Amazon Braket

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Amazon Braket

Primitives

The vocabulary of a Braket workflow, and which reference to open for each.

Each reference carries the domain detail for its own area — field paths, key names, API shapes, and billing models.

Additional notes:

• Setup — first-time account setup, prerequisites, roles, notebooks, and the results S3 bucket are covered in setup.md.

Critical Rules

These rules apply to every Braket request, whatever it involves.

1. Use credentials with IAM-administrative permissions only for setup actions, such as creating IAM roles and policies, creating or updating spending limits, and creating S3 buckets or other resources. After setup, use workload credentials with permissions scoped to the workflow.

2. The Amazon Braket Python SDK (pip install amazon-braket-sdk, imported as braket) is the primary entry point. Prefer it for every operation including Braket API operations, and understand what it covers by reading the docs or inspecting the SDK's modules locally.

   • Use local execution tools for running the Braket SDK, such as shell with python3 -c "<code>".

3. The AWS MCP server is recommended for executing any other AWS API calls in this skill, especially operations not present in the Python SDK, although not required. Note: the AWS MCP's run_script tool executes code in a minimal sandbox without Braket libraries, so prefer using other tools for code execution, especially when using the Braket SDK.

4. A small set of primitives composes every workflow — see Primitives for the vocabulary and the reference for each.

5. Devices, quantum tasks, and hybrid jobs are region-scoped, so fan out across every Braket region whenever you use the API, CLI, or boto3 to search for resources. The SDK handles fanout for you where it can — AwsDevice.get_devices searches QPUs in all regions. Get the list of regions Braket supports from aws___get_regional_availability when the AWS MCP server is available, or from the supported devices and regions documentation. Resource ARNs containing a region may only be queried from that same region, otherwise you will see a ResourceNotFoundException.

6. Open the matching reference before you write code or answer. Use the Primitives table to find and read references. Note: A request that asks for several things, e.g. executing a series of circuits and controlling the cost thereof, may require reading multiple reference files.

7. Verify, never recall. Device ARNs and statuses, API signatures, supported features, and prices (and other values) all change and may post-date training data.

8. Confirm a signature from documentation before you write code that calls it. This applies to the Braket SDK and to every third-party library that integrates with Braket. A guessed parameter or a guessed unit can produce a quantum task that runs, charges the customer, and returns a wrong answer.

   • For the Braket SDK, read the SDK reference docs.

   • For a third-party library, open its matching library reference from the Primitives table and verify signatures against the linked provider or plugin documentation.

   If no available tool reaches the documentation, read the signature from the installed package with shell:

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   # subpackages: ahs, circuits, pulse, program_sets, ...
   PAGER=cat python -c "import braket; help(braket)"
   # names: DrivingField, AtomArrangement, ...
   python -c "import braket.ahs; print(dir(braket.ahs))"
   python -c "import inspect; from braket.ahs import DrivingField; \
   print(inspect.signature(DrivingField.from_lists)); print(inspect.getdoc(DrivingField.from_lists))"

9. Attribute skill usage. In every Python script that uses the Braket SDK, insert this block before any Braket SDK code, including import braket:

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   import botocore
   
   def _braket_attribution(session):
       session.user_agent_extra = (
           f"{session.user_agent_extra} AWSSkill-Braket/1.0.0"
       ).strip()
   
   botocore.register_initializer(_braket_attribution)

   If using the AWS CLI, prepend this skill's identifier to AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID. The variable holds one value and other tools also write it, so always append the existing value instead of replacing it:

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   # sh, bash, zsh, ksh, fish 3.1+
   AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID="AWSSkill-Braket-$AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID" aws braket ...

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   # PowerShell — session-scoped
   if ($env:AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID -notlike 'AWSSkill-Braket*') {
       $env:AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID = "AWSSkill-Braket-$env:AWS_SDK_UA_APP_ID"
   }

   This marks AWS calls as originating from use with this skill. This is not needed when using AWS MCP tools as the AWS MCP automatically attributes during tool calls.

10. Before the first QPU task on each device, search for an existing spending limit on that device ARN in its region; if none exists, create one with an amount the user confirms. Do not raise or delete a limit without an explicit user instruction. See spending-limit.md.

Guardrail — where this skill's own files live (MCP vs local install)

This skill can be loaded two ways, and they resolve the skill's own bundled files from different places. Determine how the skill was loaded before reading a reference:

• Loaded through the AWS MCP retrieve_skill tool: The skill is not installed on the local filesystem. You MUST fetch each reference via retrieve_skill with the file parameter (e.g. file="references/devices.md"). Do NOT file_read these paths locally — they do not exist on disk.

• Installed locally (e.g. ~/.kiro/skills/amazon-braket/, .kiro/skills/amazon-braket/, or ~/.claude/skills/amazon-braket/): Read files from the local skill directory using relative paths.

references/ is a sibling of this SKILL.md — resolve reference paths against that directory, not your working directory, and do not search the filesystem for them. If a skill tool returns this overview instead of the file you asked for, it did not fetch it: read it from that directory instead, and do not write code from memory because a reference read failed. This distinction applies only to the skill's own packaged files. User data and session artifacts are always read from and written to the user's working directory — do not cd before running a script that writes a relative artifact path.

Common mistakes

Security considerations

Braket workflows touch IAM, S3, and (for hybrid jobs) container execution.

• Least-privilege IAM. Derive custom policies as subsets of the AWS managed policy for the workflow, scoped to the actions, device ARNs, and buckets the workload uses. Avoid using braket:* when possible. All Braket actions are listed at the Service Authorization Reference. Call Braket APIs with IAM roles, not long-lived IAM user access keys. See Security best practices in IAM for additional best practices.

  • Tasks, devices, and spending limits. Derive from AmazonBraketFullAccess. Restrict braket:UpdateSpendingLimit and braket:DeleteSpendingLimit to prevent accidental removal of a spending limit. See Restricting access to devices.

  • Notebook and hybrid job execution roles. Create as written in setup.md.

• Encryption. Keep each service's default encryption, listed below. If the user has security, compliance, or other requirements for encryption, use a customer managed KMS key that the user specifies instead.

  • S3 buckets for task and job results: always encrypted by default with SSE-S3. Using server-side encryption with Amazon S3 managed keys (SSE-S3). If using a customer managed key, use the key-policy and role grants in setup.md.

  • CloudWatch Logs: always encrypted by default. Encrypt log data in CloudWatch Logs using AWS Key Management Service

  • Notebook storage: always encrypted by default. Notebook instances, SageMaker AI jobs, and Endpoints

• S3 bucket setup. Create buckets as described in setup.md.

• Auditing. Follow Getting started with AWS CloudTrail tutorials and Security Best Practices in AWS CloudTrail to set up a Trail to capture all Braket management events.

• Cost guardrail. Enforce QPU spend caps with spending limits, per the spending-limit rule in Critical Rules.

• Secrets. Hybrid job hyperparameters are stored in job metadata and echoed into the job's CloudWatch log stream, so never pass a secret as a hyperparameter; fetch it from Secrets Manager or SSM Parameter Store inside the algorithm script.

For details, see the Amazon Braket security documentation.

Reference links

Authoritative sources — prefer these over recalled details, since device ARNs, quotas, prices, and supported features change.

Official documentation (stable entry points — navigate/search from here)

• Developer Guide — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/what-is-braket.html

• Prerequisites & account setup — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/braket-get-started.html

• How Amazon Braket works — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/braket-how-it-works.html

• API Reference — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/APIReference/Welcome.html

• Python SDK API docs — https://amazon-braket-sdk-python.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

• Getting started — https://aws.amazon.com/braket/getting-started/

• OpenQASM 3.0 spec — https://openqasm.com/versions/3.0/index.html

• OpenQASM on Braket — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/braket-openqasm.html

• Supported OpenQASM features (pragmas, verbatim rules, dynamic circuits) — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/braket-openqasm-supported-features.html

• boto3 braket client — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/boto3/latest/reference/services/braket.html

• Security — https://docs.aws.amazon.com/braket/latest/developerguide/security.html

For anything not covered here, search the documentation rather than guessing page slugs or recalling details: if the AWS MCP server is available, its aws___search_documentation tool can help; otherwise start from the Developer Guide or API Reference above and navigate.

GitHub

• amazon-braket-sdk-python (core SDK) — https://github.com/amazon-braket/amazon-braket-sdk-python

• amazon-braket-schemas-python (schemas and models for public Braket data) — https://github.com/amazon-braket/amazon-braket-schemas-python

• amazon-braket-examples — https://github.com/amazon-braket/amazon-braket-examples