This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Bansi Delwadia
On June 26, 2025, we hosted a power-packed AWS User Group Toronto meetup as part of Toronto Tech Week—and what an incredible evening it was!
From AI-powered developer tools to real-world cloud architecture insights, the event was a celebration of learning, building, and community connection.
🛠️ Hands-On Workshop: Smarter Way to Work in CLI with Amazon Q Developer
The evening kicked off with a 90-minute immersive workshop led by @dheerajchaudhary, AWS Hero and UG Pune Leader, focused on the powerful Amazon Q Developer CLI—an AI coding assistant purpose-built for developers who live in the terminal.
What is Amazon Q Developer CLI?
It’s a next-gen AI-powered tool that brings natural language interfaces, code generation, AWS integration, and context-aware automation directly to your terminal.
What We Did in the Workshop
Participants walked through real-world use cases and got hands-on experience using Amazon Q CLI in their own terminal environments. No AWS account was required—just a laptop and curiosity!
Here’s what we explored step-by-step:
1. Setup & Environment Prep
Installed Amazon Q CLI on local machines (Mac, WSL, Linux)
Logged in using AWS Builder ID
Reviewed core CLI commands and command palette
2. Natural Language to Shell Commands
Used q translate to convert plain English into real shell commands
Example: “Find files modified in the last 7 days and save to a text file” →
find . -mtime -7 -type f > recent-files.txt
Practiced editing and executing AI-suggested commands right from the terminal
3. Real-Time Chat in the Terminal
Started chats using q chat to ask for help like:
- "Fix the build failures in this project"
- "List my S3 buckets in us-west-2"
- "Write unit tests for this file"
Explored multi-turn conversations with Amazon Q to debug, generate, and improve code workflows
4. AWS Resource Interaction
Used Q CLI to interact with AWS services using natural language:
- Translate “List all EC2 instances in us-east-1” → AWS CLI command
- Query CloudWatch logs and generate policy documents
5. Debugging & Automation
- Analyzed simulated Lambda error logs with Q
- Generated IAM policies dynamically from error messages
- Practiced iterative problem-solving using contextual understanding and tooling suggestions
Key Takeaways
- Amazon Q Developer CLI drastically simplifies how developers work in the terminal
- It boosts productivity with natural language workflows, auto-suggestions, and smart AWS integration
- It’s open source, easy to install, and incredibly helpful for developers at any skill level
Cloud Case Study: Automating Restore Testing at Rewind
After the workshop, we dove into a real-world case study by the team at Rewind, who shared how they automated restore testing to meet SOC 2 compliance and improve operational workflows.
Their talk covered:
- Leveraging AWS Backup to implement scalable, repeatable restore validation
- Integrating Jira for audit trail and task orchestration
- Lessons learned from automating testing across multiple teams and environments
- A live demo showing how automation reduced manual work and improved backup reliability
Community Energy & Gratitude
The energy in the room was electric — we had over 150+ registered attendees, thoughtful questions, great conversations, and new faces joining the AWS community.
Special thanks to:
@mariaencinar and the AWS Community team for ongoing support 💛
Everyone who helped make the evening a success!
What’s Next?
We're already planning future sessions with more hands-on content, startup showcases, and AWS innovations.
👉 Follow us on Meetup
👉 Follow us on LinkedIn
Let’s keep learning, building, and growing — together.
Until next time, keep experimenting and exploring! ☁️
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Bansi Delwadia
Bansi Delwadia | Sciencx (2025-06-27T22:49:45+00:00) AWS User Group Toronto @ Toronto Tech Week’25 – June Meetup Recap. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/06/27/aws-user-group-toronto-toronto-tech-week25-june-meetup-recap-4/
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