ansible-prolisted

## Overview Ansible automates servers over SSH without agents: you describe desired state in YAML playbooks, and Ansible's modules converge machines toward it. It's the pragmatic choice for configuring VMs, deploying to bare metal, and gluing together infrastructure that isn't fully cloud-native. Ansible's simplicity is deceptive — at scale, playbook design (roles, idempotency, inventory structure) determines whether automation is reliable or a source of outages. This skill covers writing idempotent playbooks, organizing roles and inventory, handling secrets with Vault, and running Ansible safely against production. ## When to use - Automating server configuration (packages, files, services). - Writing idempotent playbooks and roles. - Structuring inventory for multiple environments. - Managing secrets with Ansible Vault. - Deploying applications to VMs or bare metal. - Running Ansible at scale (performance, strategies, pull mode). - Choosing between Ansible, Terraform, Chef/Puppet, or cloud-init. ## Core concepts - **Idempotency is the contract.** Running a playbook twice should produce the same result as running it once. Use modules (not shell commands) — `apt`, `copy`, `template`, `systemd` are idempotent; `shell: apt-get install` is not. Test by running twice and expecting zero changes the second time. - **Inventory.** Hosts and groups in INI/YAML or dynamic inventory scripts (cloud providers). Group variables layer: `group_vars/all`, `group_vars/webservers`, `host_