APEX Accelerator

June 8, 2026 · View on GitHub

Modernize your Azure Infrastructure with AI. A production-ready template for building Well-Architected environments using custom Copilot agents, Dev Containers, and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Overview

This accelerator provides the scaffolding and governance to move from requirements to deployed infrastructure using an orchestrated multi-agent workflow. It leverages domain-specific AI agents to ensure every deployment is Well-Architected, governed, and documented.

What you get: Specialized agents, skills, validation scripts, a full dev container with all tools pre-installed, and an optional weekly sync workflow that keeps your agents and skills up to date with the upstream APEX project.

Prerequisites

Requirement	Details
VS Code	Latest stable release
GitHub Copilot	Active license (Individual, Business, or Enterprise)
Docker Desktop	For the dev container (or GitHub Codespaces)
Azure subscription	Required (Owner or Contributor on the target subscription)

Quick Start

1. Create Your Repository

This repository is a GitHub Template — not a fork.

Click "Use this template" → "Create a new repository" at the top of this page
Choose an owner and name (e.g., my-infraops-project)
Select Private (do not use Public)
Click Create repository

Your new repo has the same directory structure and files but a clean commit history and no fork relationship. It is entirely yours.

2. Clone and Open in Dev Container

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/my-infraops-project.git
cd my-infraops-project
code .

When prompted by VS Code, click "Reopen in Container" (or run Dev Containers: Reopen in Container from the Command Palette). The container build takes 3-5 minutes and pre-installs:

Azure CLI with Bicep extension
Terraform CLI with TFLint
GitHub CLI (gh)
Node.js + npm (validation scripts)
Python 3 + pip (MCP server, diagram generation)
Go (Terraform MCP server)

3. Initialize Your Repository

After the dev container starts, run the initialization commands:

npm install
npm run init
npm run sync:workflows

What these do:

Command	Purpose
`npm install`	Install Node.js dependencies (validation scripts, linting)
`npm run init`	One-time setup — replaces all references to the accelerator template repo with your repo's URL (auto-detected from git remote). Run `npm run init -- --dry-run` first to preview changes.
`npm run sync:workflows`	Fetches the latest GitHub Actions workflows from the upstream APEX project into your `.github/workflows/` directory

Note: Python dependencies (diagrams, Azure Pricing MCP server, apex-recall) are installed automatically by the dev container's post-create.sh script. No manual pip install is needed.

After running, review and commit:

git --no-pager diff
git add -A && git commit -m "chore: initialize from template"
git push

Expected diff: You will see changes to AGENTS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and one or more .github/workflows/ files. You may also see formatting-only changes to .vscode/mcp.json (the dev container normalizes its JSON arrays to multi-line format on first start) — this is expected and safe to commit.

Tip: Use git --no-pager diff instead of plain git diff to avoid the less pager. If you do use git diff and see a : prompt, press q to exit or Space to scroll.

4. Set Up Azure

Run the setup wizard to configure Azure OIDC authentication, RBAC roles, and GitHub secrets/variables — all in one command:

az login
npm run setup

The wizard creates an Entra ID app registration, OIDC federated credentials (for main branch + dev/staging/prod environments), assigns Reader at your Management Group and Contributor at your subscription, and configures all GitHub secrets and variables. It is idempotent — safe to re-run.

See the Azure Setup documentation for headless mode, manual setup steps, and troubleshooting.

5. Allow GitHub Actions to Create Pull Requests

The maintenance workflows (step 6) open pull requests automatically when they detect drift. This requires one permission change in your repository settings.

Go to your repository on GitHub
Click Settings → Actions → General
Scroll to Workflow permissions
Check Allow GitHub Actions to create and approve pull requests
Click Save

Why: GitHub disables this by default on all new repositories. Without it, any workflow that opens a PR will fail with: GitHub Actions is not permitted to create or approve pull requests

6. Run the Maintenance Workflows

After Azure setup completes, trigger the two scheduled maintenance workflows once so your repository has a fresh baseline before you start working. Both run weekly on Mondays after this initial seed.

gh workflow run "Weekly Maintenance"
gh workflow run "Governance Policy Baseline"

Workflow	Purpose	Schedule
Weekly Maintenance	Refreshes the AVM module index, tracks Azure service deprecations, runs the quarterly docs/orphan audit, validates Draw.io tooling, and link-checks docs.	Mondays 06:00 UTC
Governance Policy Baseline	Collects effective Azure Policy assignments (including management-group inheritance) from your subscription into `agent-output/_baseline/` so the IaC planner consumes real governance constraints. Requires step 4 to be complete.	Mondays 05:00 UTC

Verify both runs succeeded before continuing:

gh run list --workflow "Weekly Maintenance" --limit 1
gh run list --workflow "Governance Policy Baseline" --limit 1

Each run may open a pull request when it detects drift (new AVM module versions, policy changes, deprecated services). Review and merge those PRs as they appear — they are never auto-merged.

Project Structure

Once you are working in your repo, here is what lives where:

.github/
  agents/              # Agent definitions (*.agent.md)
    _subagents/        # Subagent definitions (non-user-invocable)
  skills/              # Reusable domain knowledge (SKILL.md per skill)
  instructions/        # File-type rules with glob-based auto-application
  copilot-instructions.md  # VS Code Copilot-specific orchestration instructions
  workflows/           # GitHub Actions (sync, CI, validation)
agent-output/          # Generated artifacts organized by project
  {project}/           # 01-requirements.md through 07-*.md
infra/
  bicep/{project}/     # Bicep templates (main.bicep + modules/)
  terraform/{project}/ # Terraform configurations (main.tf + modules/)
tools/
  mcp-servers/         # MCP servers (azure-pricing, drawio)
  scripts/             # Validation and maintenance scripts
site/                  # Documentation site source (Astro Starlight)

What's Yours vs. What's Upstream

Your files (safe to edit, never overwritten by sync)	Upstream-managed files (overwritten by sync)
`agent-output/` — generated project artifacts	`.github/agents/` — agent definitions
`infra/bicep/` — your Bicep templates	`.github/skills/` — agent skills
`.github/workflows/` — your CI/CD workflows	`.github/instructions/` — coding rules
`README.md` — your documentation	`.github/copilot-instructions.md`
	`tools/`, `site/`, `package.json`
	`AGENTS.md`, `.devcontainer/`, `.vscode/`

Note: If you disable the sync workflow, everything becomes yours to edit freely. See Customization below.

Customization

Changing defaults (regions, tags, naming)

When you create from this template, every file is yours. The question is which approach gives you the best experience over time.

Strategy A: Edit directly (simplest)

Edit the file you need — for example, change swedencentral to westeurope in .github/skills/azure-defaults/SKILL.md. If you don't plan to pull upstream improvements, disable the sync workflow entirely (repo Settings → Actions → disable Upstream Sync) and manage the repo as your own.

If you want upstream updates later, re-enable the workflow. The sync PR will overwrite your edited files with the upstream version (it is not a merge), so you'll need to re-apply your changes after merging. Keep a record of what you changed.

Strategy B: Keep sync enabled, layer your overrides (recommended for teams that want continuous upstream improvements)

The sync workflow overwrites all upstream-managed files but never touches the four excluded paths. To safely store overrides that survive sync:

Edit the sync exclusion list — the sync workflow file itself is user-owned (.github/workflows/ is excluded from sync). Open .github/workflows/weekly-upstream-sync.yml and add paths to EXCLUDE_PATHS and the matching for path in ... loop:
```
EXCLUDE_PATHS: |
  .github/workflows/
  agent-output/
  infra/bicep/
  infra/terraform/
  README.md
  AGENTS.md
```
Then add your overrides to root AGENTS.md — it will survive all future syncs.
Use infra/bicep/AGENTS.md — since infra/bicep/ is already excluded from sync, you can place an AGENTS.md there with your organization defaults. VS Code loads subfolder AGENTS.md files when working with files in that directory.
VS Code user-profile instructions — place a .instructions.md file in your VS Code profile's prompts/ folder. This lives outside the repo entirely and applies to all your workspaces.

Which strategy to pick?

Approach	Best for
A: Edit directly, skip sync	Solo users, teams that self-manage updates
B: Layer overrides, keep sync	Teams that want automatic upstream improvements

Adding new agents or skills

Agents are defined in .github/agents/*.agent.md and skills in .github/skills/*/SKILL.md. You can add new ones alongside the existing set. If you keep sync enabled, use distinctive names that won't collide with upstream filenames, or add your custom paths to the sync exclusion list.

IaC Tracks: Bicep and Terraform

Both IaC tracks are fully supported. The Requirements agent (Step 1) captures your iac_tool preference, and the Orchestrator routes Steps 4-6 to the correct track.

Factor	Bicep	Terraform
Azure-only	Native DSL, first-class support	Multi-cloud via AzureRM provider
State	No state file (ARM-managed)	State file (Azure Storage backend)
AVM modules	`br/public:avm/res/`	`registry.terraform.io/Azure/avm-res-*/`
CI/CD	`az deployment group create`	`terraform plan` + `terraform apply`

Multi-Project Support

The accelerator is designed for one repo containing multiple projects. Each project gets its own folders:

agent-output/{project}/ — artifacts (requirements, architecture, plans, docs)
infra/bicep/{project}/ or infra/terraform/{project}/ — IaC templates

Agents, skills, instructions, and the dev container are shared across all projects.

One repo per project is also valid when teams need separate governance or isolation. Each repo is created independently from the template.

Edit the sync exclusion list in each repo to protect AGENTS.md, then maintain a standard overrides section that you copy into each repo
VS Code user-profile instructions — personal preferences that follow you across repos without any per-repo setup
Canonical overrides in a shared location — maintain a standard overrides snippet in a team wiki or internal repo and copy it when creating new instances

Keeping Up to Date

What	How	Frequency
Agents, skills, instructions, docs, scripts	Automated weekly PR (upstream sync workflow)	Weekly
GitHub Actions workflows	`npm run sync:workflows` (manual)	As needed
All validations	`npm run validate:all`	Before each PR

The sync workflow opens a PR for human review — it never auto-merges. You can disable it entirely if you prefer to manage updates manually.

Validation & Quality

# Run all code and documentation validations
npm run validate:all

# Fix markdown formatting
npm run lint:md:fix

# Bicep validation (replace {project})
bicep build infra/bicep/{project}/main.bicep
bicep lint infra/bicep/{project}/main.bicep

# Terraform validation
terraform fmt -check -recursive infra/terraform/
cd infra/terraform/{project} && terraform init -backend=false && terraform validate

Resources

License

MIT