Aws Lambda Direct

Lambda is the cornerstone of serverless architectures on AWS — functions triggered by virtually any AWS event source (SQS, SNS, EventBridge, S3, DynamoDB streams, API Gateway, Kinesis, etc.) or invoked directly. For agents: invoke functions synchronously (get the result) or asynchronously (fire and forget), pass payloads as JSON, and use Lambda as the compute substrate for agent tool calls. Lambda handles scaling, patching, and infrastructure — agents only provide the code. 15-minute max execution time is the primary constraint for long-running tasks. Confidence is docs-derived.

AWS SDK (boto3): lam = boto3.client("lambda"). lam.invoke(FunctionName="my-function", InvocationType="RequestResponse", Payload=json.dumps(payload)) — synchronous. lam.invoke(FunctionName="my-function", InvocationType="Event", Payload=...) — async. Response: Payload.read() returns JSON response body. lam.create_function(...) deploys a new function. lam.update_function_code(FunctionName=..., ZipFile=zip_bytes) updates function code. lam.add_permission() grants event source permissions.

IAM auth: AWS credentials. Invoking functions: lambda:InvokeFunction permission. Creating/updating: lambda:CreateFunction, lambda:UpdateFunctionCode. Execution role: separate IAM role that Lambda assumes during execution (least-privilege for resources accessed). Resource-based policies: grant cross-account invocation via add_permission. HTTPS enforced.

TooManyRequestsException for concurrent execution limits (default 1000 per region; configurable). TaskTimedOut at 15-minute max execution. Synchronous invoke errors: StatusCode 200 with FunctionError header (Handled/Unhandled). Async invoke: check CloudWatch Logs or DLQ for failures. Cold start: initial invocation delay for new containers (typically 100ms–1s). Lambda SLA: 99.95%.

docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda is comprehensive — developer guide, API reference, event source mappings, layers, extensions, and runtime API. Getting started: create function via console/SAM/CDK, boto3 invoke in under 5 minutes. Free tier: 1M invocations + 400K GB-seconds/month. Lambda Powertools for observability. Community via AWS Forums, StackOverflow, re:Invent talks.