AWS CDK CLI

The AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open-source infrastructure as code (IaC) software development framework. You can use the AWS CDK to define and deploy applications on Arm-based cloud infrastructure powered by AWS Graviton.

You can write applications in a supported programming language of your choice. Then, you can use the AWS CDK CLI to translate the code into an AWS CloudFormation template and deploy the application.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to install the CDK CLI and verify that the CLI installation was successful.

Before you begin

Verify that you have the AWS CLI installed:

    

        
        
aws --version

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        aws-cli/2.34.56 Python/3.14.5 Darwin/25.5.0 exe/arm64

        
    

For instructions to set up AWS credentials and install the AWS CLI, see the AWS Credentials and AWS CLI install guides.

Make sure you have Node.js 22 or later installed:

    

        
        
node --version

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        v26.2.0

        
    

If you don’t have Node.js installed, or if the installed version is earlier than Node.js 22, download a suitable version from the Node.js website .

You’ll also need to install prerequisites specific to the programming languages that you want to use. For more information, see Install Node.js and programming language prerequisites in the AWS CDK documentation.

Install the AWS CDK CLI

Use npm to install the AWS CDK CLI:

    

        
        
npm install -g aws-cdk

    

Verify the installation

After installing the AWS CDK CLI, check the version of the CLI:

    

        
        
cdk --version

    

The output is similar to:

    

        
        2.1125.0 (build 71fd29e)

        
    

Next steps

You’ve now installed the AWS CDK CLI and verified that the installation was successful.

Next, you can use the AWS CDK to create and deploy applications on Arm-based compute powered by AWS Graviton. To learn how you can use the AWS CDK and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to run containers on Arm-based compute, see Deploy containers on Arm-based compute using Amazon ECS and the AWS CDK .