I did something Similar, but fully based in shell scripts with no dependencies -> https://gist.github.com/mariocesar/8e674ec40dad6b94114d2a44d9151e23 https://g

I did something Similar, but fully based in shell scripts with no dependencies -> https://gist.github.com/mariocesar/8e674ec40dad6b94114d2a44d9151e23 https://gist.github.com/mariocesar/8e674ec40dad6b94114d2a44d... I completely agree with OP when Ansible is overkill for must cases, and even slower than a plain smart shell script. For my solution, simple create a bash function: function play () local remote=${2} local script=${1} local directory=$(dirname ${script}) tar cpf - ${directory}/ | ssh -t ${remote} " tar xpf - -C /tmp && cd /tmp/${dirname} && bash /tmp/${script} && rm -rf /tmp/${dirname} " } and later just call it like. play provision/bootstrap.sh ubuntu@10.0.0.1 Where provision is a directory, and bootstrap.sh is the main shell script.