Dev Guide: Building an MCP Server to Surface AWS Waste Costs to AI Agents

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A developer tutorial published on DEV Community walks through adding a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to an open-source AWS cost scanner called zombiescan. The tool scans an AWS account in read-only mode across all enabled regions, identifying unused resources such as stale ECR images, empty VPCs, and unretained log groups, then outputs findings as a single JSON document. Both a terminal interface and an AI agent consume the same scan results, with the MCP server performing all arithmetic — totals, counts, and breakdowns — so the agent never miscalculates figures itself. The guide demonstrates that delegating computation to the tool engine, rather than relying on a language model to add numbers, eliminates errors observed when small models were asked to count or sum lists independently. The project requires Python 3.12, AWS read-only credentials, and optionally Claude Code for the agent integration, with the full source available on GitHub.

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