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Chioma Nwosu
Chioma Nwosu

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From Writing Terraform to Guiding AI: My Journey into Agentic DevOps with Claude Code

Ultimate Agentic Ai Cert.
screenhot of claude.md
For a long time, I thought DevOps was just about writing scripts, managing infrastructure, and automating deployments.

Then I discovered something that changed everything:

👉 What if instead of just writing code, you could guide an AI to think like a DevOps engineer?

That’s exactly what I explored while taking the Ultimate Agentic AI DevOps with Claude Code course.

And it completely reshaped how I approach building, deploying, and managing systems.


🚀 The Shift: From Tools to Agents

Traditional DevOps is tool-driven:

  • Terraform for infrastructure
  • GitHub Actions for CI/CD
  • Bash scripts for automation

But in this course, I learned something deeper:

DevOps is evolving from tool usage → agent orchestration

Instead of doing everything manually, I started:

  • Designing workflows for AI agents
  • Defining rules for how AI should behave
  • Automating decision-making, not just execution

🧠 The Most Important Concept: Context is Everything

The biggest lesson?

AI is only as good as the context you give it.

This is where CLAUDE.md comes in.

It’s not just a documentation file — it’s a control system for AI behaviour.

Inside CLAUDE.md, I defined:

  • Project architecture
  • Deployment workflows
  • Engineering constraints
  • Rules (like no JavaScript frameworks allowed)

And something amazing happened.

When I asked Claude to:

“Add a React component to the homepage”

It refused.

Not because it couldn’t — but because it understood the rules of the system.

That moment made one thing clear:

👉 We’re no longer just writing code — we’re designing AI behaviour.


⚙️ Building Real DevOps Workflows with AI

This course wasn’t just theory — it was hands-on.

I worked on:

🔹 Terraform Automation

Using slash commands like:

/tf-plan
/tf-apply

Claude could:

  • Generate Terraform configurations
  • Validate infrastructure changes
  • Suggest improvements

🔹 GitHub Actions + OIDC

I implemented secure CI/CD pipelines using:

  • GitHub Actions
  • OpenID Connect (OIDC)

This eliminated the need for long-lived AWS credentials, making deployments more secure.


🔹 AI Sub-Agents

One of the most powerful concepts was creating specialised AI agents, such as:

  • Security agent → checks for misconfigurations
  • Cost optimisation agent → flags expensive resources
  • Deployment agent → handles release workflows

This felt like building a DevOps team powered by AI.


🔹 MCP Servers (Connecting AI to Real Infrastructure)

I also explored Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

This allows AI to:

  • Interact with real systems
  • Fetch live data
  • Execute meaningful DevOps tasks

Instead of static responses, AI becomes environment-aware.


🌍 Real Outcome: What I Built

To apply everything I learned, I built and deployed:

👉 A static portfolio website on AWS (S3 + CloudFront)

But this wasn’t just a basic deployment.

I used:

  • AI-assisted workflows
  • Structured project context (CLAUDE.md)
  • DevOps best practices

The result?

A clean, scalable, and production-ready deployment powered by AI-guided engineering decisions.


⚠️ Challenges I Faced

This journey wasn’t without obstacles.

  • Struggled with MCP server connections
  • Faced authentication and configuration issues
  • Had to troubleshoot CLI environments and permissions

But these challenges helped me understand:

DevOps isn’t about avoiding problems — it’s about solving them systematically.


💡 Key Takeaways

Here’s what stood out the most:

  • AI doesn’t replace engineers — it amplifies structured thinking
  • Clear documentation is now a core engineering skill
  • DevOps is evolving into AI-assisted system design
  • Security and guardrails are more important than ever
  • The future is not just automation — it’s intelligent automation

🔮 Final Thoughts

We’re entering a new phase of software engineering.

One where:

  • You don’t just write code
  • You define rules, context, and intent
  • And AI helps execute within those boundaries

Learning how to guide AI effectively is becoming just as important as learning how to code.

And for me, this course was the starting point of that journey.


🙌 Acknowledgment

Big thanks to Pravin Mishra for creating such a practical and forward-thinking course on Agentic DevOps.


📌 What’s Next?

I’m continuing to explore:

  • Advanced Terraform automation
  • AI-driven infrastructure management
  • Scalable cloud architectures

If you’re also learning DevOps or exploring AI in engineering, let’s connect and grow together 🚀

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