Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Automation the KISS way. No YAML involved
Hello HN, I like Ansible as a tool for automation to perform tasks on multiple remote hosts. But like many of you, I'm sick of the custom YAML DSL that many of this kind of tools provide. How many times have we said "just give me a true scripting language!" ? That's why I started this project `tricorder` (as in Star Trek's tricorder, a simple device to do pretty much anything required by the plot). For now, it's only a tool to execute a command on multiple hosts (like ansible, but without the YAML) and returning the outputs as JSON so you can query it with other tools like `jq` in your bash…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Automation the KISS way. No YAML involved launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Your very own offline-first privacy-centric open-source data-center! https://homelabos.com/
2018 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Minimal distributed configuration management in bash - frameable/aviary.sh
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3EA
Happy new year folks! This tool was born out of a situation where I had 'inherited' a bunch of servers that were not under any form of config management. Oh, the horror... Enroll 'harvests' system information such as what packages are installed, what services are running, what files have 'differed' from their out-of-the-box defaults, and what other custom snowflake data might exist. The harvest state data can be kept as its own sort of SBOM, but also can be converted in a mere second or two into fully-functional Ansible roles/playbooks/inventory. It can be run remotely over SSH or…
Jan 2026 · enroll.sh · its alternatives →
- 4
Interactive Ansible tutorials with dead simple setup via Docker - turkenh/ansible-interactive-tutorial
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Jupyter Notebook Kernel for running Ansible Tasks and Playbooks - ansible/ansible-jupyter-kernel
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
Assisted automation writing tool for your Ansible Playbooks
2022 · steampunk.si · its alternatives →
- 7UW
What if Dependabot and Ansible had a child? Well for me that could be Updatecli. Updatecli is a project that I started to help maintain the infrastructure of the Jenkins project. I needed something flexible enough to update YAML with whatever information needed. Because let’s say it, everybody loves YAML. YAML is everywhere. Run it from everywhere… Updatecli is a command-line tool written in Golang and available for Windows, Linux, MacOSx, amd64, arm64, thank you Goreleaser All of that to say that it runs from wherever CI or laptop we need. As of today, Updatecli opened over 3000 Pull…
2022 · its alternatives →
- 8
Give coding agents a disposable Linux VM, not your laptop - clawkwork/clawk
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
posixcube.sh is a POSIX compliant, shell script-based server automation framework. - myplaceonline/posixcube
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10AC
Hi Everyone. My name is Mike. I've created a free Ansible Crash Course. It's a course aimed at people who are new to Ansible and want to get up and running quickly. It goes into a fair amount of detail on most topics, but should something be missing just let me know and I'll add it in. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! Just note an email address is required to register for the course - this is a limitation of the platform I'm using to host the course. Sorry about that! The course can be found over here: https://www.thecloud.coach/ansible-crash-course Any and all…
2019 · its alternatives →
- 11
2020 · starsheep.io · its alternatives →
- 12
Server and configuration management for humans
2015 · ansiblefordevops.com · its alternatives →
- 13
2015 · blog.tryolabs.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hey HN, long time lurker here. I humbly present ara which is a project I created back at Red Hat in 2016 (before AWX was open source) to make my life easier working with distributed and large scale Ansible playbooks. It is designed to be simple and compatible with however you're already running Ansible today without needing to change much of your existing workflows. My time and skills are limited but I have learned a lot and I am happy with how the project has steadily improved over the years with the much appreciated help of contributors. If you'd like to read more about the project, the…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Create a new production-ready project by one CLI command
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 16
- 17
Developer-first automation runner - pipelines as YAML, extended with Python, executed from the CLI or a local scheduler.
Jun 2026 · rorlikowski.github.io · its alternatives →
- 18
Reasonable Automation Engine. Contribute to lapce/tiron development by creating an account on GitHub.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
DebOps - Your Debian-based data center in a box. Contribute to debops/debops development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20SS
I just released the first stable version of a new tool called "Spot" (also known as simplotask). As someone who has had to deal with the frustration of broken Ansible dependencies and the endless googling required to add even the most trivial elements to playbooks, I decided to create a tool that simplifies these tasks. That's how Spot was born - a simple yet flexible tool for automating deployment tasks.
2023 · simplotask.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Hey HN, we're Jon and Kristiane, and we're building Orloj (https://orloj.dev), an open-source orchestration runtime for multi-agent AI systems. You define agents, tools, policies, and workflows in declarative YAML manifests, and Orloj handles scheduling, execution, governance, and reliability. Over the past year we tried to use many different platforms/frameworks to build out agent systems and while building we hit some sort of problem with all of them, so we decided to have a go at it. Jon has worked with kubernettes and terraform for years and always liked the declarative…
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Hey HN, About a year ago I shared a first MVP of a visual node-based system for CI/CD pipelines that I've been very passionate about. I've been building on it since, and it's now live. I've always liked building pipelines and workflows, but I've never liked writing YAML for anything more than simple linear tasks. Branching, conditions, loops, or trying to just run certain things in parallel always gets messy. So I built Actionforge, a visual node system to tackle some of these pain points. Instead of writing YAML yourself, you build workflows as graphs. While Actionforge still uses YAML…
Feb 2026 · actionforge.dev · its alternatives →
- 23
Ask▲4Talk to your shell in natural language. Locally. Contribute to ykushch/ask development by creating an account on GitHub.
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24OA
2017 · play.ansible.online · its alternatives →
Also compare
- HomelabOS – Ansible scripts to deploy self hosted cloud services alternatives
- Aviary.sh – A tiny Bash alternative to Ansible alternatives
- Enroll, a tool to reverse-engineer servers into Ansible config mgmt alternatives
- Interactive Ansible Tutorial alternatives
- Ansible Kernel – Run Ansible Tasks and Plays with Jupyter Notebook alternatives
- Steampunk Spotter alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →