Required IAM Permissions

Overview

The deploying IAM user or role requires permissions to create and manage resources across multiple AWS services. Below is the minimum set of IAM permissions required for deployment.

Minimum Required Permissions

Core Infrastructure

Service	Actions	Used By
CloudFormation	cloudformation:*	CDK stack deployment
IAM	iam:*	Create roles/policies for Lambda, ECS, Step Functions
SSM	ssm:GetParameter, ssm:PutParameter, ssm:DeleteParameter	Cross-stack resource discovery
KMS	kms:Create*, kms:Describe*, kms:Enable*, kms:List*, kms:Put*, kms:GenerateDataKey*, kms:Decrypt	Encryption for S3, DynamoDB, SQS
CloudWatch	cloudwatch:*, logs:*	Monitoring, alarms, log groups

Networking

Service	Actions	Used By
EC2	ec2:*	VPC, subnets, NAT gateway, security groups, VPC endpoints
ELB	elasticloadbalancing:*	Private ALB for backend

Compute

Service	Actions	Used By
Lambda	lambda:*	All Lambda functions and layers
ECS	ecs:*	Backend Fargate service
ECR	ecr:*	Container images for Lambda and ECS
CodeBuild	codebuild:*	SageMaker model image build
Step Functions	states:*	Document analysis workflow

Storage

Service	Actions	Used By
S3	s3:*, s3express:*	Document storage, LanceDB, sessions, frontend hosting
DynamoDB	dynamodb:*	Workflow state, backend data
ElastiCache	elasticache:*	Redis for WebSocket connections
Neptune	neptune-db:*, rds:*	Knowledge graph database

AI / ML

Service	Actions	Used By
Bedrock	bedrock:*	Claude, Nova Embed, Cohere Rerank, BDA
Bedrock AgentCore	bedrock-agentcore:*	IDP Agent, Voice Agent, WebCrawler Agent, MCP Gateway
SageMaker	sagemaker:*	PaddleOCR GPU endpoint
Transcribe	transcribe:*	Audio/video transcription

API & Auth

Service	Actions	Used By
API Gateway	apigateway:*, apigatewayv2:*	REST, HTTP, WebSocket APIs
CloudFront	cloudfront:*	Frontend CDN
Cognito	cognito-idp:*, cognito-identity:*	User/Identity pools

Messaging

Service	Actions	Used By
SQS	sqs:*	Workflow queue, LanceDB writer, graph deletion
SNS	sns:*	OCR completion notifications
EventBridge	events:*	S3 upload detection, SFN failure catching

Sample IAM Policy

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": [
        "cloudformation:*",
        "iam:*",
        "ssm:*",
        "kms:*",
        "cloudwatch:*",
        "logs:*",
        "ec2:*",
        "elasticloadbalancing:*",
        "lambda:*",
        "ecs:*",
        "ecr:*",
        "codebuild:*",
        "states:*",
        "s3:*",
        "s3express:*",
        "dynamodb:*",
        "elasticache:*",
        "neptune-db:*",
        "rds:*",
        "bedrock:*",
        "bedrock-agentcore:*",
        "sagemaker:*",
        "transcribe:*",
        "apigateway:*",
        "apigatewayv2:*",
        "cloudfront:*",
        "cognito-idp:*",
        "cognito-identity:*",
        "sqs:*",
        "sns:*",
        "events:*",
        "sts:*",
        "application-autoscaling:*",
        "aws-marketplace:Subscribe",
        "aws-marketplace:Unsubscribe",
        "aws-marketplace:ViewSubscriptions"
      ],
      "Resource": "*"
    }
  ]
}

This policy uses service-level wildcards. For production environments, consider restricting Resource to specific ARNs.

Bedrock Model Access

Since September 2025, Amazon Bedrock automatically enables access to all serverless foundation models. You no longer need to manually enable models in the Bedrock console. Access is controlled via IAM policies and SCPs.

Prerequisites

• Third-party models (Anthropic, Cohere, etc.): The IAM role must have AWS Marketplace permissions (aws-marketplace:Subscribe, aws-marketplace:Unsubscribe, aws-marketplace:ViewSubscriptions). On first invocation, Bedrock auto-subscribes in the background (up to 15 minutes).
• Anthropic models: Require a one-time First Time Use (FTU) form submission (use case details) via the Bedrock console or PutUseCaseForModelAccess API before first invocation.

Note

On the first invocation of a third-party model, you may see AccessDeniedException (403) errors for up to 15 minutes while the auto-subscription completes. See FAQ for details.

Required Models

Model	Model ID	Purpose
Claude Sonnet 4.6	anthropic.claude-sonnet-4-6	Segment analysis, document summarization, web crawler
Claude Haiku 4.5	anthropic.claude-haiku-4-5-20251001-v1:0	Search summarization, description, extraction
Amazon Nova Embed	amazon.nova-2-multimodal-embeddings-v1:0	Vector embeddings (1024d)
Amazon Nova Lite 2	amazon.nova-2-lite-v1:0	Video script extraction

Restricting Model Access

To deny access to a specific model, use an IAM policy:

{
  "Effect": "Deny",
  "Action": ["bedrock:*"],
  "Resource": ["arn:aws:bedrock:*::foundation-model/<model-id>"]
}

Lambda Quotas

Lambda quotas may be limited depending on your account, causing deployment or runtime failures. Check current values in the Service Quotas dashboard.

Quota	Default Limit	Required	Note
Lambda function memory	10,240 MB (some new accounts: 3,008 MB)	5,120 MB	Required for OCR Lambda. Some new accounts auto-increase with usage, cannot be manually requested
Lambda concurrent executions	1,000 per region (may be lower)	1,000	Can request increase via Service Quotas. May take up to one day to take effect

See FAQ for details.

CDK Bootstrap

Before first deployment, CDK bootstrap is required:

npx cdk bootstrap aws://{ACCOUNT_ID}/{REGION}

CDK bootstrap creates an S3 bucket and IAM roles used during deployment. The bootstrapping user additionally needs:

• cloudformation:CreateStack
• s3:CreateBucket
• iam:CreateRole, iam:AttachRolePolicy
• ecr:CreateRepository
• ssm:PutParameter