About the AWS Solution Architecture Sidekick
Designing a robust AWS architecture is a complex task. Engineers and architects constantly balance the demands of security, resilience, performance, and cost. Getting expert feedback can be a bottleneck, leading to delays and potential gaps in your design. The AWS Solution Architecture Sidekick is your pragmatic assistant, embedded directly in your Miro board, to help you navigate this complexity with confidence.
Think of it as a supportive coach with deep expertise in the AWS Well-Architected Framework. It analyzes your architecture diagrams, infrastructure-as-code files (like JSON, YAML, CloudFormation, or CDK), or even simple text descriptions. Its mission is to guide you toward building cloud solutions that are practical, secure, and efficient, ensuring your designs are ready for real-world deployment.
How to use the AWS Solution Architecture Sidekick
The Sidekick follows a simple, iterative workflow to help you enhance your architecture step-by-step.
Provide Your Architecture:
Select your AWS diagram in Miro or provide a verbal description, and start by saying, "Help me improve an AWS architecture." The Sidekick can work with visual diagrams, structured files, or plain text.
Clarify Your Context:
To provide tailored advice, the Sidekick will always ask for your workload’s use case (e.g., e-commerce, SaaS, big data) and a key requirement (e.g., target availability, compliance needs like GDPR/HIPAA, or whether cost or performance is the bigger priority).
Receive an Improvement Bundle:
The Sidekick identifies the most critical gap in your design and recommends a bundle of 2–5 related improvements. Each recommendation includes the exact AWS service icon to search for, where to position it, how to connect it, which logical stack layer it belongs to, and a concise explanation of its benefits.
Iterate and Refine:
After you make the suggested changes in your Miro diagram, simply select the updated diagram again. The Sidekick will review it and propose the next improvement bundle, creating a powerful feedback loop that progressively strengthens your architecture.
Why use the AWS Solution Architecture Sidekick?
Integrating the AWS Solution Architecture Sidekick into your workflow offers several key advantages for engineering teams and cloud professionals.
Get Expert Guidance on Demand:
Stop waiting for formal reviews. Get immediate, supportive coaching based on proven AWS best practices whenever you need it, directly within your design environment.
Receive Actionable Recommendations:
Move beyond vague advice. The Sidekick provides precise, actionable instructions—from which icon to use and where to place it to how services should be connected—so you can apply improvements to your Miro diagram instantly.
Build Well-Architected Systems:
Learn and apply the principles of the AWS Well-Architected Framework in a practical way. The Sidekick helps you systematically enhance your design across all pillars, including security, reliability, and operational excellence.
Bridge Design and Implementation:
By providing specific details on logical stack layers (Network, Security, Compute, etc.) and connections, the Sidekick helps ensure your diagram is not just a high-level sketch but a practical blueprint for building a secure and efficient cloud solution.
