Types of users for CodeWhisperer

There are multiple scenarios under which you may come to use CodeWhisperer. Understanding how your situation differs from the situation of other customers may help you understand issues related to authentication, IDE choices, and billing. This page explains the differences between the types of CodeWhisperer users.

Professional-tier developers are users who work for an enterprise (that is, a company), and it’s the enterprise, not the individual, who has a financial relationship with AWS.

Root user (of a whole AWS account)

The root user is the most powerful user in the AWS account. When a customer first sets up an AWS account, the root user is the only user. Because the root user is so powerful, it should be used very infrequently. The root user should create administrative users, and then those administrative users should be used for the majority of account management tasks.

IAM Identity Center administrator

The root user creates the IAM Identity Center administrator. The IAM Identity Center administrator is in charge of adding users to the account through the IAM Identity Center. The person who logs in as the IAM Identity Center administrator may work in human resources. They may not have a direct relationship with CodeWhisperer. They also probably manage users for the same professionals who are using AWS services other than CodeWhisperer. Some, but probably not all, of the users managed by the IAM Identity Center administrator will become CodeWhisperer professional developers.

CodeWhisperer administrator

The root user creates the CodeWhisperer administrator. The CodeWhisperer administrator decides which users should have access to CodeWhisperer as professional developers. The pool of users from which the CodeWhisperer administrator picks these users, is the pool of users created by the IAM Identity Center administrator. The CodeWhisperer administrator might not be a developer, and they might not use CodeWhisperer themselves at all.

Professional-tier developer (using a third-party IDE)

The IAM Identity Center manager adds the professional-tier developer to the IAM Identity Center. Then the CodeWhisperer administrator gives the professional-tier developer access to CodeWhisperer. Then the professional-tier developer uses CodeWhisperer through the AWS Toolkit in either VS Code or JetBrains IDEs.

Individual-tier developer (using a third-party IDE)

The individual-tier developer does not use CodeWhisperer on behalf of a professional. Therefore, they are in charge of their own access. This developer authenticates with Builder ID, which does not require an AWS account.

In-console developer

An in-console developer uses CodeWhisperer inside AWS Cloud 9, Lambda, Sagemaker Studio, or AWS Glue Studio within the AWS console. This developer logs in as a user who is created in IAM (not IAM Identity Center). Typically, this developer is using their personal AWS account. This account owner may also act as their own administrator. In that case, they may have created the in-console developer IAM user themselves, while logged in as the root user (not recommended), or (best practice), a user that acts as a general AWS account administrator.