Getting Started with Puppet Infra Assistant: A Complete Guide

Managing today's complex enterprise infrastructure presents significant challenges — from siloed data and steep learning curves to time-consuming troubleshooting. As the pace of business accelerates and infrastructure demands grow, these obstacles are increasingly difficult to overcome.

That’s why we built Infra Assistant, a new AI capability in Puppet Enterprise Advanced, powered by Perforce Intelligence. It’s designed to increase productivity, break down operational barriers, and fundamentally change how DevOps teams interact with their infrastructure.  

In this blog, I’ll walk you through how to get started with Infra Assistant, share practical prompt examples, answer frequently asked questions, and offer a glimpse into Puppet’s AI roadmap.

Why Modern Infrastructure Management Needs AI

For a majority of IT organizations, skill shortages delay digital transformation and product development, threaten quality, and lead to revenue loss. IDC predicts that by 2027, nine out of 10 organizations will be impacted by IT skills shortages, costing companies more than $5 trillion globally.

Forward-thinking organizations are adopting AI to tackle those issues head-on: It comes as no surprise that the top benefits companies have seen from integrating AI into their processes include increased productivity, scalability, quality, and streamlined workflows (according to Pluralsight’s 2025 AI Skills Report). Here’s what’s driving their AI integration:

• Skills Shortages: Teams face hurdles hiring individuals with the expertise to properly utilize existing toolsets (like using Puppet Query Language (PQL) to report on the state of nodes managed by Puppet).
• Inefficiencies & Bottlenecks: Excessive manual tasks create efficiency bottlenecks and claim the valuable bandwidth of skilled team members.
• Compliance Concerns: DevSecOps teams need fast, thorough insights to prove compliance, pass audits, and enforce up-to-date security policies (and the tools they use to gather those insights also need to be demonstrably secure).

Infra Assistant directly addresses these hurdles by making it easier to access Puppet data and the services Puppet interacts with to power your infrastructure. Read our blog for more on Puppet’s approach to integrating AI into our solutions.

What is Puppet Infra Assistant?

Puppet Infra Assistant is an AI-powered feature exclusive to Puppet Enterprise Advanced. At its core, it’s a natural language interface that allows users to interact with Puppet infrastructure data and APIs simply by asking questions.

Getting information from Puppet and the services it interacts with no longer requires specialized expertise and knowledge of Puppet Query Language (PQL). Users of any skill level with the right permissions can now ask intuitive queries like "Which nodes failed yesterday?" or "What’s out of compliance?" directly through Infra Assistant, instead of having to know the corresponding PQL.

Key Capabilities of Infra Assistant  

• Ease of Use: No Puppet expertise required. Natural language queries make valuable Puppet data accessible to any authorized user, from platform engineers to managers and security teams.
• Unlock Infrastructure Insights: Infra Assistant allows users to query Puppet data as well as services Puppet interacts with via API, unlocking a trove of insights on system state, compliance, drift, and more.
• Enterprise-Grade Security: With explicit opt-in consent and backed by Puppet’s role-based access control (RBAC), Infra Assistant was developed with security and compliance at its core.
• Keep a Human in the Loop: In each response, Infra Assistant includes the PQL generated to run the user’s query. Think of it as evidence that lets the humans on your team double-check input and output for accuracy.
• Multi-AI Support: Infra Assistant supports “bring your own key" for OpenAI and Azure OpenAI out of the box, ensuring enhanced flexibility and privacy. Support for more AI models will be added in future updates.
• Read-Only Architecture: Infra Assistant provides insights without modifying data, giving enterprise teams a safe, secure gateway for risk-free interaction.

How to Get Started with Infra Assistant

Activating the Infra Assistant in your Puppet Enterprise Advanced environment is a straightforward process. Here’s how to begin using its powerful capabilities today.

Make Sure You’re Ready

1. Upgrade to Puppet Enterprise Advanced: Infra Assistant is an exclusive enhancement available only to Puppet Enterprise Advanced users. Speak to your team about getting access to exclusive entitlements like Infra Assistant.
2. Bring Your Own AI Key: Configure the assistant with your OpenAI or Azure OpenAI key for seamless integration within your secure enterprise framework.
3. Get Familiar with Queries: Utilize the provided starter guides and templates or watch Puppet’s demo video to see real-life application examples.
4. Enable RBAC and Permissions: Ensure you’ve been granted the proper permissions to access Puppet’s AI features in RBAC.

Steps to Start Using Infra Assistant  

Note: These instructions assume Infra Assistant has already been configured for the Puppet instance, and that the user has been granted permission to access it.

1. Log into Puppet.
2. Click “Puppet AI Agent” in the upper right-hand corner of the Puppet Enterprise dashboard.
3. Start running queries in conversational language.
   1. Tip: Check the PQL provided with each response to make sure Infra Assistant interpreted your query properly. If you don’t know PQL, you can ask Infra Assistant “How did you get that answer?" and it’ll explain its logic in natural language.

Not sure what to ask Infra Assistant? Check out our list of sample prompts for inspiration. 

For more on using Infra Assistant, including benefits and use cases for Puppet users, read Introducing Puppet Infra Assistant on Puppet’s dev.to blog.

Example Use Cases for Infra Assistant

Infra Assistant isn’t just a shiny new feature in Puppet. It’s an enabler for organizations looking to accelerate productivity, close skill gaps, streamline operations, and elevate infrastructure management performance.

Since it eliminates the need for specialized skills to access valuable insights, the use cases for Infra Assistant are broad and deep. But for context, here are just a few ways it helps critical business functions across an IT organization:  

• Compliance Audits: Call up instant status reports to ensure policies adhere to best practices.
• DevOps Automation: Enable team members to self-serve data insights, streamlining deployment processes.
• Drift Remediation: Rapidly identify node run failures and drift to minimize downtime.
• Security: Validate configuration files for integrity, ensuring no gaps are left for exploits.

Puppet’s Path Forward with AI

The launch of Infra Assistant marks only the first step in Puppet’s AI-powered future. With trusted enterprise AI from Perforce Intelligence, Puppet will enable cross-functional teams to automate, configure, secure, and deliver infrastructure beyond human scale.

In the future, enhancements to Puppet capabilities will leverage AI code generation to augment your organization’s best practices and Puppet expertise; improve resiliency and proactive desired state management with agentic orchestration and remediation; and embrace natural language for smoother workflows throughout all aspects of the infrastructure management lifecycle.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Puppet Infra Assistant

How can we use Infra Assistant if our organizational policies restrict the use of AI in our infrastructure?

We have purpose-built Infra Assistant to focus specifically on infrastructure tasks, and we designed it with safety and control in mind:

• Infra Assistant isn't another AI tool that needs to be approved. It integrates with your existing AI provider via “bring your own key" activation, ensuring it operates within your organization’s existing security policies, rather than introducing new or unmanaged services.
• Using Infra Assistant is optional. Enable it only when your organization is ready.

How do we know that only authorized users can access infrastructure information through Infra Assistant?

Infra Assistant requires explicit opt-in and must be enabled before it can be used. Once activated, it fully respects the role-based access controls (RBAC) you’ve already configured in Puppet, so users can only access the infrastructure data they’re authorized to see.

How can we be sure Infra Assistant won’t return inaccurate responses or hallucinations?

To ensure greater accuracy, answers from Infra Assistant are grounded in your actual environment — not general assumptions about infrastructure ‘like yours.’ Additionally, we’ve put guardrails in place to ensure your team gets accurate, relevant responses. Because any AI capability can provide inaccurate information, we encourage users to confirm the output of their interactions.

Puppet's Infra Assistant is more than a call to a general-purpose AI model. The Infra Assistant uses Puppet services and tools to get answers based on your Puppet infrastructure data. It provides more reliable responses by using Puppet-engineered system context and API tools to augment external AI services.

Perforce tests Infra Assistant rigorously and tunes it continuously for quality, completeness, safety, and to reduce hallucinations. We welcome any feedback that can help us tune it to your needs.

My organization is highly secure — does Infra Assistant work in our type of environment?

If your organization is in an air-gapped Puppet instance and can’t use an external AI (common in regulated industries), contact us and we’ll work together on a solution to help you utilize Infra Assistant.

Is Infra Assistant trained on customer data?

No. We do not use any customer data to train the Infra Assistant solution.

Can my organization use Infra Assistant if we don’t have Puppet Enterprise Advanced?

The Infra Assistant is only available to Puppet Enterprise Advanced license holders. If you’d like to see Infra Assistant in action or learn about the other capabilities unique to the Advanced edition, just let our team know and we can provide a 1:1 custom demo.

How do we know our data is secure when accessed by Infra Assistant?

Here's how we ensure Puppet Infra Assistant handles data securely:

• We work directly with top AI providers to provide extensive data protections and ensure any data they access is safe.
• Infra Assistant history and memory storage is determined by Puppet, not by the AI providers.
• Infra Assistant adheres to Perforce Software’s policies regarding the integration and use of generative AI features in Perforce products. For more, read the Perforce generative AI policy.

What AI models does Infra Assistant support?

Puppet Infra Assistant supports OpenAI and Azure OpenAI right out of the box. Let us know if your organization uses a different model and our team will work with you to add that support.

What languages can Infra Assistant understand?

Infra Assistant can understand prompts entered in a multitude of languages; however, the responses will be returned in English.

Can Infra Assistant make changes to infrastructure by itself?

• The current version of Puppet Infra Assistant doesn't make any autonomous changes to state or execute commands. It will only retrieve data unless asked to invoke an API, with explicit confirmation from the user. Even read-only retrieval operates within the constraints of your access control permissions. Future capabilities may enable automated changes in your infrastructure, but these will be protected through additional RBAC permissions.
• Infra Assistant displays the PQL behind each query it runs so that operators can double-check every output (and less technical users can get a feel for how PQL is written).
• Infra Assistant only operates with the permissions you give it.

We believe interaction and input are crucial to effective, responsible use of AI. Perforce Intelligence solutions like Infra Assistant are designed to increase efficiency and innovation while keeping a human in the loop, helping teams take their DevOps beyond human scale without sacrificing security.

Unlock the Power of Puppet with Infra Assistant

Managing your enterprise infrastructure doesn’t have to be tedious or time-consuming. The Puppet Infra Assistant is your AI teammate, designed to simplify processes, accelerate insights, and make smarter decision-making a fundamental part of your operations.

If you're ready to transform how your organization utilizes Puppet, schedule a personalized demo to explore its potential. If you’re already using Puppet Enterprise Advanced, give Infra Assistant a try and reach out with your thoughts!

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