[ansible] Safely limiting Ansible playbooks to a single machine?

This approach will exit if more than a single host is provided by checking the play_hosts variable. The fail module is used to exit if the single host condition is not met. The examples below use a hosts file with two hosts alice and bob.

user.yml (playbook)

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: Check for single host
      fail: msg="Single host check failed."
      when: "{{ play_hosts|length }} != 1"
    - debug: msg='I got executed!'

Run playbook with no host filters

$ ansible-playbook user.yml
PLAY [all] ****************************************************************
TASK: [Check for single host] *********************************************
failed: [alice] => {"failed": true}
msg: Single host check failed.
failed: [bob] => {"failed": true}
msg: Single host check failed.
FATAL: all hosts have already failed -- aborting

Run playbook on single host

$ ansible-playbook user.yml --limit=alice

PLAY [all] ****************************************************************

TASK: [Check for single host] *********************************************
skipping: [alice]

TASK: [debug msg='I got executed!'] ***************************************
ok: [alice] => {
    "msg": "I got executed!"
}