Appdiscovery Diagnostics

Application Discovery Service Diagnostics

When to use

Any AWS Application Discovery Service investigation — agent deployment, agentless discovery, data collection, export, dependency mapping, or Athena integration.

Investigation workflow

Step 1 — Collect and triage

aws discovery describe-agents --max-results 20
aws discovery describe-continuous-exports --max-results 10
aws discovery list-configurations --configuration-type SERVER --max-results 20

Step 2 — Domain deep dive

aws discovery describe-agents --filters name=agentIds,values=,condition=EQUALS
aws discovery describe-export-tasks --max-results 10
aws discovery get-discovery-summary

Step 3 — Detailed investigation

aws discovery start-data-collection-by-agent-ids --agent-ids  
aws discovery describe-tags --filters name=configurationId,values=
aws cloudtrail lookup-events --lookup-attributes AttributeKey=EventSource,AttributeValue=discovery.amazonaws.com --max-results 10

Read references/guardrails.md before concluding on any Application Discovery Service issue.

Gotchas: Application Discovery Service

• Two discovery methods: agent-based (installed on servers) and agentless (VMware vCenter).
• Agents collect detailed data including network connections for dependency mapping.
• Agentless collector discovers VMware VMs via vCenter API — no agent installation needed.
• Data is stored in Migration Hub home region.
• Continuous export to S3 enables Athena queries on discovery data.
• Agent requires outbound HTTPS to discovery service endpoint.

Anti-hallucination rules

1. Agent-based and agentless discovery collect different data — agents provide more detail.
2. Discovery data is stored in the Migration Hub home region, not the agent's region.
3. Continuous export must be enabled separately — it's not automatic.
4. Athena integration requires continuous export to be active.
5. Agentless collector requires VMware vCenter access — it doesn't work with other hypervisors.
6. Spend no more than 2 minutes on any single hypothesis. Pivot if inconclusive.

12 runbooks

| Category | IDs | Covers | |----------|-----|--------| | A — Agent | A1-A2 | Agent deployment, agent health | | B — Agentless | B1-B2 | Agentless collector, vCenter | | C — Collection | C1-C2 | Data collection, network data | | D — Export | D1-D2 | Data export, continuous export | | E — Dependency | E1 | Dependency mapping | | F — Athena | F1 | Athena integration | | Z — Catch-All | Z1 | General troubleshooting |

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: aws-samples
• Source: aws-samples/sample-ai-agent-skills
• License: MIT-0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.