SageMaker IAM Role Preflight

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Before creating a SageMaker endpoint, model or training job
• When no role ARN was given and a script is about to call iam:CreateRole
• Diagnosing an AccessDenied error that mentions an IAM action

Example prompts

• “Deploy this Hugging Face model to a SageMaker endpoint, but look for an existing execution role first.”
• “Find a usable SageMaker execution role in my AWS account.”
• “Check that AmazonSageMaker-ExecutionRole-training will work for a training job.”

Requirements

• Python 3
• The AWS CLI with working credentials or an SSO session

Workflow steps

3 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

1. 1Did the user provide a role?
2. 2Discover existing roles
3. 3Create, only if discovery found nothing

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit c3ff942. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Ships 2 files in scripts/ (Python), which the agent can run.

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • aws
  • python3
  • python

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  No URLs in SKILL.md. Its commands use aws, which can reach the network depending on how they are called.

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

SageMaker IAM Role Preflight loads about 1.8k tokens when it runs, and up to ~2.1k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 162 tokens; SKILL.md has 778 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~162

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.8k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~2.1k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from huggingface/skills at commit c3ff942, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© huggingface). 778 words, ~1,756 tokens.

name

hf-cloud-sagemaker-iam-preflight

description

Ensure a usable SageMaker execution role exists before deploying or training. Use this skill whenever about to create a SageMaker endpoint, model, training job, or any resource that requires an execution role. Use it especially when the user has not provided a role ARN explicitly, when scripts are about to call `iam:CreateRole`, or when an AccessDenied error mentions an IAM action. Never blindly call `iam:CreateRole` — always check for existing roles first. This skill prevents the most common SageMaker deployment failure: trying to create IAM resources from an SSO principal that has no IAM write permissions.

python3 scripts/check_role.py        # macOS / Linux
python  scripts/check_role.py        # Windows (PowerShell / cmd)

python3 scripts/check_role.py "<role-name-or-arn>"

python3 scripts/check_role.py

python3 scripts/create_role.py "<role-name>" "<model-bucket>"

# 1. List candidate SageMaker roles
aws iam list-roles --query "Roles[?contains(RoleName,'SageMaker') || contains(RoleName,'sagemaker')]" --output json

# 2. For each candidate, confirm the trust policy allows sagemaker.amazonaws.com
aws iam get-role --role-name <role-name> --query "Role.AssumeRolePolicyDocument" --output json

# 3. Prefer the most-recently-used role with SageMaker-execution naming
#    (LastUsedDate is often None for every role — then prefer newest CreateDate)
aws iam get-role --role-name <role-name> --query "Role.[RoleLastUsed.LastUsedDate, CreateDate]" --output text

© huggingface, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 4 other files (scripts, references) in skills/hf-cloud-sagemaker-iam-preflight of huggingface/skills.

• SKILL.md
• references/minimum-permissions.json
• references/trust-policy.json
• scripts/check_role.py
• scripts/create_role.py

Open the folder on GitHubat commit c3ff942

Used in 1 other repository

We found 1 copy of this SKILL.md (exact, near-identical or edited) in other folders, from 1 other GitHub owner. This page covers the copy in huggingface/skills, which our catalogue first saw on October 7, 2026.

• lingxling/awesome-skills-cnhuggingface-skills/skills/hf-cloud-sagemaker-iam-preflight