James Hood

James Hood

@jameshood.dev

Husband, Father, Principal Engineer @ AWS, AWS CloudFormation (previously: AWS SAM/SAR, Amazon Fulfillment, AWS MTurk), Blogger, Coder, Hockey fan 🏒🥅

194 followers71 following35 posts

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James Hood
@jameshood.dev

2025 has been the most gratifying year of my career. Felt privileged to share the #AWSreInvent stage with @abaibourova.bsky.social and tell the true story of how I went from #AI skeptic to power user, sparking a company-wide grassroots movement of tens of thousands of #Amazon builders.

Gunnar Grosch@gunnargrosch.com

Part 4 of DEV Track Spotlight 🤖 DEV323 with @jameshood.dev & @abaibourova.bsky.social (Prime Video) "I don't think you can succeed in AI native transformation without grassroots energy from your builder community. However, it has to come both from bottoms-up and top-down." #AWSreInvent #DEVTrack

James Hood reposted

Gunnar Grosch
@gunnargrosch.com

Part 22 of DEV Track Spotlight 🤖 DEV403 with @jameshood.dev (AWS) & @maishsk.com (AWS) "I am also a former AI skeptic. My previous experience with AI was trying flashy demos on real world code and watching it crash and burn." Then he discovered Agent SOPs. #AWSreInvent #DEVTrack #AWSCommunity

James Hood
@jameshood.dev

2025 has been the most gratifying year of my career. Felt privileged to share the #AWSreInvent stage with @abaibourova.bsky.social and tell the true story of how I went from #AI skeptic to power user, sparking a company-wide grassroots movement of tens of thousands of #Amazon builders.

Gunnar Grosch@gunnargrosch.com

Part 4 of DEV Track Spotlight 🤖 DEV323 with @jameshood.dev & @abaibourova.bsky.social (Prime Video) "I don't think you can succeed in AI native transformation without grassroots energy from your builder community. However, it has to come both from bottoms-up and top-down." #AWSreInvent #DEVTrack

James Hood
@jameshood.dev

Also got to demo Strands Agent SOPs, a simple but incredibly powerful technique for creating “determin-ish-tic” agentic workflows. Agent SOPs are an innovation that came from our internal builder community and is now open source to benefit the broader AI community. github.com/strands-agen...

github.comGitHub - strands-agents/agent-sop: Natural language workflows that enable AI agents to perform complex, multi-step tasks with consistency and reliability.Natural language workflows that enable AI agents to perform complex, multi-step tasks with consistency and reliability. - strands-agents/agent-sop

James Hood reposted

AWS Blogs on 🦋
@awsblogs.bsky.social

📰 New article by James Hood, Nicholas Clegg Introducing Strands Agent SOPs – Natural Language Workflows for AI Agents #AWS #OpenSource

aws.amazon.comIntroducing Strands Agent SOPs – Natural Language Workflows for AI AgentsModern AI can write code, compose symphonies, and solve complex reasoning problems. So why is it still so hard to get them to reliably do what you want? Building reliable AI agents that consistently perform complex tasks remains challenging. While modern language models excel at reasoning and problem-solving, translating that capability into predictable workflows often [...]
James Hood
@jameshood.dev

2024 was a big year for #AWS #CloudFormation. Check out this blog post to see a recap of what we launched! 🚀 Even more excited about what we have planned for 2025! 😄 aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops...

aws.amazon.comAWS CloudFormation: 2024 Year in Review | Amazon Web ServicesAWS CloudFormation: 2024 Year in Review AWS CloudFormation enables you to model and provision your cloud application infrastructure as code-base templates. Whether you prefer writing templates directl...
James Hood
@jameshood.dev

#AWS #CDK support in progress! 🙂 github.com/aws/aws-cdk/...

github.comfeat(cli): warn the user of resource renaming by otaviomacedo · Pull Request #33257 · aws/aws-cdkTL;DR: with this feature, the CLI will detect when resources have been renamed and ask the user if they really want to deploy the stack, considering that it will cause resource replacement. For now...
James Hood@jameshood.dev

#AWS #CloudFormation now supports stack refactoring! Super excited about this launch!! 🚀 aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wh...

aws.amazon.comReshape your AWS CloudFormation stacks seamlessly with stack refactoring - AWSDiscover more about what's new at AWS with Reshape your AWS CloudFormation stacks seamlessly with stack refactoring

James Hood reposted

AWS News(Unofficial)
@awsnews.bsky.social

Reshape your AWS CloudFormation stacks seamlessly with stack refactoring AWS CloudFormation introduces a new capability called stack refactoring that makes it easy to reorganize cloud resources across your CloudFormation stacks. Stack refactoring enables... #AWS #AwsGovcloudUs #AwsCloudformation

aws.amazon.comReshape your AWS CloudFormation stacks seamlessly with stack refactoringAWS CloudFormation introduces a new capability called stack refactoring that makes it easy to reorganize cloud resources across your CloudFormation stacks. Stack refactoring enables you to move resources from one stack to another, split monolithic stacks into smaller components, and rename the logical name of resources within a stack. This enables you to adapt your stacks to meet architectural patterns, operational needs, or business requirements. As your workloads scale and requirements evolve, re-architecting resources into a new stack structure can become necessary. For example, you may need to split a monolithic stack for easier resource lifecycle management or rename resource logical IDs to align with new naming conventions. Previously, refactoring a stack required multiple manual steps, such as updating templates to retain targeted resources, removing them from current stacks, and then importing them into new stacks. Stack refactoring improves the speed and safety of this process. To refactor a stack, you first provide the CloudFormation templates that reflect the desired stack structure. Then, you generate a preview of the refactor operation, allowing you to confirm that the refactoring changes align with your requirements. If the planned changes meet your expectations, you can execute the refactor operation through an atomic workflow. This new capability enables seamless and continuous adaptation to evolving architectural patterns. Stack refactor is available in all AWS Regions where CloudFormation is supported. To get started, update your CloudFormation templates to reflect the desired stack structure, then use the AWS CLI or SDK to perform the refactor operation. Visit our https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/introducing-aws-cloudformation-stack-refactoring/ to learn more about this feature.  

James Hood reposted

Hannah Aubry
@haubles.bsky.social

As the new OSS Developer Advocate for AWS CDK, I was hired to help evolve the way AWS engages with the CDK community. Today, we're proposing to form a CDK Contributor Council as a first step in that evolution. github.com/aws/aws-cdk-...

github.comRFC 676: Contributor-Council-Charter.md by haubles · Pull Request #679 · aws/aws-cdk-rfcsThis is a request for comments about the proposed AWS CDK Contributor Council. See Tracking Issue #676 for discussion of the proposal. By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contributi...

James Hood reposted

Adam Grant
@adamgrant.bsky.social

One of the most reliable ways to improve our mental health is to help others. After being randomly assigned to do just 3 acts of kindness a week, people felt significantly less depressed, anxious, and lonely. Lifting others up elevates us too. Giving shows us that we matter.

James Hood reposted

Marc Brooker
@marcbrooker.bsky.social

The most valuable thing you can do for your career is to be thoughtful about how you spend your time. One of the tools I use most to do that, Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec's principal roles framework, is now available outside Amazon for the first time.

James Hood
@jameshood.dev

🫡

Jeff Barr@jeffbarr.bsky.social

After 20 years as lead blogger on the #AWS News Blog, I am going to return to my builder roots and spend more time with fewer AWS services. Here's my announcement: And that's a wrap! - aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/an...

aws.amazon.comAnd that’s a wrap! | Amazon Web ServicesAfter 20 years, and 3283 posts adding up to 1,577,106 words I am wrapping up my time as the lead blogger on the AWS News Blog. It has been a privilege to be able to “live in the future” and to get to ...
James Hood
@jameshood.dev

With another #awsreinvent in the books, we’re solidifying plans for 2025. Send me your top #AWS #CloudFormation pain points! #feedback 🙏

James Hood
@jameshood.dev

Whenever I see GenAI written down, I hear it in my head the way Forrest Gump pronounces “Jenny”.

Corey Quinn@quinnypig.com

Today I learned that I’ve been pronouncing “AI” incorrectly. It’s “Aaii!” as a feral corporate scream.

James Hood reposted

Nathan Peck
@nathanpeck.com

Let's see what the latest re:Invent launches for Q Developer can do! I accepted this Corey Quinn challenge and put Q Developer Agent to work on a task he provided: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMvN...

youtube.comCorey Quinn challenge vs the latest Q Developer AgentYouTube video by Nathan Peck
Corey Quinn@quinnypig.com

Okay, I'll make a deal. When Amazon Q can do "take this application and deploy it repeatably to AWS Lambda" and do the right thing, I'll revisit it.

James Hood reposted

Clare Liguori
@clare.dev

We're always iterating and improving Q Developer Agent. Today we launched three new abilities: * unit tests * documentation * code reviews AND as of today, Q Dev Agent is #1 on SWE-Bench Verified benchmark, resolving a massive 54.8% of issues. Agentic development truly transforms how we write code.

James Hood reposted

Werner
@wernervogels.bsky.social

For a deep dive on Amazon Aurora DSQL go to @marcbrooker.bsky.social's sessions DAT424 and DAT427. In my keynote on Thursday, I'll dive under the hood to look at its architecture and the technology that makes global strong consistency possible. #AWSreinvent

Luc van Donkersgoed@lucvandonkersgoed.com

IT'S HERE! Amazon Aurora Distributed SQL (DSQL). It's DynamoDB and Postgres merged into a truly serverless relational database. This is THE announcement of Re:Invent 2024. Everything else is irrelevant.

buff.lyAnnouncing Amazon Aurora DSQL (Preview)AWS introduces Amazon Aurora DSQL, a serverless, distributed SQL database offering unlimited scalability, high availability, and zero infrastructure management...
James Hood
@jameshood.dev

#AWS #reInvent dos and don’ts: Don’t get talked into running a half marathon the morning you leave for re:Invent. My feet are already so worked! Do not recommend. 😩😅

James Hood reposted

Gergely Orosz
@gergely.pragmaticengineer.com

There's this evergreen joke on software development that goes something like this: "We're done with 90% of the project. Which means we only have the other 90% left to go." It's funny because it's true. It's also why experienced engineers are in-demand: they are the "finishers." AI tools: not now.

James Hood
@jameshood.dev

Really cool experimentation with feeding the new #AWS #CloudFormation timeline view to GenAI and asking for optimization improvements.

Massimo Re Ferré@mreferre.bsky.social

Random ramblings (and prompts) from the sofa on a lazy weekend around "AWS CloudFormation and Generative AI" (with a focus on and inspiration from the new timeline view) it20.info/2024/11/aws-...

it20.infoAWS CloudFormation and Generative AIThe CloudFormation team has been on a roll in the last 12 months. Among many releases, they introduced Git stack management, up to 40% faster deployments, stack …

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