Workflow Tips

June 28, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Quick recommendations and tips for various processes.

Development Workflow

  1. Write your functions
  2. Use osls deploy only when you've made changes to serverless.yml and in CI/CD systems. For more information on setting up CI/CD for your serverless app, read the CI/CD guide.
  3. Use osls deploy function -f myFunction to rapidly deploy changes when you are working on a specific AWS Lambda Function.
  4. Use osls invoke -f myFunction -l to test your AWS Lambda Functions on AWS.
  5. Open up a separate tab in your console and stream logs in there via osls logs -f myFunction -t.
  6. Write tests to run locally.

Using stages

  • At the very least, use a dev and production stage.
  • Use different AWS accounts for stages.
  • In larger teams, each member should use a separate AWS account and their own stage for development.

Larger Projects

  • Break your application/project into multiple services.
  • Model your services around Data Models or Workflows.
  • Keep the Functions and Resources in your services to a minimum.

Cheat Sheet

A handy list of commands to use when developing with osls.

Create A Service

Creates a new service from a local template directory

osls create -p [TARGET DIRECTORY] --template-path [LOCAL TEMPLATE DIRECTORY]

Install A Service

This is a convenience method to install a pre-made service locally by downloading the GitHub repository and unzipping it.

osls install -u [GITHUB URL OF SERVICE]

Deploy All

Use this when you have made changes to your Functions, Events or Resources in serverless.yml or you simply want to deploy all changes within your Service at the same time.

osls deploy -s [STAGE NAME] -r [REGION NAME] -v

Deploy Function

Use this to quickly overwrite your AWS Lambda code on AWS, allowing you to develop faster.

osls deploy function -f [FUNCTION NAME] -s [STAGE NAME] -r [REGION NAME]

Invoke Function

Invokes an AWS Lambda Function on AWS and returns logs.

osls invoke -f [FUNCTION NAME] \
  -s [STAGE NAME] \
  -r [REGION NAME] \
  -l

Streaming Logs

Open up a separate tab in your console and stream all logs for a specific Function using this command.

osls logs -f [FUNCTION NAME] -s [STAGE NAME] -r [REGION NAME]