What tools can inventory AWS resources and help bootstrap infrastructure as code?

Another practical approach is to use a read-only AWS integration with an AI coding assistant, then ask it to inventory resources, explain the architecture, and produce documentation or IaC drafts. Keep the permissions strictly read-only and have the output reviewed by a person before applying anything. Native discovery tools are generally better for collecting complete data, while the AI assistant is more useful for organizing it, explaining unfamiliar services, and turning selected resources into maintainable code.

Former2 can scan an existing AWS environment and generate CloudFormation templates, so it may be useful for turning parts of an undocumented setup into an initial infrastructure-as-code baseline. I would treat the generated templates as a starting point rather than production-ready code: review dependencies, secrets, permissions, unsupported resources, and environment-specific values carefully.

AWS Config is probably the best native starting point. It provides an inventory of supported resources, includes relationships between them, and can retain historical configuration changes. It is useful for more than just a one-time export, since you can also use it for compliance checks and remediation. For multiple accounts, configuration data can be aggregated centrally. For a single account, the Tag Editor may also provide a quick, though less complete, overview.

Steampipe is a strong option if you want something easy to query and export. It exposes AWS resources through SQL, so you can build focused inventory queries and write the results to JSON or CSV for documentation, automation, or AI context. It also lets you use narrowly scoped read-only permissions. Be mindful that broad queries across a large account can generate a lot of API calls, so start with the services and regions you actually need.