Every AWS service, and how to leave it.

Give the agent read-only keys, not your admin keys

Don't paste credentials that can change or read everything into a terminal. Create a throwaway IAM user with the scoped policy below — it can list and describe what you run, but it can't modify anything, read your S3 objects, or fetch your secret values.

1. Copy the policy JSON below.
2. AWS Console → IAM → Policies → Create policy → JSON tab → paste → name it leaveaws-inventory-readonly.
3. IAM → Users → Create user (no console access) → Attach policies directly → pick the policy you just made.
4. Open the user → Security credentials → Create access key (Command Line Interface) → give that key pair to the agent.
5. Delete the user when your inventory is done.

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "LeaveAwsInventoryReadOnly",
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "ec2:Describe*",
        "elasticloadbalancing:Describe*",
        "autoscaling:Describe*",
        "s3:ListAllMyBuckets",
        "s3:ListBucket",
        "s3:GetBucketLocation",
        "s3:GetBucketPolicy",
        "s3:GetBucketVersioning",
        "s3:GetBucketTagging",
        "s3:GetBucketWebsite",
        "s3:GetBucketCORS",
        "s3:GetBucketNotification",
        "s3:GetLifecycleConfiguration",
        "s3:GetEncryptionConfiguration",
        "s3:GetReplicationConfiguration",
        "rds:Describe*",
        "rds:ListTagsForResource",
        "dynamodb:Describe*",
        "dynamodb:List*",
        "lambda:List*",
        "lambda:GetFunctionConfiguration",
        "lambda:GetPolicy",
        "cloudfront:Get*",
        "cloudfront:List*",
        "route53:Get*",
        "route53:List*",
        "route53domains:List*",
        "ses:Get*",
        "ses:List*",
        "sqs:ListQueues",
        "sqs:GetQueueAttributes",
        "sns:Get*",
        "sns:List*",
        "ecs:Describe*",
        "ecs:List*",
        "eks:Describe*",
        "eks:List*",
        "ecr:Describe*",
        "ecr:List*",
        "elasticache:Describe*",
        "cognito-idp:Describe*",
        "cognito-idp:List*",
        "apigateway:GET",
        "secretsmanager:ListSecrets",
        "secretsmanager:DescribeSecret",
        "ssm:DescribeParameters",
        "lightsail:Get*",
        "states:Describe*",
        "states:List*",
        "events:Describe*",
        "events:List*",
        "kafka:Describe*",
        "kafka:List*",
        "es:Describe*",
        "es:List*",
        "bedrock:Get*",
        "bedrock:List*",
        "sagemaker:Describe*",
        "sagemaker:List*",
        "iam:GetRole",
        "iam:ListRoles",
        "iam:ListInstanceProfiles",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics",
        "cloudwatch:GetMetricData",
        "cloudwatch:ListMetrics",
        "ce:GetCostAndUsage"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

Deliberately missing: s3:GetObject, secretsmanager:GetSecretValue, ssm:GetParameter, and every write action. The agent sees names, sizes and configs — never your data. When it's time to actually move bytes, do that step with a key scoped to just those buckets, or from a machine you control.