---
# System prepended metadata

title: Ansible talks CfgMgmtCamp 2026
tags: [CfgMgmtCamp 2026]

---

###### tags: `CfgMgmtCamp 2026`

# Ansible talks CfgMgmtCamp 2026

This Forum Post contains the abstracts, slides, discussion notes and videos (where available)

It it part of the [CfgMgmtCamp 2026](https://forum.ansible.com/t/cfgmgmtcamp-2026/44250) set of Forum posts


## Your feedback

Please do reply to this Forum post (or one of the linked threads) to continue the discussion. We know from experience that our community works best when we share ideas.


## Talk: Composing systems in an automated way with Ansible, Podman, and bootc

by Fabio Alessandro "Fale" Locati

* Slides: [Slides](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/KU78JX/resources/handout_KIJdbfs.pdf)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/2jG6ncbm0QQ)

### Abstract

As organizations increasingly adopt containerization, Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for orchestrating clusters. However, for many teams, the complexity and operational overhead of managing a Kubernetes environment can be daunting.
In this talk, we'll explore a practical alternative built on open standards and simple tools: using:
* Ansible for automation
* Podman for container management
* bootc for the operating system.
While Ansible and Podman are very established technologies, bootc is an emerging technology that reimagines how systems are built and updated by transforming container images into fully bootable, atomic operating systems. It brings the simplicity, consistency, and automation of container workflows all the way down to the OS layer.
You'll learn how to use Ansible to define and manage containerized applications and services, leverage Podman's daemonless architecture for secure deployments, and then go one step further by using bootc to build and manage image-based operating systems directly from your container 
We'll wrap up with a live demo creating podman containers using Ansible on a bootc system, showing how these tools together can deliver lightweight, reproducible, and maintainable infrastructure in a simple way.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Ansible for Beginners: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Learned the Hard Way

by James Freeman

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7r3gojLRmg)

### Abstract

Getting started with Ansible is exciting and rapidly improves your productivity. However I've revisited playbooks that I wrote almost a decade ago and found the code today to be almost unmaintainable. Should I have created a role instead of a playbook? Was it really a good idea to copy-paste between projects? (Spoiler: yes, but we've all done it somewhere!) This talk shares the practical knowledge I've gathered over years of working with Ansible—the kind of insights that only come from actually using it in production, making mistakes, and finding better approaches. In this talk, I'll share what worked, what didn't, and why—so you can build automation you'll still be happy with months down the line. You'll leave with both the fundamentals and the perspective that usually takes years to develop.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Building an Infrastructure Automation Platform using Platform Engineering principles

by Niklas Werker

* Slides: [Slides](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/8VCRHU/resources/Building_an_Infrastructure_Automation_Platform_us_jyOR3qh.pdf)
* Video:

### Abstract

Nowadays, everybody seems to be talking about Platform Engineering. The world of software development and cloud native technologies have been flooded with new tools and frameworks under the label of Platform Engineering. This talk aims to unpack these technologies by exploring their underlying principles and addressing the following questions:

- What is Platform Engineering?
- What are the core principles that define Platform Engineering and differentiate it from traditional DevOps?
- How do Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management interplay with Platform Engineering?
- Can we build platforms tailored to the needs of infrastructure automation developers and how would they look like?

The session concludes with a live demo of an Infrastructure Automation Platform that combines the following technologies:
- Backstage
- Ansible
- HashiCorp Vault
- GitLab
- Eclipse Che

This demonstration showcases a practical approach to architecting, building and maintaining an Infrastructure Automation Platform - an approach that can be adapted to platforms composed out of other tech stacks as well. Finally, we will take a glimpse in the future of possible platform capabilities and how they might reshape the way we collaborate.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions


## Talk: Debugging Playbooks Made Easy: The Ansible Playbook Debugger

by Jure Medvesek

* Slides: [Presentation](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/AJAMAN/resources/Steampunk_Spotter_CfgMgmtCamp_2026_Ghent_Vwvwm3d.pptx)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/9SFfOzNbkpQ)

### Abstract

The Ansible community lacks official debugging tools. In this session, I'll present our reference implementation of an Ansible Playbook Debugger that allows you to inspect variables without relying on 'printf' debugging.

This debugger is useful in many scenarios, such as:
* Retrieving structured results from tasks
* Evaluating Jinja expressions or real variables and facts at runtime
* Listing Ansible facts
* Checking actual FQCN used when a short name was used in a playbook

In this session, I'll showcase practical use cases where this tool has proven valuable, including live demos that highlight how it simplifies development, inspects variables, and improves visibility into your playbooks.

### Talk summary

Use Cases

- Retrieve task result structure
- Evaluating jinja expressions
- Listing ansible facts
- FQCN names
- Precedence of arguments evaluation

VSCode plugin - spotter

Supported Ansible:

- Version: 2.11-2.18 from any thread
- Ansible 2.19 must run in main thread

Control flows supported:

- breakpoints - stop on custom task
- stop on start - stop before gather facts
- step - execute till next step
- continue - execute to next breakpoint or the end

Additional choices:

- stop once per task (`strategy`) or for every iteration inside loop (`task`) → `debugType` attribute

watch/debug console (only in strategy debugType mode)

What it is not:

- action plugin debugger - use python debugger
- inventory plugin debugger
- filter, test or lookup plugin debugger - user python debugger

Security considerations:

- masking secrets - Debugger must have access to ALL variables, even those in vault. Potential for data tagging feature introduced in Ansible Core 2.19.

Overriding variable values - not implemented.

### Ideas & followups

Potential in newer versions of Ansible Core to use the [Data Tagging](https://forum.ansible.com/t/core-2-19-and-data-tagging-playground/39909) feature to prevent secrets being exposed during debugging. Tagging varibales as *sensitive* (or equivilent) to prevent exposure during debugging sessions.

### Questions

#### Advice for how to use the debugger for writing plugins in an enterprise setting.

The debugger can debug everything but modules, recommend using breakpoints during debugging sesisons.

#### Is it possible to re-run the task while the debugger is running?

No simple way to do that right now. Potential to explore in the future?

## Talk: Building a self-contained, zero-dependency deployment with Ansible

by Daniel Podwysocki

* Slides: [Slides](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/WRKSNK/resources/presentation_XgNwtci.html)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/F6qP3g8wOhA)

### Abstract

This talk will show you how to finally solve bootstrapping your infrastructure/laptop/coffee machine anywhere.

I will show you how I've solved packaging Ansible into a self-contained, offline-capable installer that can run anywhere, with zero dependencies - no docker or other OCI runtime, no python, just a minimal linux box.

### Talk summary

The presentation, as well as the code alongside explanations can be found at: https://github.com/danielpodwysocki/self-contained-ansible-demo
The real-world case the presentation is based off of can be found at: https://github.com/juno-fx/K8s-Playbooks/blob/main/.github/workflows/release-oneclick.yml

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Use Best-in-Class Tools for End-to-End Automation

by Vincent  Seynhaeve

* Slides: [Slide Deck](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/RQUJBF/resources/cfgmgmtcamp_2026_AAP_OpenTofu_tQsK6Oo.pdf)
* Code: [github.com/RedHatBelux/AAP2_opentofu](https://github.com/RedHatBelux/AAP2_opentofu)
* Video:

### Abstract

Ansible, Terraform, OpenTofu: Choosing between one of these tools becomes a dilemma when teams have to automate their IT environment.

Like many community members, we are also convinced by how these tools work together and their potential to automate and standardize infrastructure.

In this presentation, we'll explore different ways to take infrastructure-as-code to the next level and leverage an end-to-end automation flow.
The presentation will conclude with a live demo showcasing a concrete use case for integrating these tools.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Growing a startup using ansible

by Johan Van de Wauw

* Slides:
* Video:

### Abstract

[Fluves](https://www.fluves.com/) and [Marlinks](https://marlinks.com/) are two sister companies in Ghent focusing on monitoring water & energy infrastucture, both onshore and offshore mostly using fiber optic sensing.
I want to tell the story of how our infrastructure grow with the company, from our first ansible playbook almost 9 years ago to the company we are now with 30 employees and deployments at different critical infrastructure sites all around the world, and under scrutiny of audits such as ISO 27001.
Due to the high volume of data we gather (acoustic sensing can generate terabytes of data per day) and our own interests, we have been self-hosting most of our work, in a time before data sovereignty was a thing and the cloud was still all the hype.
Most of our own development is done in Python, deployments are done using Ansible and I'll touch which open source tools worked for us (amongst other proxmox, postgres, gitea, prometheus, grafana, restic) and how we deploy them, which problems we faced and solved and which ones we didn't.

Even though we are not an open source company, we have contributed back patches to many of the tools we use, and we maintain a number of libraries.

The session is meant to be highly interactive. I want to mention which difficulties we are facing, such as stricter rules on remote access, and hope to hear how others are handling this.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions


#### Are there safety/stability implications to mounting /proc and /dev into a chroot

Not for an installer - however you want to add safeties to not mount over /dev/ twice - this will kill all PTYs and force a machine reboot.

You can see how I safeguard against it here: https://github.com/danielpodwysocki/self-contained-ansible-demo/blob/main/installer/installer.run#L35

Mounting those in is very similar to running a privileged container - it does the same thing.

#### Have you tried any tools that create a single python executable

I considered it briefly, but I quickly ruled that out and opted for deriving the installer from an OCI base.

The prime reason for it had been the customer needing to also run an Execution Environment (ansible lingo for: container where you execute your playbook runs)
I wanted to have a shared base for both.

#### Why not require some container tooling on the host, since the first use case had been to deploy a container platform?

What we were deploying shipped with its own executable, containing containerd. Having 2 implementations of it would bloat the amount of software on the machine and our end users didn't like that.


## Talk: Don't Fear the Jinja - Beyond the Handlebars with Ansible

by Matt Davis

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5BMDL8HBEQ)

### Abstract

Jinja's tricky. Few things can so quickly evoke chutzpah, fear, and regret in the soul of a playbook author; often all at once! Join Ansible Core architect nitzmahone for a light-hearted exploration of some Jinja anti-patterns, and a dive into powerful new Jinja features enabled in recent Ansible Core releases. Learn to confidently embed handlebars in your automation without going "over the handlebars".

### Talk summary

Is a playbook a Jinja template?

- Common misconception, but no. Template ability implemented by each keyword.
- Special sauce over Jinja for Ansible features
    - Automatic lazy template-on-fetch.
    - Native mode (Core team contributed to Jinja upstream project for enhancements to this). Native mode is by default

Jinja Template Behavour in Ansible
* Only run on the Ansible controller.
* Should not have side effects
    * May be evaulated more than once. Can be done during a best effort scenario. Can sometimes happen when a debugger is being used.
* Lazy recursive templating: Templates are not evaulated untl referenced. Laziness was vastly improved in 2.19.

Jinja macros:
* Easier to write than (Python) Jinja plugins.
* Building CI CD pipeline with Ansible.

### Ideas & followups



### Questions

#### Alternative to Jinja?

Yes there are alternatives, but there would be a huge overhead to re-implement and do that safely, and preserve backwards compatibility.

## Talk: Building CI/CD Pipelines for your Ansible code

by Ottavia Balducci

* Slides:
* Video:

### Abstract

Ansible has become indispensable for modern configuration management. Once you start writing Ansible code, the first thing that you should do is to put it under version control. From there, a whole new world of automation possibilities through CI/CD pipelines opens up.

In this session, we will explore how to leverage CI/CD pipelines to supercharge your Ansible repositories. Using GitLab CI/CD as the primary example, we will walk through several real-life scenarios, each illustrated with a live demo. We will start with the simple yet impactful step of adding automatic linting. We will then move on to more advanced use cases such as automatically building collections and execution environments, generating CHANGELOGs with antsibull-changelog, and performing automated testing with Molecule.

Whether you are just starting with Ansible or already managing complex automation frameworks, this talk will offer practical examples and ideas to take your Ansible code management to the next level.

### Talk summary

Due to nature of Ansible, make sure to think about file/code structure beforehand

Have your Ansible code in Git

CI/CD pipelines: execute jobs on git events, usually on a runner. For tests, linting, releases, deployments, ...

GItLab CI/CD: in .gitlab-ci.yml
Divided into stages, executed one after after another. a stage can contain multiple jobs which can run in parallel

Git hooks can be use for same purpose and are great but CI/CD pipelines are better 😃 :

- much more workflows
- nice logging
- dedicated runners
- and much more

### ansible-lint

First pipeline when code is in git: lint the code (static analysis of the code): Check for best practices and possible caveats and to enforce standards

yamllint? Generic for YAML, ansible-lint also uses yamllint, so no separate yamllint is required

You can override lint complains on per line basis using #noqa syntax

### Ansible collections

when code grows, good idea to package the code in a collection:

- modular and reusable
- easily distributed
- clearer context
- easier version control
- easier to maintain

ansible-galaxy cli tool:

init collection: ansible-galaxy collection init <name>

build: ansible-galaxy collection build

publish on galaxy, private galaxy NG or AAP: ansible-galaxy collection publish

install: ansible-galaxy install (downloads all requirements + collection)

CI/CD pipeline: built collection → tarbal → saved as artefact → publish to galaxy server or AAP

### Changelog

clear project history

easier maintenance and support

better user trust

tool: antsibull-changelog

→ add changelog fragment to each commit: describe what the change does

antsibull-changelog release → collects all changelog fragments and adds it to CHANGELOG.rst

also reads inline docs from plugins/modules, so no separate changelog fragment required

syntax:

```yaml
deprecated_features:
	- >-
    ...
breaking_changes:
	- >-
    ...
minor_changes:
  - ...
```

Run from CI/CD on version bump → generate changelog → push new tag

### Execution Environments

- Container images for executing Ansible
- created with ansible-builder
- customizable with: own collections, python packages, certificates, ...
- use with ansible-navigator, AWX or AAP

definition in execution-environment.yml:set dependencies, base image, additional build steps

ansible-builder build --container-runtime docker -t <registry>/<image>:<tag>

CI/CD: run builder to build image → push new image to registry

### Molecule

- create test infrastructure
- run ansible code against it
- verify results
- test idempotence
- destroy test infrastructure

Steps:

- Init: molecule init scenario my_scenario
- create infra: molecule create
- run test: molecule converge
- test idempotence molecule idempotence
- destroy: molecule destroy

or all in sequence: molecule test

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

#### Genarating changelog: can we use singular for a minor change in changelog fragment and will it enarating a new changelog?

FIXME

#### How to figure out when to use a collection? How big a playbook should be to make a collection and/or role?

FIXME

## Talk: Uyuni: connecting two distinct worlds of Salt and Ansible

by Victor Zhestkov, Pablo Suárez Hernández

* Slides:
* Video:

### Abstract

There is a list conceptual differences between Salt and Ansible, but we want to provide some solutions to build a bridge between these two distinct worlds.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Behind The Scene: How We Ship Ansible Network Collections

by Chetna Agrawal

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/f6bJd0jlSos)

### Abstract

How do you transform dozens of ansible network collections into predictable, "always-green" releases? We will share how the Ansible Networking team standardizes structure, testing, and release hygiene across collections, so users get fewer surprises and faster fixes. We will cover our CI gates (sanity/unit/integration), Galaxy readiness checks, branch strategy, and what "Done" means before publishing.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Using antsibull-nox to test your Ansible collection

by Felix Fontein

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/V3pz1d7pjug)

### Abstract

Antsibull-nox is a extension for nox that makes it easy to run various tests and other testing tools for Ansible collections. In this talk, I want to present some background on why I created antsibull-nox, why I chose nox (instead of, say, tox), and demonstrate on how you can use antsibull-nox to test your Ansible collections.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions
    
#### Why is using toml so difficult in Ansible

FIXME

## Talk: Automating Config Deployment with NetBox

by Christopher Rössler

* Slides:
* Video:

### Abstract

At BCIX we have moved from writing switch configurations by hand to a mostly automated process centered around NetBox.

Previously, the information required for the network switch configurations has been scattered across different tools and locations:
- IXP Manager (an open-source management platform designed to facilitate the operations and administration of Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) developed by INEX)
- NetBox
- existing device configurations.

This over time created inconsistencies. To solve this issue, we have come up with a four step plan:
 - Collecting Data in NetBox using ansible
 - Generating the configs with jinja2-templates
 - Compare and validate actual vs intended configurations
 - Deployment of the configs on the switches

This improved consistency across IXP Manager, NetBox and the switch configurations. Additionally this has enabled us to leverage NetBox for further automation tasks like preparing, announcing and doing Maintenances on the BCIX Peering Platform more efficiently.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: ansible-docsmith - ultimate tool to document ansible roles

by Kirill Satarin

* Slides: [Presentation](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/UJHJE7/resources/ansible-docsmith_-_ultimate_tool_to_document_ansi_LyVf0hQ.pdf)
* Repo: [github.com/foundata/ansible-docsmith](https://github.com/foundata/ansible-docsmith)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/yNm9Aut_7Zk)

### Abstract

Maintaining accurate, up-to-date documentation for Ansible roles is a persistent challenge when maintaining ansible roles. ansible-docsmith solves this problem by automating documentation generation from a single source of truth - argument_specs.yml file.

  In this talk, we'll explore ansible-docsmith and how to use it to forget about ever updating the readme.md file for the role, but always keeping it up to date.

  - Using argument_specs.yml as the single source of truth for ansible role readme.md file
  - Using ansible-docsmith in CI/CD: automation pipelines and pre-commit hooks, making documentation updates effortless
  - Available customization options in ansible-docsmith: how to use Jinja2 templates to generate readme.md according to your specific documentation standards
  - Compare ansible-docsmith with ansibull-docs - pros and cons, use case scenarios

https://github.com/foundata/ansible-docsmith

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups
    
- There is 3 different community tools for working with Ansible role documentation:
    1. https://github.com/foundata/ansible-docsmith
    2. https://ansible-doctor.geekdocs.de/
    3. https://github.com/docsible/docsible/

    Is there an opportunity to implement some sort of auto README generation into an Ansible Community tool such as antsibull-docs? Leveraging `arugment_spec.yml`?

### Questions

## Talk: Ansible - State of the Community

by John "gundalow" Barker, Don Naro

* Slides: [Slides](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/PES9FE/resources/Talk__Ansible_-_State_of_the_Community_Feb_2026_mw4GC2a.pdf)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/fQ5bEdWgVeo)

### Abstract

As one of the big events on the Ansible Community calendar, CfgMgmtCamp is an opportunity to get together and review how we're doing as a community.

This talk is aimed at anyone with an interest in Ansible, as all voices are welcome in the discussion of how to shape the community in the coming year.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Reliable Network Backups & Restore with Ansible: Idempotent, Vendor-Neutral, — with AI/ML Diff Severity

by Rohit Thakur

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/0ke0l6_FFGo)

### Abstract

In network automation, reliable backups are critical but often overlooked. This session explores how to design a consistent, vendor-neutral backup and restore workflow using Ansible.
Backups that "usually work" aren't good enough. This talk presents a battle-tested, backup/restore workflow for Cisco IOS/IOS-XR/NX-OS using Ansible and Validated Content. We'll show how to pick the right transfer method (SCP/SFTP/TFTP), enable and secure internal file servers, and make tasks idempotent across vendors. We'll also cover selecting device-native paths (`bootflash:/, disk0:, /misc/config`) to avoid path pitfalls.
 We will also go through a lightweight, offline rules + ML approach that scores the severity of configuration diffs (e.g., VLAN/ACL/BGP/interface changes) to prioritize reviews and automate safe rollbacks. Live demos include copying configs, verifying hashes, ranking diff severity, and controlled restores.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Asking a local LLM about my Ansible playbooks because why not

by David Moreau-Simard

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/WvMmCr8Ho4c)

### Abstract

LLMs can write Ansible roles and playbooks as well as plugins and modules to a relative degree of competency with commodity hardware that you can run offline, at home, with less privacy and security concerns.

They certainly understand what Ansible is, how it works and they can write YAML, Jinja or Python.

What about troubleshooting an issue with an Ansible playbook ?
You could provide it with a log file or copy & paste the results of your ansible-playbook command.
Maybe it could point you in the right direction... or hallucinate. Who knows ? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

ARA Records Ansible playbook results to a database and provides an API to query the results.
What if we gave a LLM programmatic access to that API using Model Context Protocol (MCP) ?
It would allow the model to include context like host facts, playbook files and detailed task results, amongst other things.

The author experimented with it (for science) and the results are interesting.

Join us to learn about the experiment, how it works and how it might be useful in a number of ways.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: How we opened up Ansible's documentation infrastructure to the community

by Don Naro

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/R3jlJmve1fs)

### Abstract

The Ansible community team at Red Hat work to dismantle closed infrastructure and open up workloads and processes to community contributors.

Join me to hear how we moved from locked-down Jenkins jobs to transparent, community-managed GitHub workflows. I'll share how we navigated the technical challenges of migrating a truly chonky Sphinx build process, preserved a decade of SEO authority, and scored some major quality improvements by providing contributor access.

It all started at an Ansible contributor summit at CfgMgmtCamp 2023 too! So please join me as I share what we learned about infrastructure, trust, and some unexpected ways investment in OSS can unlock community potential.

### Talk summary

Dependency challenges initially. Lost reasoning for why certain versions were pinned in `requirements.txt` files.

Dependency pinning strategy:
    - Keep production builds stable.
    - Create tested and relaxed dependencies.
    - Don't force users to install pinned dependencies.
    - Bump dependencies automatically.

Using `nox` to help with test automation - linting documentation for any formatting issues.

Ansible documentation bot for engaging with the community contributing to documentation.

Implemented patchback for backporting certain pieces of documentation. Reducing manual maintainer burden.



### Ideas & followups

### Questions

#### Will the magic va work in  2.19?

FIXME

## Talk: Ansible Style Guide and guidelines for compatibility with newer versions of Ansible community package/ansible-core (Ansible 12/ansible-core 2.19 and above)

by Kostiantyn Volenbovskyi

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/kOmD94rkB6E)

### Abstract

There are several Ansible Style Guides and I would like to present a different one based on existing ones with certain guidelines added and changed

It covers topics such as list of dictionaries as recommended structure for "more complex" variable, usage of set_fact, etc.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Talk: Writing, running, and testing awesome Ansible content with natural language and AI - powered by Ansible's MCP server

by Shatakshi Mishra

* Slides: [Slides](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/WG9ST8/resources/Writing_running_and_testing_Ansible_content_with_MmucWqV.pptx)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/9QKJ7q6rsjg)

### Abstract

Ansible content developers lose hours each day to context switching, which kills productivity and increases the risk of human errors.

We've integrated an AI-powered Model Context Protocol (MCP) server directly into the Ansible VS Code extension to address this problem. The result is a single, unified development experience that goes beyond an ordinary AI code assistant. Adding MCP server capabilities to the Ansible VS Code extension gives you an intelligent development environment that allows you to work within the context of all your existing Ansible content, including playbook, roles, and inventories. As a result, teams can reduce fragmentation in their workflows to gain productivity and standardise and accelerate Ansible content development.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

#### Best practices for Ansible Content - How did the devtools team generated that Markdown file used for the MCP context, were Ansible Lint rules used to generate that?

#### `define_and_build_execution_env` - Is it able to install `podman` for me too? Say I'm on a system which doesn't have `podman` installed, or I don't know much about containers. Help reduce the barrier to entry for new users.

#### How many tokens does it use?

All of the tooling is shared so the token count is not excessive. The feature is still in the process of being developed.

#### How to do streaming output work in ansible?

FIXME

#### How does data tagging work (the support) in 2.19? (sensative data tagging)

FIXME

#### Visualizer debugging in 2.19 (protomater collection finder)

FIXME

#### How does tag on the variable work?

FIXME

#### Is it possible to see all the deprication working after the run of the playbook?

FIXME

#### If the include task can have return value?

FIXME

## Talk: A Love Letter to Ansible Core 2.19

by Matt Davis

* Slides: 
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/mTc38vpvTHQ)

### Abstract

Nervous about upgrading to Ansible Core 2.19? Learn how the revamped template engine and error handling in Ansible's latest release will make your life easier from a self-proclaimed Ansible lover.

### Talk summary

### Ideas & followups

### Questions

## Contributor Summit: Ansible Community & Partner Engineering updates

by Don Naro & John 'gundalow' Barker

* Slides
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/TeF2RGTB4zc)
* ➡️  Forum Posts
    * Post 1
    * Post 2

### Abstract

Don & Gundalow share updates from the community and partner engineering team at Red Hat and delve into our plans for the year ahead.

### Talk summary

What is involved in the Certified & Validated process
Is it manual or automated, can it be shared?

[ABU Validation Workflow PDF](https://connect.redhat.com/sites/default/files/2025-08/ABU%20_%20Validation%20workflow%20guide%20v2.0.pdf)

Idea: Add Check to ensure that release is tagged, avoids problems with Ansible community package release.

### Ideas & followups

- Certified collection workflow process. How does it work? Is it a manual or automated process? A mixture of both?
  - Potential use of AI for helping with the reviews?
  - Collection tagging releases until its ready for release which has caused issues with Ansible Community package collection building.
  - Maybe add a new requirement to the certified collection process that requires a collection to be tagged?
- Centralise GitHub Action workflows across different repositories into [github.com/ansible-content-actions](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-content-actions)?
- Missing documentation around Zuul CI use for publishing `community` namespace collections to Galaxy.
- Who is the Point of Contact for Zuul CI build isuses?
- [https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible.content_builder](https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible.content_builder) moving this functionality to the `ansible-creator` utility.
- `ansible-galaxy` CLI tool with `requirements.yml` adding an `update` command or `--update` flag to update collections which do have updates available. Right now the only way to do this is to use the `--force` flag on `install` which causes all collections to be re-installed.
  - Raise an issue on `ansible/ansible` for `ansible-galaxy` for this issue.

- [`ansible/galaxy`](https://github.com/ansible/galaxy/) repository should be archived. Pending moval of namespace requests to forum.ansible.com -  Add to the repositories `README.md` file mentioning this to avoid confusion. Mention that the repository is not for the `ansible-galaxy` CLI either. That should be raised in `ansible/ansible`.

#### Focus on content quality

#### Improve content discovery and user adoption

- galaxy.ansible.com UX improvements:
  - Ansible Collections - Last tested with Ansible Core version? Last linited via `ansible-lint`?
  - Add `ansible-lint` results to collection overview.
  - Exposing CI results from the collection repository to Galaxy.
  - Scoring system?
  - Favorite a collection on Galaxy to see your favorite collections on Galaxy homepage.
  - Can we add a count for how many people have clicked on the documentation? Usage / consumption statistics for collection maintainers to see.
  - A label on Galaxy that the collection is included in the Ansible Community package.
  - Filter for collections containing plugins or roles etc.

#### Reduce maintainer burden

- `argument_spec.yml` potential review and maybe improvements?
- Better documentation rendering for collections on Galaxy.
- Community AI agent skills for helping with maintainer burdening tasks. Could these go into the [collection_template](https://github.com/ansible-collections/collection_template/)?

#### Act as open source champions

- Let the community know when it's not going well. If it breaks, it happens, we're working on it, expecting an ETA on fix, Root Cause Analysis would be nice etc.
- Signal to noise ratio, forum tag for `critical-service-status`. Using maybe [Gatus](https://github.com/TwiN/gatus) or [Uptime Kuma](https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma) for status page for docs.ansible.com, galaxy.ansible.com etc.

➡️ Forum Post: [Ansible Community Status page & Notifications](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-community-status-page-notifications/45253)

#### Other

- Security scanning / Static Application Security Testing, Software Composition Analysis scanning? Dependency vulnerabilities.

### Questions

## Contributor Summit: Open Discussion: Good, bad and ugly

by Felix Fontein & Matt Davis

* Slides:
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/FeRj3AUYmgI)
* ➡️ Forum Posts
    * [CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (0/12): Problems in the Ansible world and how to improve on them](https://forum.ansible.com/t/cfgmgmtcamp-2026-discussion-0-12-problems-in-the-ansible-world-and-how-to-improve-on-them/45300)

**As a user**

* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45288
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45289
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45290
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45291
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45292
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45293

**As a collection maintainer and developer:**

* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45294
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45295
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45296
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45297
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45298
* https://forum.ansible.com/t/45299

### Abstract

felixfontein and nitzmahone lead an open discussion about the state of things in Ansible and how we can improve.

### Talk summary

#### Support for Python versions
Support for Python versions. Managing RHEL 8 / Alma 8 / Older Debian LTS version you might find out that the latest Ansible core versions are unusable because they require newer version of Python to be installed on the Managed Node.
- RHEL packaging the bindings for packaging multiple versions of Python, not just the system Python.
- Possible to target multiple versions of Python
- Ansible Core 2.21 - Tiny c types wrapper around libdnf and that is implemented into the Ansible DNF module.
- Still would need a supported Python version of the Mangaed Node (target).
- When is this going to be supported for certified content / system roles.
  - To be determined.
- <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/86432>

#### Ansible 2.9 Templating Changes (data tagging)
    
- Data Tagging: Changes to trust model and templating changes, boolean(ish) values are now disallowed. In general is a good thing because it makes templating more consist. More consistent typing.
  - Huge feature and seemed like it was not tested very well. Red Hat maintained collections which were broken, long talk against pre-releases. Example: `ansible.netcommon` was broken and required changes in core but core was already released so it was a bad experience for the community. `ansible.netcommon` is now testing against `devel` now.
  - Introduce a requirement to test against the `devel` branch? ACTION: Discussion with the Ansible Steering Committee.

#### INJECT_FACTS_AS_VARS
- [Forum Post](https://forum.ansible.com/t/inject-facts-as-vars-is-defaulting-to-false-in-2-24/44886)
- Being changed without communication as to why this is happening. Better communication for breaking changes. Changed due to a security problem and can cause variable collision. Was pending data tagging being implemented to make this change.
- ACTION: Follow up with Nitz to see which embedded docs/troubleshooting pages are still in ansible-core and ensure they still work (grep for docs URLs in core)
    - Might need a short URL for permalink errors
    - Maybe docs should also link to Forum
    - Discussion area for the core team to communicate changes? `ansible-core` tag and announcement maybe?

#### Collection maintainers when deprecating content
    
- Collection maintainers when deprecating content in their collection to make sure you link to these issues and pull requests. In the changelog fragment link to the PR for more context for the users. Use deprecation messages so when a user when running `ansible-playbook` can have a message for more context as to why it's being removed.
  - Record Architectural Decision Records in the collection so that if someone wants to go through and find out why something was deprecated they can read about that and why it was changed.
  - Subdomain for redirects. Having these redirects stored in a GitHub repository and could be contributed by the community. Submit a PR to add a new redirect so it doesn't matter if the documentation is moved it doesn't matter. It will link to the correct location.
  - Forum tag for these kind of specific discussions.
  - Where could these kind of documents be stored? In the collection itself? Could there be a standard around this inside collections? Like in the `meta/` directory with a specific file name.
  - Concern: If we make it too complicated for collection maintainers it won't get used. Need to carefully consider the solutions.

#### Wanrings & Deprecation Messages
    
- Warnings & Deprecation messages: Being able to disable specific ones. Making maybe certain ones errors rather than warnings.
  - 2.19 standardised the error and warning controls in Ansible Core. Assign IDs to the warnings and collections could do the same for their modules. Hopefully some new features upcoming in new Ansible Core versions.
  - Being able to get a count of the number of deprecation warnings have occurred.
  - Error as warning, warning as error in Ansible Core 2.19.
  - Capture warnings and correlate them to tasks. Accessible in task results, or `register` a variable. Improvement for integration testing, can check that a warning has occurred now.
    - ACTION: Contact nitz if they could create a forum post about this warnings and error as warnings.

### Ideas & followups

- Does it fix the issue with newer versions of Ansible Core not supporting RHEL 8 for example?
  - Yes, this is a pattern that the core team is trying out and if successful could be implemented by collection maintainers too.

### Questions

## Contributor Summit: Bullhorn, Meetup, Release Calendar & Social Media

by Anwesha Das & John 'gundalow' Barker

* Slides: [PDF](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/media/ghent2026/submissions/HPHLRM/resources/Contributor_Summit__Bullhorn_Meetup_Social_Promot_6E48V6t.pdf)
* Video: [YouTube](https://youtu.be/ilkpnigmiMw)
* ➡️ Forum Posts
    * [Problems in the Ansible world and how to improve on them](https://forum.ansible.com/t/45300)
    * Post 2

### Abstract

@anwesha and @gundalow discuss Bullhorn improvements, release calendar sync, meetup strategy, and other topics related to communication and promotion of the Ansible community.

### Talk summary

#### Bullhorn

- Quarterly edition of the Bullhorn?
  - Maybe pinning certain annoucements for a few weeks on the forum? Would that be too much? Maybe...
- Discussion annoucements are **very** useful in the bullhorn.
- Major releases / changes to Ansible Core, having those posts included in the bullhorn are **very** useful.
- Matrix barrier for entry for the bullhorn:
  - Forum - Discourse to Matrix bridge. Open Source project.
  - Forum - Email to Matrix bridge. Open Source project.
    - Email to a email address & then arrives in Matrix and then could be included in the bullhorn.
  - Forum Event for that specific edition of the bullhorn and then all replies to that event are added to that edition.
  - Ansible Collections - GitHub releases - Subscribe to releases only and have those notifications be included in the bullhorn?

#### Ansible Meetups
    
- Meetups - Ansible is now on Meetup Pro
  - Ansible Community meetup repository: <https://github.com/ansible-community/meetup>
  - Ansible Meetup Toolkit: <https://docs.ansible.com/projects/meetup/en/latest/>
  - Having a repository / speakers directory where folks can add themselves as being interested in speaking at Meetups on certian topics? Would this help meetup organizers find speakers?
    - What is the level of expertise that you want to hand out to the attendees.
    - Some way of when folks sign up to meetups we can gauge the kind of talks wanted.
      - Helping meetup organisers know the expertise level of  participants to know what kind of talks are needed.
    - Maybe having a speakers directory on the forum?
  - Library of Community talks which could be used?
    - Which format for the speaker content should be used? PowerPoint, Latex, Google Slides etc.
    - Probably not PDF because then the content could not be editable.
  - Uploading speaker content without any license. Do we need to have a common license for content?
  - Ensure if a meetup takes place then please make sure that information about the meetup is posted on the forum :heart:
    
* ➡️ Forum Post: https://forum.ansible.com/t/github-repo-for-slides-for-meetups/45281

#### Social Media
- What Social Media platforms would you prefer for use:
  - mastodon.social
  - linkedin.com
  - Metrics based on the type of platform.
    
    
* ➡️ Forum Post: https://forum.ansible.com/t/social-media-promotion-ideas/45147

#### Upstream Release Calendar
    
- Release Calendar:
  - Releasing Ansible Community package.
  - Release mentorship program was introduced.
  - Plan releases better.
  - Give recognition to the release managers.
    - Having a special release calendar in the forum.
  - Better schedule. Dependent on the Ansible Core releases.
  - Sometimes Ansible Core releases are moved, and then the community package finds out and then know that the Ansible Community package needs a release. Area for improvement: Ansible Core communication on release time so the Ansible Community package can be coordionated.
  - Issue with some collections not following semver.
    - Could there be potential for helping collection maintainers with auto bumping collection version based on commit messages? :thinking_face:
  - Core is usually release Monday afternoon. Suggestion for a maybe a week between Ansible Core vs Ansible Community package releases?
    
    
* ➡️ Forum Post: https://forum.ansible.com/t/proposal-ansible-community-package-release-calendar/44947

### Ideas & followups

### Questions