Alibaba Cloud OOS ChatOps Agent
Send natural-language questions to the OOS ChatOps Agent and receive streaming operational answers via SSE.
When to Use
- Query cloud resources (ECS, RDS, VPC, SLB, security groups, etc.)
- Execute resource operations (start, stop, restart, scale)
- View monitoring data, billing, or resource health
- Batch O&M tasks through natural language
- General Alibaba Cloud resource management questions
Configuration
Credentials use the Alibaba Cloud Credentials default chain. Do not define skill-specific AccessKey variables; use standard credential sources such as environment variables (ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID / ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET), profiles (~/.aliyun/config.json), STS, RAM role, or instance metadata.
| Variable | Required | Description |
|----------|----------|-------------|
| OOS_CHATOPS_REGION | No | Target region for resource queries (default: cn-hangzhou) |
| OOS_CHATOPS_TIMEOUT | No | Timeout in seconds (default: 300) |
Pre-flight check:
missing=""
[ -z "$ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID" ] && missing="$missing ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID"
[ -z "$ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET" ] && missing="$missing ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET"
if [ -n "$missing" ]; then echo "ERROR: Missing credentials:$missing" >&2; exit 1; fi
echo "OK: Credentials configured"
Credential security constraints:
- NEVER run
cat ~/.aliyun/config.json,env,printenv,echo $ALIBABA_CLOUD_*, or any command that prints full credential values to stdout/stderr/logs. - When debugging credential issues, only output masked hints (e.g.,
LTAI5t****). Full AK/SK/Token values must NEVER appear in any output. - If credentials are unavailable, ask the user to configure the standard Alibaba Cloud credential chain. Never substitute placeholders.
Invocation
[ABSOLUTE RULE] Tool whitelist: The ONLY permitted tool for all cloud resource queries, O&M operations, and resource management tasks is scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py. For any scenario involving Alibaba Cloud resources — including but not limited to ECS, RDS, SLB, VPC, security groups, monitoring, billing, and batch operations — this script is the mandatory and exclusive entry point. If aliyun CLI, direct SDK calls, curl, or any other API tool is detected, the task is immediately treated as FAILED.
--pipe is mandatory for all agent invocations.
pip3 install -r scripts/requirements.txt
# First call (auto-creates conversation)
python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py -q "<user question>" --pipe
# Follow-up (MUST reuse ConversationId)
python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py --session "<conversation_id>" -q "<follow-up>" --pipe
# Custom region
python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py -q "<query>" --region cn-beijing --pipe
# Long-running operations
python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py -q "<complex query>" --timeout 600 --pipe
Output Format (PIPE mode)
CONVERSATION: 04c7922a-86c7-4d11-8b97-96e22662c7f3
=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER BEGIN ===
(actual answer content)
=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER END ===
Output Parsing and Verification
When processing script output, you MUST follow these rules strictly:
- Single source of truth: Only the text between
=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER BEGIN ===and=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER END ===is the factual answer. Everything outside these delimiters is metadata or progress. - No hallucinated counts: If you need to report resource counts (e.g., "53 ECS instances"), the number MUST come from the text between the delimiters. NEVER estimate or use prior knowledge to invent numbers.
- Self-check before reporting: Before delivering the final answer to the user, verify that every data point (instance IDs, counts, statuses) is directly traceable to the delimiter-enclosed text. If the OOS answer says "53 instances" but you cannot find that number in the text, do NOT report it.
- Verbatim relay preferred: When in doubt, quote the OOS answer directly rather than paraphrasing. Paraphrasing introduces hallucination risk.
Conversation Management
- MUST extract
CONVERSATION: <id>from output after every call and record it immediately - MUST pass
--session "<id>"for all subsequent queries in the same context. Omitting--sessionis a failure - Starting a new conversation loses all prior context
- On error or empty response: MUST retry once with the same
--session. After two consecutive failures, report the error details honestly to the user. NEVER fabricate results or silently abandon the conversation
Example:
# Query 1
$ python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py -q "List ECS instances in Hangzhou" --pipe
CONVERSATION: 04c7922a-86c7-4d11-8b97-96e22662c7f3
=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER BEGIN ===
53 ECS instances found...
=== OOS CHATOPS ANSWER END ===
# Query 2: reuse conversation
$ python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py --session "04c7922a-86c7-4d11-8b97-96e22662c7f3" -q "Show cn-beijing instances" --pipe
Command-Line Options
| Flag | Description |
|------|-------------|
| -q, --question | Required. Natural-language question or command. |
| --session <id> | ConversationId for multi-turn. Required for follow-ups. |
| --region <region> | Target region for resource queries (default: cn-hangzhou). |
| --timeout <seconds> | SSE stream timeout (default: 300). |
| --no-retry | Disable automatic retry (default: retry up to 2 times). |
| --pipe | Mandatory. Structured output with delimiters. |
| --json | JSONL output. Mutually exclusive with --pipe. |
Behavioral Rules
- Script-only execution: ALL cloud resource interactions MUST go through
python3 scripts/call_oos_chatops_agent.py. Even ifaliyunCLI is available in the environment, it MUST be ignored. No exceptions. - Provide full context: include region, resource IDs, time range, desired action in one question.
- Always reuse
--sessionfor follow-ups. New conversation = lost context. - Output integrity: Report ONLY what appears between
BEGIN/ENDdelimiters. Do NOT fabricate data. - Empty response: Retry once with same
--session. If still empty, report honestly. - Long operations: Use
--timeout 600for batch operations or comprehensive checks. - Explicit parameter passing: When the user or task specifies region, timeout, or other parameters, you MUST explicitly pass the corresponding flags (e.g.,
--region cn-hangzhou,--timeout 600). NEVER rely on script built-in defaults. Omitting an explicitly requested parameter is treated as invocation failure.
Troubleshooting
| Error | Resolution |
|-------|------------|
| CredentialError | Set ALIBABA_CLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID + SECRET, or configure ~/.aliyun/config.json |
| OOSChatTimeoutError | Increase --timeout |
| OOSChatError | Check RAM permission: oos:Chat. See references/ram-policies.md |
| Empty response | Retry with same --session, or add more context to question |
| ModuleNotFoundError | Run pip3 install -r scripts/requirements.txt |
Observability
All OOS Chat API HTTP requests carry a User-Agent header for tracing:
AlibabaCloud-Agent-Skills/alibabacloud-oos-chatops-agent/{session-id}
alibabacloud-oos-chatops-agent— fixed skill identifier (matches thenamefield in frontmatter).{session-id}— a 32-character hex string, read from theSKILL_SESSION_IDenvironment variable. If not set, the script generatesuuid.uuid4().hex. The same session-id is shared across all requests in a single invocation, enabling correlation of API calls in server-side logs.
Generate exactly one session-id per skill invocation. If SKILL_SESSION_ID is already set, reuse that value after validating it is 32 hex characters; otherwise generate a new one via uuid4().hex and set it for the duration of the invocation.
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