Chef Skill for Claude

Chef Automate and Chef Infra Server knife CLI skill for Claude Code. Get instant, accurate guidance on node management, cookbook operations, bootstrapping, remote execution, monitoring, and failure diagnostics — without leaving your terminal.

What This Skill Provides

Node Management

• List, inspect, edit run-lists, and delete nodes
• Set and modify attributes safely with before/after diff workflow

Cookbook Operations

• Upload single or all cookbooks, manage versions, check dependencies
• Find all nodes/roles/environments that consume a given cookbook

Roles & Environments

• Create and update from JSON files, pin cookbook versions per environment

Data Bags

• Plain and encrypted data bag operations with secret key support

Search

• Full Solr query syntax — filter by platform, role, environment, or any attribute
• JSON output piped to jq for scripting

Bootstrapping

• Linux via SSH, Windows via WinRM
• Run-list and environment assignment at bootstrap time

Remote Execution

• knife ssh and knife winrm for parallel command execution across node sets

Monitoring & Diagnostics

• knife status with stale-node filtering
• ohai_time timestamp conversion
• Node failure diagnosis — Chef Automate UI, SSH log tailing, stacktrace location, why-run mode

Installation

Claude Code (Recommended)

/plugin marketplace add siliconchaos/chef-skill
/plugin install chef-automate@siliconchaos

Manual

git clone https://github.com/siliconchaos/chef-skill ~/.claude/skills/chef-skill

Verify

After installation, try:

"Show me all production nodes that haven't converged in the last hour"

Claude will automatically use the skill when working with Chef/knife.

Quick Start Examples

Check your knife setup:

"Verify my knife configuration is correct"

Find cookbook consumers:

"Which nodes are using the nginx cookbook?"

Safe attribute edit:

"Update the app.debug attribute on web-01 with a before/after diff"

Bootstrap a new node:

"Bootstrap 10.0.1.50 as web-03 in the production environment with the base role"

Diagnose a silent node:

"web-07 hasn't converged in 3 hours, help me diagnose it"

What's Included

chef-automate/
├── SKILL.md                        # Full skill prompt loaded by Claude
└── references/
│   └── knife-commands.md           # Comprehensive knife command reference
└── scripts/
    └── check_setup.sh              # Knife configuration diagnostic script

Requirements

• Claude Code or another Claude environment that supports skills
• Chef Workstation (includes knife) installed locally
• A configured ~/.chef/credentials or .chef/config.rb pointing at your Chef Infra Server
• Network access to your Chef Infra Server / Chef Automate instance

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome at github.com/siliconchaos/chef-skill.

For significant changes, open an issue first to discuss the approach.

Related Resources

• Chef Docs — knife — official knife reference
• Chef Workstation — installation and setup
• Chef Automate — UI and pipeline documentation
• knife search syntax — Solr query reference

Attribution

Skill structure and release automation inspired by terraform-skill by Anton Babenko.

License

MIT