Compute Instance Provisioning

Manages the lifecycle of a virtual machine instance — create, read, resize, snapshot, power-control, decommission — on whichever platform the caller is targeting, following that platform’s own documented procedure exactly.

When to use this skill

• Creating, reading, resizing, snapshotting, powering on/off or restarting, or deleting a virtual machine instance on a supported hypervisor or cloud platform.
• Not for containers or Kubernetes workloads — see container-workload-deployment.
• Not for upgrading network-device operating systems — see software-upgrade-lifecycle.
• Not for allocating addresses or recording the instance in an inventory — see ipam-allocation, dcim-asset-management, and cmdb-asset-management. Where creating an instance requires attaching an existing network, volume, or address, that attachment is part of the platform’s own create procedure; creating those objects themselves is out of scope.

Universal concepts (shared virtual-instance vocabulary, not a wire standard)

These are claims expected to hold for any hypervisor or cloud platform, and were checked against each platform listed in references/INDEX.md. Where a platform differs, its own procedure wins.

• An instance has a lifecycle state that decides which operations are allowed, and write calls are usually asynchronous. Read the current state before changing an instance, and confirm the target state after; an accepted request is not a finished one.
• Deleting an instance is final, and what happens to its storage depends on the platform and its settings. Treat deletion as a confirmation point and tell the operator which storage will go with it.
• Some changes, such as resizing, may require the instance to be powered off, where the platform says so; some platforms allow certain changes while it runs. Power-off interrupts the workload and can lose volatile state; confirm before doing it, and let the platform’s own procedure say what else changes.
• What “snapshot” means differs by platform (a point-in-time copy of the whole machine, of its disks, or an image to launch from), and not every platform can revert an instance to one, or offers a snapshot of an instance at all. Do not assume either exists.
• Repeating a create request can create a second instance unless the platform offers an idempotency mechanism; use it where it exists.

Procedure

1. Identify the target platform — from the caller’s request or the platform argument. Check references/INDEX.md; if no matching row exists, stop: this skill doesn’t cover it yet.
2. Open references/<platform>/procedure.md and follow it exactly — it contains that platform’s full operational procedure, error handling, patterns, known limitations, tools, and verification checklist.
3. Report the outcome using that platform procedure’s own status vocabulary — don’t normalize it away.

Known limitations

• Platform coverage is in references/INDEX.md; a platform not listed there needs a new reference file before this skill can be used for it.
• Scope is the instance lifecycle only. Networks, storage systems, images as standalone catalog objects, identity, and other parts of a cloud or hypervisor are out of scope even where the same platform offers them.

Contributing to this skill

SKILL.md only changes for two reasons: a bug in the universal concepts/router logic above, or adding a pointer to a newly-supported platform. Platform-specific procedure changes — a new error code, a corrected field, a changed API path — belong in that platform’s own references/<platform>/procedure.md, never here.

Tools

Each platform assumes its own authenticated client — see references/INDEX.md for which, and that platform’s procedure.md for the specific operations.

Verification checklist

• Target platform confirmed against references/INDEX.md before proceeding
• That platform’s own procedure.md was followed, including its own confirmation gates on launch, power-on, power-off, reboot, resize, an image that reboots the instance, and deletion
• Outcome reported using the platform procedure’s own status vocabulary