Features

Cross-cutting capabilities that span multiple systems, plugins, and primitives. Each feature here sits on top of the engine's machinery rather than living inside a single source directory.

Pages in this section

Page	What it covers
Modules and actions	The lifecycle of a module call from a playbook task to a JSON result, and how action plugins can short-circuit or augment that flow
Collections	Galaxy collections — what they are, how ansible-galaxy collection install works, how the collection loader resolves them
Fact gathering	The setup module, fact collectors, custom fact plugins, and the fact cache
Dynamic inventory	How inventory plugins discover hosts from cloud APIs, files, scripts, or generators

Capability overview

graph LR
    PB[Playbook] --> TASK[Task: action + args]
    TASK --> ACT[Action plugin]
    ACT --> MOD[Module<br/>via AnsiBallZ]
    PB -->|gather_facts: true| FACTS[Setup module]
    FACTS --> CACHE[(Fact cache)]
    PB --> INV[Inventory plugin]
    INV --> HOSTS[(Hosts and groups)]
    PB -->|collections:| CL[Collection loader]
    CL --> COL[(Installed collections)]
    ACT --> COL
    INV --> COL

Cross-links

• Systems for the underlying machinery.
• Plugins for the per-type plugin guides.
• Primitives for the playbook objects.