AWS FinOps Agent is in preview release and is subject to change.
Task management
AWS FinOps Agent supports three task types: on-demand, scheduled, and event-based. Each runs through a shared task queue.
On-demand tasks
On-demand tasks run in the background without blocking the conversation. When you ask the agent to create a task, it runs the work in the background and continues the conversation. This is useful for requests that require extended processing, such as generating a report or investigating an anomaly. The agent creates a task only when you ask it to; it answers other requests directly in the conversation.
You can create on-demand tasks in two ways:
From the chat area. Ask the agent to create a task in conversation. For example: “Create a task to generate a cost report for last month.” The agent creates the task and runs it in the background.
From the Tasks workspace. In the side navigation, choose Tasks, then choose Create tasks to open the task creation form. The form includes instructions for how you want the task to be structured.
Scheduled tasks
Scheduled tasks run recurring workflows at specified intervals. Define the schedule through natural language (for example, “every Monday at 9 AM” or “on the first business day of each month”) and the agent creates a recurring automation in its queue. Each time the schedule triggers, the agent creates and runs a new task from the automation.
To view all automations, open the Automations workspace from the side navigation. To stop a recurring workflow, disable or delete the automation.
Event-based tasks
Event-based tasks trigger automated responses when conditions are met. During preview, the agent supports cost anomaly detection events from AWS Cost Anomaly Detection. When an anomaly is detected on a monitor that matches the event-based task, the agent runs the prompt you specified.
You configure event-based tasks by describing the trigger condition and desired response in conversation. For example: “When a cost anomaly is detected on my production monitor, investigate the root cause and post the summary to my finance Slack channel.” The agent registers an event-based automation that runs the prompt each time a matching event arrives.
Behind the scenes, the agent provisions an AWS EventBridge managed rule to receive the events. For details on the underlying IAM permissions, see FinOpsAgentAgentPolicy. For the end-to-end walkthrough, see Event-triggered cost anomaly investigation.
Approvals for read-write actions
During preview, the agent requires approval before creating a Jira issue or adding a comment to one, and only when the action is started from a chat conversation or from an on-demand task. The agent shows the action details (for an issue: project, summary, description; for a comment: target issue and body) in the conversation, and you confirm or revise before the action runs.
Automations that include Jira ticket creation (scheduled or event-based) do not prompt for approval. When you set up the automation, you pre-authorize the agent to create tickets each time the automation runs, so the workflow completes end to end without manual intervention.
Posting a message to a Slack channel does not require approval, including from a chat conversation or an on-demand task. The agent posts to the channel you specify and records the result in the task history. For the full read-write action model, see Agent guardrail controls.
All other agent actions (querying cost data, retrieving recommendations, posting to a Slack channel, generating reports) run without approval. You can review every action the agent took in the task history.
For details on guardrail policies, see Agent guardrail controls.
