redshift-guide

An agent skill by aws, from aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws. Tags: database, debugging, performance, redshift, sql.

What it does

Amazon Redshift is NOT PostgreSQL — corrects PostgreSQL-derived LLM mistakes; covers Redshift-specific SQL, DDL, COPY/UNLOAD, system views, metadata discovery, and operational patterns. Applies ONLY when the task is about Redshift itself (cluster, Serverless workgroup, or Redshift SQL). Pushes back on: CREATE INDEX, string_agg, pg_catalog, text type, SERIAL, stl_query, LATERAL, RETURNING. Triggers on: Redshift SQL, Redshift CREATE TABLE, Redshift COPY/UNLOAD, slow Redshift query, Redshift permission denied, Redshift disk full, Redshift system views, QUALIFY, PIVOT, MERGE, Redshift Data API, Redshift WLM, concurrency scaling, Redshift resize, Redshift Spectrum external tables. Does NOT apply to (defer to that service's own skill): Amazon S3 storage/bucket policies, Athena or Glue queries/catalogs, data-lake or Iceberg work outside Redshift, Aurora, RDS, or DynamoDB — but S3/Glue ARE in scope for Redshift COPY, UNLOAD, or data-lake queries (external schemas/tables on S3).

Install

With the skills CLI, which installs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other agents:

npx skills add aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws --skill redshift-guide

Or copy the skill folder into Claude Code's skills directory by hand (~/.claude/skills for every project, or .claude/skills inside one):

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws
cp -r agent-toolkit-for-aws/plugins/aws-data-analytics/skills/redshift-guide ~/.claude/skills/redshift-guide

Safety box score

Grade D, elevated risk: 49 of 100 risk points, rated 2026-10-19. The grade rates what the skill and its scripts can reach on the machine of whoever installs it, across eight categories from shell execution to secrets access. How the score works.

This Redshift guide is a high-blast-radius operations skill: it generates and recommends live SQL, AWS CLI, Data API, IAM, and S3 actions against Redshift clusters and related cloud services. The main risks are destructive database operations, cross-service data movement, and permission/auth changes; most of the content is readable markdown, but one referenced remediation file could not be inspected.

Category levels, from 0 (none) to 3 (high)
Category	Level	Why
Code & shell execution	2 (moderate)	The skill includes runnable bash/Python/AWS CLI recipes and SQL snippets, such as `aws redshift-data execute-statement`, `aws iam update-saml-provider`, `COPY`, and `UNLOAD`, so following it can directly execute commands against live services.
Network access	2 (moderate)	It explicitly talks to remote services and moves data off-box via Redshift Data API, S3 `COPY`/`UNLOAD`, CloudTrail/CloudWatch, and IAM federation endpoints.
Filesystem reach	0 (none)	I found no instructions to read, write, or delete local files, dotfiles, or system paths; the actions are cloud/database scoped.
Secrets & credentials	1 (low)	It handles credentials-related concepts (`SecretArn`, temporary credentials, `DbUser`) and warns that statement IDs and load-error output can be sensitive, but it does not read local secret stores or ask for raw passwords.
Privilege & persistence	2 (moderate)	The guide changes auth and access controls (`GRANT USAGE ON DATABASE`, `ALTER USER ... SYSLOG ACCESS UNRESTRICTED`, `aws iam update-saml-provider`) and discusses cluster/security-group parameter changes.
Instruction hijack surface	1 (low)	There is some directive language like `MANDATORY` and `do not re-confirm`, but I did not see remote-content-following or hidden prompt-injection payloads.
Irreversible actions	3 (high)	It covers destructive and irreversible operations and cloud mutations—`DROP DATABASE`, `DELETE without WHERE`, `TRUNCATE`, `RESTORE`, `RESIZE`, `VACUUM`, and `UNLOAD`—which can alter or expose data at large scale.
Transparency	1 (low)	One referenced file, `references/redshift-storage-remediation.md`, could not be read in this review, so part of the skill's behavior remains uninspected.

Before installing

Read `SKILL.md` for the destructive-operation guardrails (`DROP DATABASE`, `TRUNCATE`, `RESIZE`, `RESTORE`).
Open `references/redshift-storage-remediation.md` yourself before relying on any storage-remediation advice; it was not reviewed here.
Test the Data API / AWS CLI snippets in a sandbox Redshift workgroup or cluster first, with nonproduction credentials.
Confirm which S3 buckets, IAM roles, and Redshift users the skill may touch before allowing it to run.

Rated 2026-10-19 by an automated review of 12 files from the skill's repository.

Source

Repository: aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws (all skills from this repository)
Path: plugins/aws-data-analytics/skills/redshift-guide/SKILL.md
Branch: main
Collection: aws-data-analytics
Updated: 2026-09-19

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