# Ansible

Ansible is a radically simple IT automation platform that makes your applications and systems easier to deploy and maintain. Automate everything from code deployment to network configuration to cloud management, in a language that approaches plain English, using SSH, with no agents to install on remote systems. https://docs.ansible.com.

Repository: https://github.com/ansible/ansible
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ansible
Homepage: https://www.ansible.com/
Language: Python
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: python, ansible
Last push: 2026-08-26T21:11:29+00:00
Link (homepage): https://www.ansible.com/
Link (site_page): https://www.redhat.com/en/ansible-collaborative/faq
Link (site_page): https://www.redhat.com/en/about/company
Link (site_page): https://www.redhat.com/en/about/privacy-policy
Link (site_page): https://www.redhat.com/en/about/terms-use

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 94/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:39:23.370411+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 85, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5293, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 23, "gap_med": 0.0, "n_releases_24m": 69}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 70474, forks 24324 (observed 2026-08-28T04:12:20.968884+00:00)

## What it is
Ansible is an agentless IT automation platform written in Python that handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, and multi-node orchestration over SSH. It uses human-readable YAML playbooks to describe infrastructure and tasks, requiring no agents or extra open ports on managed machines.

## Use cases
- automate server configuration management across a fleet of machines
- deploy applications with zero-downtime rolling updates
- provision cloud infrastructure from YAML playbooks
- run ad-hoc commands on many hosts in parallel
- automate network device configuration
- orchestrate multi-node deployment workflows without installing agents

## When to choose
- you want agentless automation that only needs SSH access to managed hosts
- you prefer declarative, human-readable YAML playbooks over custom scripts
- you need configuration management, provisioning, and deployment in one tool
- you want a large community ecosystem of modules and collections
- you manage heterogeneous Linux, Windows, and network environments

## When to avoid
- you need real-time streaming or event-driven pipelines better served by a message queue
- you require a web UI and REST API out of the box (consider AWX or Ansible Automation Platform)
- you only manage a single machine where shell scripts suffice
- you need extremely low-latency per-second configuration enforcement

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: configuration-management, deployment, infrastructure-as-code, cli, workflow-automation, cloud
- domain: infrastructure-as-code, cloud-computing, self-hosted, developer-tools
- platform: windows, python, cli, cross-platform
- tags: agentless, ssh, playbooks, provisioning, orchestration, yaml, red-hat, devops, automation, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- ansible/ansible (main) score 94
- ansible/ansible-examples (examples) score 10
- ansible/ansible-modules-core (plugin) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:20.968884+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:16:22.916275+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ansible/ansible (fetched 2026-08-28T04:12:20.968884+00:00, sha 3ba52224ac30)
  - homepage: https://www.ansible.com/ (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.448865+00:00, sha babbdf82d493)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/company (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.461085+00:00, sha 2fd0240dbbec)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/privacy-policy (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.462993+00:00, sha d47ffc278b96)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/terms-use (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.465689+00:00, sha 9f73131f923e)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/all-policies-guidelines (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.467772+00:00, sha 1acce78b7e3d)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/about/digital-accessibility (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.469391+00:00, sha 480d61865362)
  - site_page: https://www.redhat.com/en/ansible-collaborative/faq (fetched 2026-08-28T17:50:45.459323+00:00, sha 7a35cc09f8da)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.