50 AI Prompts for AWS Lambda and Serverless Development

Getting the Best Results from These Lambda Prompts

Lambda Function Setup and API Gateway (Prompts 1-15)

• Prompt 4: Create a Lambda authorizer function that validates a JWT token from the Authorization header and returns an IAM policy document. The policy allows access to the specific resource the request is for and includes the decoded userId in the authorizer context for downstream Lambda functions to read.
• Prompt 5: Write a Lambda function that handles a multi-part form data upload via API Gateway. Parse the base64-encoded body, extract the file buffer, validate the MIME type and file size, upload to S3 using the AWS SDK v3 PutObjectCommand, and return the S3 object URL.
• Prompt 6: Create a Lambda function with provisioned concurrency to eliminate cold starts. Configure the CDK provisioned concurrency setting, move all initialization code (SDK clients, database connections, config loading) outside the handler function so it runs once per container, and show the difference in cold start vs warm execution time.
• Prompt 7: Write a Lambda function that uses Lambda Layers to share common dependencies. Define a Layer CDK construct with the shared node_modules, attach it to three different Lambda functions, and show how the layer path is available in the /opt directory at runtime.
• Prompt 8: Create a Lambda function optimised for minimum cold start time using ESBuild bundling. Configure the CDK NodejsFunction construct with ESBuild bundling that tree-shakes unused imports, sets the target to node20, externalises the AWS SDK (available in the Lambda runtime), and produces a bundle under 1MB.
• Prompt 9: Write a Lambda function that handles pagination for a DynamoDB scan. The function accepts a page token in the request, passes it to DynamoDB as the ExclusiveStartKey, and returns the items plus the next page token encoded as a base64 string so it is safe to pass in a URL query parameter.
• Prompt 10: Create a Lambda function with structured logging using AWS Lambda Powertools for TypeScript. Use the Logger utility with correlation IDs automatically added to every log, annotate the function with @logger.injectLambdaContext, log the request and response at INFO level, and log errors with the full stack trace at ERROR level.
• Prompt 11: Write a Lambda function with distributed tracing using AWS X-Ray. Instrument outbound HTTP calls and DynamoDB calls with X-Ray subsegments, add custom annotations for userId and orderId, and show how to view the trace in the X-Ray service map.
• Prompt 12: Create a Lambda function with AWS Lambda Powertools Metrics. Emit a custom metric for each successful order processed, a metric for validation errors, and a metric for downstream service failures. Configure the CloudWatch namespace and add the function name as a dimension.
• Prompt 13: Write an API Gateway WebSocket API Lambda handler for a real-time chat application. Implement the $connect route that stores the connection ID in DynamoDB, the $disconnect route that removes it, and a custom sendMessage route that broadcasts a message to all connected clients using the API Gateway Management API.
• Prompt 14: Create a Lambda function that implements idempotency using AWS Lambda Powertools Idempotency. Configure the DynamoDB idempotency table, decorate the handler with @idempotent, use the request body hash as the idempotency key, and show how duplicate API calls within the TTL window return the cached response without re-executing the handler.
• Prompt 15: Write a Lambda function URL configuration (without API Gateway) for a simple webhook receiver. Configure the function URL in CDK with NONE authentication for public access, handle CORS in the function code, and show the URL format. Include a second function URL with AWS_IAM authentication for internal service-to-service calls.

Event Sources, Step Functions, and CDK (Prompts 16-50)

• Prompt 20: Write a Step Functions state machine CDK definition for an order processing workflow. Define states: ValidateOrder (Lambda), CheckInventory (Lambda with choice state), ChargePayment (Lambda with retry and catch), FulfillOrder (Lambda), and SendConfirmationEmail (Lambda). Configure retry policies with exponential backoff on payment errors and a fallback to RefundPayment on catch.
• Prompt 21: Create a Lambda function that is part of a Step Functions workflow and returns structured output. The function receives the state machine input, processes it, and returns an object where successes and failures are separate keys so the Step Functions choice state can route appropriately.
• Prompt 22: Write an EventBridge rule CDK construct that triggers a Lambda function on a schedule (every 6 hours) and on a custom event pattern where source is myapp and detail-type is OrderPlaced. Show how to pass additional constants to the Lambda via the event target input transformer.
• Prompt 23: Create a CDK stack with a Lambda function that reads secrets from AWS Secrets Manager. Cache the secret value in a module-level variable with a 5-minute TTL to avoid calling Secrets Manager on every invocation, and show how to reference the secret ARN from an environment variable set by CDK.
• Prompt 24: Write an AWS CDK pipeline stack using CodePipeline and CodeBuild. The pipeline triggers on git push to main, runs npx cdk synth, runs Jest tests, runs a security scan with cdk-nag, and deploys the CDK stack to production. Configure CodeBuild with the Lambda function build environment.
• Prompt 25: Create a Jest test setup for AWS Lambda functions using aws-sdk-client-mock. Mock the DynamoDB DocumentClient, test a successful item creation, test the error path when DynamoDB returns a ConditionalCheckFailedException, and verify the correct DynamoDB command arguments were called.