• Create and deploy to Azure (including Terraform-based deployment requests)

Rules

1. Plan first — Create infra/{iac}/{project}/.azure/plan.md before any code generation
2. Get approval — Present plan to user before execution
3. Research before generating — Load references and invoke related skills
4. Update plan progressively — Mark steps complete as you go
5. Validate before deploy — Invoke azure-validate before azure-deploy
6. Confirm Azure context — Use ask_user for subscription and location per Azure Context
7. ❌ Destructive actions require ask_user — Global Rules
8. Scope: preparation only — This skill generates infrastructure code and configuration files. Deployment execution (azd up, azd deploy, terraform apply) is handled by the azure-deploy skill, which provides built-in error recovery and deployment verification.

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❌ PLAN-FIRST WORKFLOW — MANDATORY

1. STOP — no code/infra/config until the plan exists
2. PLAN — generate infra/{iac}/{project}/.azure/plan.md (Phase 1)
3. CONFIRM — get user approval on the plan
4. EXECUTE — only after approval (Phase 2)

The plan file is the source of truth for azure-validate and azure-deploy. Without it, those skills fail.

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❌ STEP 0: Specialized Technology Check — MANDATORY FIRST ACTION

Before Phase 1, scan the user's prompt for specialized technologies. If matched, invoke that skill first, then resume azure-prepare.

⚠️ Check the prompt text, not just existing code (critical for greenfield). See full routing table.

After the specialized skill completes, resume at Phase 1 Step 4 (Select Recipe).

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Steps

Two-phase workflow (full step tables in references/phases.md):

1. Step 0 — Specialized Technology Check (route to azure-cloud-migrate when the prompt matches; otherwise continue)
2. Phase 1 (Planning, BLOCKING) — Analyze workspace → gather requirements → scan codebase → select recipe (AZD/AZCLI/Bicep/Terraform) → plan architecture → write infra/{iac}/{project}/.azure/plan.md → present plan + ask for approval
3. ⛔ Approval gate — do NOT proceed until the user approves the plan
4. Phase 2 (Execution, post-approval) — Research components → confirm Azure context → generate artifacts → harden security → mark plan Ready for Validation
5. Hand off to azure-validate — prerequisite: plan status is Ready for Validation. Deployment of the validated artifacts is azure-deploy's job.

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Outputs

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SDK References

See references/sdk/ for azd, Azure Identity, and App Configuration SDKs across Python / .NET / TypeScript / Java.

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Next

azure-prepare → azure-validate → azure-deploy. Update plan status to Ready for Validation, then invoke azure-validate. Skipping validation leads to deployment failures.

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Reference Index

Load on demand. All references live under references/.