I got tired of writing the same CDK wiring, so I built simple-cdk

pujaaan — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:37:08 +0000

I got tired of writing the same CDK wiring, so I built simple-cdk

Most of the AWS backends I build end up looking the same. A few Lambdas. A few DynamoDB tables. An AppSync API on top. Cognito for auth. Maybe an RDS instance. A bundle of outputs the frontend reads at startup so it knows where everything lives.

None of it is hard. It's just repetitive. Every new project starts with the same several hundred lines of CDK — the same Function definitions, the same GraphqlApi setup, the same grantReadWriteData calls, the same VPC and secret for RDS.

simple-cdk is what I built so I could stop writing that code.

What it is

A thin layer on top of AWS CDK. You describe your app once in a single config file, drop your code into a few conventional folders, and it turns into a deployable serverless stack:

Lambda functions
DynamoDB tables (with GSIs, TTL, streams)
An AppSync GraphQL API with auto-generated CRUD resolvers
A Cognito user pool with triggers
An RDS instance with a managed VPC and secret
A single SSM parameter the frontend reads to discover all of the above

How it works

  your code              backend/functions/hello/handler.ts
                         backend/models/todo.model.ts
                         backend/triggers/pre-sign-up/handler.ts
                         schema.graphql
                              │
                              ▼
  adapters                 lambda • dynamodb • appsync
                           cognito • rds • outputs
                              │
                              ▼
  AWS CDK                  Lambda + DynamoDB + AppSync
                           + Cognito + RDS + SSM

You drop files in conventional folders. Each adapter scans the folder it owns, turns what it finds into CDK constructs, and a wiring step at the end connects everything together. No decorators, no registry, no magic — discovery is just listing files in a folder.

Less boilerplate

A Lambda plus a DynamoDB table the Lambda can read and write is roughly thirty lines of CDK. Multiply that by every function, table, trigger, and resolver in a typical backend and you're at several hundred lines of wiring before you've written any business logic.

In simple-cdk the same setup is two files:

backend/models/todo.model.ts       # export default { pk: { name: 'id' } }
backend/functions/create-todo/handler.ts

Just write the code — simple-cdk picks it up. IAM grants, Cognito triggers, AppSync resolvers, RDS access — the things you used to wire by hand are derived from the files you've already written.

simple-cdk vs Amplify vs raw CDK

Amplify gets you scaffold-and-go ergonomics, but every project I built with it eventually hit something Amplify wouldn't let me do — a custom resource, a policy I needed to edit, an opinion I couldn't override. Once you start fighting Amplify you're rewriting half your infra in CDK anyway.

Raw CDK is the opposite. It takes no opinions, which means I have to take all of them, every project, from scratch.

simple-cdk picks the rote defaults so you don't have to. It's built directly on AWS CDK — if you already know CDK, there's nothing new to learn, and no framework to reverse-engineer when something goes wrong. Built-in adapters are replaceable, you can write your own in a handful of lines, and you can drop into raw CDK in the wiring step at any time. No proprietary asset format, no managed service. If you decide you hate simple-cdk, throw it away and keep the underlying CDK.

When NOT to use it

You're building non-serverless workloads (ECS, EKS, EC2-heavy)
You have an existing CDK codebase you're already happy with
You want a fully managed full-stack framework that hosts the frontend too — Amplify is still the better choice there

Try it

mkdir my-app && cd my-app
npx simple-cdk@latest init
npx simple-cdk deploy --stage dev

Repo: https://github.com/pujaaan/simple-cdk

PRs and issues welcome.

DEV Community: pujaaan

I got tired of writing the same CDK wiring, so I built simple-cdk