EC2: every running instance on one line each

Instance ID, type, Name-tag, launch time, public IP — sortable, greppable, pastable. The morning check.

$ aws ec2 describe-instances \
     --filters 'Name=instance-state-name,Values=running' \
  | jq -r '.Reservations[].Instances[] |
             [
               .InstanceId,
               .InstanceType,
               ((.Tags[]? | select(.Key=="Name") | .Value) // "-"),
               .LaunchTime[0:19],
               (.PublicIpAddress // "-")
             ] | @tsv' \
  | column -t -s $'\t'

1. [01] awsaws ec2 describe-instances --filters 'Name=instance-state-name,Values=running'
   Filter server-side — much cheaper than fetching all and grepping. Other filter values: stopped, terminated, pending.
2. [02] jq(.Tags[]? | select(.Key=="Name") | .Value) // "-"
   EC2 tags are an array of {Key,Value} objects, not a map. Pluck the 'Name' tag, fall back to '-' for unnamed instances. The `?` after `Tags[]` survives instances with no tags.
3. [03] jq.LaunchTime[0:19]
   ISO timestamp truncated to YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS — drops the trailing `.000Z` for terminal readability.
4. [04] jq@tsv | column -t -s $'\t'
   @tsv emits tab-separated fields; column aligns them. The classic JSON-to-aligned-table bridge.

i-0abc123def4567890  t3.medium    web-prod-1       2026-05-09T08:13:42  18.196.42.7
i-0xyz987uvw6543210  m5.large     reprocess-worker  2026-05-10T14:22:11  -
i-01230abcd5678efgh  c6i.xlarge   etl-batch         2026-05-08T11:05:33  3.122.18.91

• Add `--region eu-west-1` if your default region differs from where the instances live.
• To find idle candidates, pipe this list through `aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics` for CPUUtilization.