Create templates visually with Infrastructure Composer

AWS Infrastructure Composer (formerly known as Application Composer) helps you visually compose and configure modern applications on AWS. Instead of writing code, you can drag and drop different resources to build your application visually.

Infrastructure Composer in CloudFormation console mode is the recommended tool to work with CloudFormation templates visually. This version of Infrastructure Composer that you can access from the CloudFormation console is an improvement from an older tool called AWS CloudFormation Designer.

With Infrastructure Composer in CloudFormation console mode, you can drag, drop, configure, and connect a variety of resources, called cards, onto a visual canvas. This visual approach makes it easy to design and edit your application architecture without having to work with templates directly. To access this mode from the CloudFormation console, select Infrastructure Composer from the left-side navigation menu.

For more information, see How to compose in AWS Infrastructure Composer in the AWS Infrastructure Composer Developer Guide.

Why use Infrastructure Composer in CloudFormation console mode?

Visualizing your templates in Infrastructure Composer helps you identify gaps and areas of improvement in your CloudFormation templates and application architecture. Infrastructure Composer improves your development experience with the ease and efficiency of visually building and modifying CloudFormation stacks. You can start with an initial draft, create deployable code, and incorporate your developer workflows with the visual designer in Infrastructure Composer.

How is this mode different than the Infrastructure Composer console?

While the CloudFormation console version of Infrastructure Composer has similar features to the standard Infrastructure Composer console, there are a few differences. Lambda-related cards (Lambda Function and Lambda Layer) require code builds and packaging solutions that are not available in Infrastructure Composer in CloudFormation console mode. Local sync is also not available in this mode.

However, you can use these Lambda-related cards and the local sync feature in the Infrastructure Composer console or the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. For more information, see the AWS Infrastructure Composer Developer Guide and Infrastructure Composer in the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio Code User Guide.