AWS CLI
- What it is
- Unified command-line tool for controlling every AWS service, scriptable from a terminal.
- One of the three ways to access AWS, alongside the AWS Management Console and the SDKs.
- Why use it over the console
- Repeatable and scriptable — the same command produces the same result every time.
- Automatable in CI/CD pipelines and shell scripts.
- Some options are CLI/API-only and never exposed in the console.
- Authentication
- Named profiles in
~/.aws/credentials, IAM roles on EC2 (preferred — no stored keys), or AWS IAM Identity Center SSO sessions.
- Named profiles in
- Related
- SDKs — the same API surface from Python (boto3), JavaScript, Java, Go, .NET, for building applications.
- AWS CloudShell — the CLI pre-authenticated in a browser, nothing to install.
- infrastructure as code — for creating whole environments declaratively, prefer AWS CloudFormation over a pile of CLI commands.