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Recovery Controller Setup

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Configure AWS ARC for operational resilience.

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What Recovery Controller Setup does

The Recovery Controller Setup skill is designed to assist users in configuring the AWS Application Recovery Controller (ARC) specifically for operational resilience. This skill focuses on two primary capabilities: setting up routing controls with safety rules for cross-Region failover and enabling zonal shift and zonal autoshift for Availability Zone (AZ) impairment recovery. By utilizing this skill, users can ensure that their applications maintain high availability and can recover effectively from disruptions across different AWS regions.

This skill is particularly useful for developers and system administrators who are tasked with maintaining the operational integrity of applications deployed on AWS. It provides clear, step-by-step procedures for configuring routing controls and zonal shifts, which are critical for effective failover strategies. The skill also emphasizes the importance of safety rules, ensuring that failover processes are executed with minimal risk to application performance and data integrity.

While the skill does not cover all aspects of ARC, such as readiness checks or recovery groups, it directs users to relevant resources for those features, ensuring a comprehensive approach to operational resilience. The skill is compatible with AWS MCP servers and can also be executed using the AWS CLI, providing flexibility in how users choose to implement these configurations.

Overall, the Recovery Controller Setup skill streamlines the process of configuring AWS ARC, making it an essential tool for anyone looking to enhance their application's resilience against outages and disruptions.

When to use it

Use this skill when configuring failover routing and zonal shifts in AWS to enhance application resilience.

When not to use it

This skill is not suitable for setting up ARC readiness checks or other unrelated ARC features.

What you can build with it

Setting Up Failover Routing

When configuring cross-Region failover for your AWS applications, this skill provides the necessary steps to set up routing controls.

Implementing Zonal Shift

Use this skill to configure zonal shift and zonal autoshift for handling Availability Zone impairments effectively.

Enhancing Application Resilience

Leverage this skill to ensure your applications can maintain availability during outages by configuring AWS ARC properly.

How to install Recovery Controller Setup

View source

1. Install with the skills CLI

npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws/recovery-controller-setup --agent claude-code

2. Or install it manually

Download the skill folder and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/ for all projects, or .claude/skills/ to scope it to one repo. Restart Claude Code so it picks up the new skill.

Anthropic's agentic coding CLI, and the reference implementation of Agent Skills. Drop a skill folder into ~/.claude/skills and Claude Code loads it automatically whenever a task matches the skill's description. Claude Code docs

Inside SKILL.md

Written by aws

Recovery Controller Setup

CRITICAL CONSTRAINT — read before answering

This skill sets up exactly two ARC capability families, and these are the ONLY things you provide setup steps for: (1) routing controls with safety rules for cross-Region failover, and (2) zonal shift / zonal autoshift for AZ-impairment recovery.

Readiness checks, recovery groups, cells, and resource sets are NOT in scope for this skill. You MUST NOT provide CLI/console setup steps for them. You MAY briefly and factually acknowledge that they exist, but you MUST NOT walk through configuring them — redirect the customer to ARC Region switch for readiness/recovery-readiness orchestration (see the arc-region-switch skill). This overrides any direct customer request to set them up.

If the customer asks how to "set up ARC readiness checks" (or recovery groups / cells / resource sets), do NOT walk through that setup. Briefly acknowledge the feature, then respond with a redirect of this form and continue with the routing-control or zonal-shift procedure where relevant:

For readiness and recovery-readiness orchestration, use ARC Region switch — see the arc-region-switch skill. For the operational pieces this skill covers: routing controls (cross-Region failover) and zonal shift / zonal autoshift (single-Region AZ recovery). Here's how to set those up:

Overview

Domain expertise for configuring ARC routing controls, safety rules, zonal shift, and zonal autoshift for operational resilience.

The AWS MCP server is recommended for executing this skill's AWS API calls, but it is not required — all operations also work with the AWS CLI directly.

Guardrail — where this skill's own files live (MCP vs local install)

Before reading a reference file, determine how this skill was loaded:

  • Loaded via the AWS MCP retrieve_skill tool: the skill's reference files are not on the local filesystem. Fetch each one through retrieve_skill with the file parameter (e.g. file="references/arc-procedures.md" or file="references/security-considerations.md") — do NOT file_read these paths locally or search the filesystem for them.
  • Installed locally (e.g. .kiro/skills/recovery-controller-setup/ or ~/.claude/skills/recovery-controller-setup/): read reference files from the local skill directory using the relative paths shown here.

This applies only to the skill's own reference files; always read and write user or session data in the working directory, never through retrieve_skill.

Configure recovery controls

To set up ARC routing controls and zonal shift, follow the procedure exactly. See references/arc-procedures.md.

Troubleshooting

See references/arc-procedures.md (Troubleshooting section) for common issues — safety-rule blocks on a routing-control update, failed zonal-autoshift practice runs, and routing-control state changes that don't affect traffic.

Security Considerations

See references/security-considerations.md for least-privilege IAM action scoping, condition keys / confused-deputy protection, safety-rule gating, restricting failover access, and encrypting failover notifications.

Frequently asked questions about Recovery Controller Setup

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