Installing Ansible AI Skills with Lola and AI Forge

In the previous post, we covered what Lola is and why it matters. Now let’s put it to work: installing Ansible community AI skills from the ai-forge project and seeing how they fit into an Ansible development workflow.

What is AI Forge?

AI Forge is an Ansible community project, hosted under the ansible-community GitHub organization, that packages AI assistant skills and commands for developing Ansible content that follows Red Hat Communities of Practice (CoP) automation good practices.

Instead of manually referencing documentation or remembering conventions, ai-forge gives your AI coding assistant the knowledge to guide you through creating, reviewing, and improving Ansible content: roles, collections, modules, playbooks, and tests.

Available Modules

Ai-forge ships as a Lola marketplace with 7 modules. Numbers below combine the project’s auto-generated SKILLS.md index, each module’s README, and a live lola search --mod check, which is the most current source since the repo updates frequently:

Step-by-Step Installation

1. Install Lola

pip install lola-ai

2. Add the Ansible Content Marketplace

Ai-forge publishes its modules through a Lola marketplace. Register it:

lola market add ansible-content \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ansible-community/ai-forge/main/lola-market.yml

Search the marketplace to confirm the modules are discoverable:

$ lola search --mod ansible

Local registry (5 modules)

  ansible-collection-sdlc
    26 skills, 3 commands, 0 agents
  ansible-collection-standards
    1 skill, 3 commands, 0 agents
  ansible-content-development
    4 skills, 0 commands, 0 agents
  ansible-documentation
    1 skill, 0 commands, 0 agents
  ansible-role
    0 skills, 1 command, 0 agents

3. Install Modules

Since Ansible work often spans multiple projects, you can install to user scope so the skills are available everywhere:

lola install ansible-collection-standards -a claude-code --scope user
lola install ansible-role -a claude-code --scope user
lola install ansible-collection-sdlc -a claude-code --scope user
lola install ansible-content-development -a claude-code --scope user
lola install cloud_content -a claude-code --scope user
lola install network_content -a claude-code --scope user

Or install to the current project only (default scope):

lola install ansible-collection-sdlc -a claude-code

4. Verify Installation

$ lola list

Installed (7 modules)

ansible-collection-standards
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

ansible-role
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

ansible-collection-sdlc
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

ansible-content-development
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

cloud_content
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

network_content
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

ansible-documentation
  - scope: user
    assistants: [claude-code]

5. Start a New Claude Code Session

Skills and commands are read when Claude Code loads its configuration, so start a fresh session after installing for the new skills and slash commands to be picked up. In Claude Code, you can check what’s available by typing /skills in the prompt.

What Gets Installed Where

For Claude Code at user scope, Lola writes to your ~/.claude/ configuration directory: skills go under ~/.claude/skills/, and commands under ~/.claude/commands/. Exactly how agent-level guidance is merged into any existing CLAUDE.md depends on the version of Lola you’re running, so check the Lola documentation for the current behavior rather than relying on this post for that detail.

How the Mechanisms Differ

Commands are invoked explicitly by typing the command name in Claude Code. For example, /ansible-cop-review (from the ansible-collection-standards module) triggers a CoP compliance review.

Skills activate automatically when your request matches the skill’s trigger conditions. Ask Claude Code to “write a module” and the write-module skill (from ansible-content-development) activates with Ansible module development guidance.

Using the Skills in Practice

Review Code Against CoP Best Practices

/ansible-cop-review

Example:

❯ /ansible-cop-review

  Thought for 4s (ctrl+o to expand)

● I'll review the Ansible code in this project against Red Hat CoP automation good
  practices. Let me start by discovering the project scope and finding all Ansible files.

  Searched for 3 patterns (ctrl+o to expand)
  ...

This command (from ansible-collection-standards) reviews Ansible code against Red Hat CoP automation good practices with severity classification, a diff-aware mode, and auto-fix capabilities, per the module’s own documentation.

Scaffold a New Role

/ansible-scaffold-role

This command (from ansible-role) scaffolds a new role with an interactive variable builder, task componentization, smart handler generation, and CoP compliance.

Scaffold a New Collection

/ansible-scaffold-collection

This command (from ansible-collection-standards) scaffolds a new content collection with plugin generation, CI/CD pipelines, and CoP compliance.

Review a Collection for Community Inclusion

/ansible-collection-standards-inclusion-review

Reviews an Ansible collection for inclusion in the Ansible community package.

Write an Ansible Module

Just ask Claude Code to write a module and the write-module skill activates automatically:

Write an Ansible module for managing nginx virtual hosts

Per the ansible-content-development module’s skill description, this scaffolds new modules or reviews existing ones against official best practices from docs.ansible.com.

Create Conventional Commits

commit these changes

The commit skill (from ansible-collection-sdlc) creates conventional commits with FQCN scopes for Ansible collection content.

Create a Pull Request

create a PR for these changes

The create-pr skill runs pre-flight checks, validates changelog fragments, and creates a draft PR.

Check CI Status

/check-pr-actions

This command (from ansible-collection-sdlc) checks GitHub Actions or GitLab CI status for a pull request and analyzes failures. A related command, /check-pr-sonarcloud, checks SonarCloud analysis results.

Agent Roles in the SDLC Module

The ansible-collection-sdlc module doesn’t currently define any subagents of its own (its README lists “None currently defined” under Agents). Instead, its 26 skills cover the collection development lifecycle end to end: changelog-fragment, commit, create-branch, create-pr, pr-review, release, run-tests, sanity, security-scan, remove-deprecations, tox-lint, version helpers (current-release, next-release), stable-branch release orchestration (stable-release, stable-release-analyze, stable-release-prep), and SonarCloud integration (configure-sonarcloud-collection, configure-sonarcloud-coverage, sonarcloud-remediation).

Optional Configuration

The ansible-collection-sdlc module supports an optional configuration file for defaults like your collections path, GitHub username, and sanity test mode:

cp ansible-release.conf.template ~/.ansible-release.conf
vim ~/.ansible-release.conf
source ~/.ansible-release.conf

See the module’s ansible-release.conf.template in the repo for the full list of options.

Updating Modules

When ai-forge publishes updates:

# Update module sources
lola mod update

# Regenerate assistant files
lola update
```text

## Licensing

This is worth flagging clearly since the two projects use different licenses: the Lola tool itself is released under **Apache-2.0**, while the **ai-forge** content (the Ansible skills, commands, and modules themselves) is released under **GPL-3.0-or-later**. If you're building on either project, check the license that applies to what you're actually using.

## Tips

- Use `--scope user` if you work across multiple Ansible projects and want the skills available everywhere; use the default project scope to keep them contained to one project.
- Start a new Claude Code session after installing so new skills and commands are picked up.
- Some ai-forge modules (`ansible-content-development`, `cloud_content`, `network_content`) currently ship skills only, with no slash commands; others (`ansible-role`) ship a command only, with no auto-triggered skills.
- Optional dependencies referenced by the SDLC and standards modules include `ansible-creator`, `ansible-lint`, `ansible-test`, `antsibull-changelog`, and the `gh` CLI. None are strictly required, but some skill features fall back to manual steps without them.

## References

- [AI Forge GitHub Repository](https://github.com/ansible-community/ai-forge)
- [AI Forge Skills Index (SKILLS.md)](https://github.com/ansible-community/ai-forge/blob/main/SKILLS.md)
- [Lola GitHub Repository](https://github.com/LobsterTrap/lola)
- [Lola Documentation](https://lobstertrap.org/lola/)
- [Lola Community Marketplace](https://github.com/RedHatProductSecurity/lola-market)
- [Red Hat CoP Automation Good Practices](https://github.com/redhat-cop/automation-good-practices)