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I guess it probably depends on what is in the userData right now. I think it would probably be difficult to use Node to mount volumes, create filesystems, etc

It's not automation api, but we have this example of doing provisioning <https://github.com/pulumi/examples/tree/master/aws-ts-ec2-provisioners>

The AWS-native alternative is SSM. automation-api could easily orchestrate provisioning, by doing the provisioning work after awaiting the `up()`. Could even call out to Chef, Ansible, DSC, etc.