AgentOS: Serve agents over API, MCP, and interfaces like Slack

AgentOS is a durable agent runtime that serves agents over API, MCP, and chat interfaces like Slack. Build customer-facing agents and serve them to your users from your product, through AI apps like Claude and ChatGPT, or interfaces like Slack. AgentOS gives you one agent backend for every frontend.

Three ways to build agents.

1. Coding agent. Point a coding agent at the skills in .agents/skills/ and it can create, improve and evaluate your agents for you.
2. Natural language. Ask the built-in Platform Builder to build agents for you.
3. No-code Studio. Build agents visually using the AgentOS Studio.

Three ways to serve your agents to your users.

1. Your product. Call the AgentOS REST API from your product.
2. AI apps. Connect your agents to Claude and ChatGPT using the AgentOS MCP server.
3. Chat interfaces. Distribute your agents through Slack, WhatsApp (and more) using AgentOS Interfaces.

Monitor and govern your agents.

The AgentOS Control Plane gives you a unified view of your agent platform. Trace every action. Enforce agent- and tool-level permissions.

Everything runs in your cloud, your data lives in your database.

Get Started

Copy this prompt into your favorite coding agent. It sets up the platform and builds your first agent for you:

Help me set up my agent platform and build my first agent.

Clone https://github.com/agno-agi/agentos-render into a folder called agent-platform, cd in, and run the setup-platform skill (in .agents/skills/).

Your coding agent checks Docker, sets up .env, boots the platform, verifies the MCP endpoint, connects to the AgentOS UI, then builds your first agent. Prefer to drive yourself? See Manual Setup.

Manual Setup

Step 1: Run locally

Prerequisite: Docker installed and running.

git clone https://github.com/agno-agi/agentos-render agentos
cd agentos

# Configure credentials
cp example.env .env
# Open .env and set OPENAI_API_KEY

# Run the platform on docker
docker compose up -d --build

Confirm your AgentOS is running at http://localhost:8000/docs.

Step 2: Connect the AgentOS UI

1. Open os.agno.com and sign in.
2. Click Connect OS, enter http://localhost:8000 as the URL, name it Local AgentOS, and connect.

Step 3: Build your first agent using natural language

1. Click Chat under the Agno team and tell it what you're working on: "Help me build an agent for my product".
2. Give it the docs URL for your product, or for a product you like — docs.agno.com, say.
3. Click the Refresh button on the top right. You should now see your new agent in the Agents dropdown. Chat with it directly, or just ask Agno to run it for you.

Make the platform yours

Your cloned repo points at this public template. Create your own GitHub repo and point your platform at it:

git remote rename origin upstream    # keep the template connected for updates
git remote add origin <your-private-repo-url>
git push -u origin main

Heads up. Create the private repo first (github.com/new, or gh repo create <name> --private). Keep upstream connected, so that git pull upstream main brings in template updates in the future.

Run in production

You can run the platform anywhere that supports containerized images. This template deploys to Render via the Blueprint in render.yaml — Render builds the Dockerfile and provisions managed Postgres (pgvector included) in one launch — and a coding-agent skill, /deploy-platform, that will help you deploy it.

Prerequisites: a Render account with this repo (your copy of it) reachable from Render, a RENDER_API_KEY (dashboard → Account Settings → API Keys) for the scripts, Python 3, and OpenSSL.

1. Set up your production env

Create a new .env.production file for production credentials.

cp .env .env.production          # or cp example.env .env.production
# Edit .env.production with production values

Keeping a separate .env.production lets us use different values for local and production: different OpenAI keys, production-only credentials, a different Slack workspace.

2. Deploy

Launch the Blueprint: dashboard.render.com → New + → Blueprint, connect your copy of this repo, and apply — Render reads render.yaml, prompts for OPENAI_API_KEY, builds the Dockerfile, and creates the basic-256mb Postgres (first build ~10 min). The web service runs on the starter plan — the cheapest that never sleeps, which the in-process scheduler and MCP streams require — as a single instance by design (two instances double-fire every cron).

Then wire the rest:

./scripts/render/up.sh

It waits for the Blueprint service to appear, pins AGENTOS_URL to the real service URL — render.yaml can't express "my own URL", and without it scheduled jobs silently never fire — generates MCP_CONNECT_SECRET (the chat-app OAuth consent secret, printed once in the closing summary), and pauses for a JWT verification key (see next section).

3. Production Auth

Token-Based Authorization is on by default. Without a JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY or JWT_JWKS_FILE, the app refuses to serve traffic in production. The platform's job is to keep your data private, so the safe default is "refuse to start" without an authentication token.

Token-Based Auth gives you three things:

1. No public access. The server rejects requests without a valid token.
2. Per-request identity. Middleware parses the token and extracts the user_id, session_id, and custom claims. Each request is tied to a user and session, giving you auditability and traceability.
3. Granular permissions. Scopes on the token decide what each caller can do — run agents, read sessions, manage the platform. Admin tokens can do everything; scoped tokens get exactly what their claims grant.

During ./scripts/render/up.sh, once the service URL exists the script pauses so you can mint the key.

1. Open os.agno.com, click Connect OS → Live, and enter your onrender.com URL.
2. Name it Live AgentOS, flip Token-Based Authorization (JWT) on and connect. The UI generates your public key. (Ran into an issue? Go to Settings → OS & Security → Token-Based Authorization (JWT) to get the key from the settings page.)
3. Copy the public key.
4. Paste the full public key into the up.sh prompt. The script saves it into your env file for future syncs:

JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY="-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MIIBIjANBgkq...
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----"

If you run non-interactively or skip the prompt, you can sync environment variables later with ./scripts/render/env-sync.sh.

4. Verify

The script prints the service URL — open /docs on it. Logs live in the dashboard: your service → Logs.

5. Connect your AgentOS to MCP clients

AgentOS comes with an MCP server at /mcp (wired via mcp=MCPConfig(...) in app/main.py), where Agno itself is published as a first-class agno tool — clients just call it, no id discovery. There are two ways to connect your AgentOS to MCP clients:

1. AI Apps like Claude and ChatGPT connect to your AgentOS over the internet using OAuth. Add https://<your-onrender-domain>/mcp as a custom connector in the chat app's connector settings. Leave the form's optional OAuth fields (client ID / client secret) empty. Click Connect and, on the consent page, enter the MCP_CONNECT_SECRET that up.sh generated during deploy (saved in .env.production).
2. Coding agents like Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, and Cursor connect to your AgentOS via the MCP URL. Register your AgentOS with the MCP clients on your machine:

uvx agno connect --url https://<your-onrender-domain>

After a successful connection, open one of these apps and ask:

can you access my agentos mcp?

6. Redeploy after code changes

autoDeploy: true is on in render.yaml, so pushing to your deploy branch redeploys automatically — that's the normal flow. To re-run a build without a new commit:

./scripts/render/redeploy.sh

Render builds the pushed branch; local uncommitted changes never deploy.

7. Sync environment variables

To re-sync environment variables, run the following command:

./scripts/render/env-sync.sh

Each key is upserted individually (never the destructive replace-all API call), then one deploy applies it all.

8. Tear down

./scripts/render/down.sh

Deletes the agent-os service and the agentos-db Postgres, including all data, and verifies both are gone before declaring success.

Troubleshooting

• The first deploy fails before you add the JWT key, and that is expected. In production (RUNTIME_ENV=prd) AgentOS refuses to start without a JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY, so the Blueprint's first deploy exits with a ValueError until ./scripts/render/up.sh adds the key and redeploys. The service still gets its URL, which is why up.sh can proceed against a failed first deploy.
• os.agno.com's Live connection fails to connect instantly. os.agno.com calls your AgentOS from the browser, so a browser adblocker or content blocker can block the cross-origin request to your onrender.com domain (that domain sits on several filter lists). If the connection fails immediately (not a timeout), disable the blocker for os.agno.com or allowlist your https://<name>.onrender.com URL.

Opting out of JWT (not recommended)

Change authorization=runtime_env != "dev" to authorization=False in app/main.py and redeploy. Use this only inside a private VPC behind another auth layer. Without it, anyone who reaches your service URL can access your platform.

Using the platform

This platform is designed so that coding agents can drive the entire create → improve → evaluate → maintain lifecycle for you.

Create

Open your coding agent of choice (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) and run:

/create-agent

It asks a few questions, generates the agent file in agents/, registers it in app/main.py, adds its description and quick prompts to app/config.yaml, restarts the container, and smoke-tests it for you.

Improve

Improve your agents by running the following skills:

• /extend-agent — Add a tool, add a capability, refine the instructions, fix a known bug.
• /improve-agent — Claude simulates scenarios from the agent's INSTRUCTIONS and its real usage recorded in the database, runs them against the live container, judges the responses, and edits until they pass.

Evaluate

Run the eval suite to check for regressions. The evals live in evals/cases.py, and run history shows up in the AgentOS UI next to your sessions and traces.

The evals run on the host machine, so set up the venv with ./scripts/venv_setup.sh && source .venv/bin/activate, then run:

python -m evals --tag smoke      # fast checks of the self-driving surfaces
python -m evals --tag release    # broader pre-release confidence
python -m evals --name <case>    # one case while iterating
python -m evals -v               # stream the full run with rich panels

If a case fails, run /eval-and-improve — it diagnoses each failure, fixes what's in scope, and loops until green.

Maintain

Because the repo is managed by coding agents, it moves fast. Run /review-and-improve before a release or after a refactor: it sweeps for drift between docs, code, and config, auto-fixes mechanical drift like stale paths and missing env vars, and flags anything bigger.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Default	Description
OPENAI_API_KEY	yes	none	OpenAI key for models and embeddings.
RUNTIME_ENV	no	prd	dev disables JWT. Compose sets this to dev for local — never put dev in an env file that env-sync.sh pushes to Render, or production serves unauthenticated.
JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY	prd	none	Public key from os.agno.com. Required when RUNTIME_ENV=prd, unless JWT_JWKS_FILE is set.
JWT_JWKS_FILE	prd	none	Path to a JWKS file; alternative to JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY for production JWT verification.
AGENTOS_URL	no	http://127.0.0.1:8000	Scheduler base URL. scripts/render/up.sh pins it to the onrender.com service URL after the first deploy (render.yaml can't reference its own URL) and writes it back into your env file. Also the public origin OAuth metadata derives from when MCP_CONNECT_SECRET is set.
MCP_CONNECT_SECRET	no	none	If set (≥16 chars, e.g. openssl rand -base64 32), /mcp becomes its own OAuth 2.1 authorization server so claude.ai and ChatGPT (web) can connect; connecting asks for this secret on a consent page. Requires AGENTOS_URL. scripts/render/up.sh auto-generates it on deploy. PAT and JWT bearers keep working alongside.
AGENTOS_MCP_SIGNING_KEY	no	none	Optional high-entropy signing-key material (≥32 chars) for OAuth tokens. Unset, a strong key is generated and persisted in the database. Rotating it invalidates outstanding tokens.
ENABLE_DEPLOY_CHECK	no	True	The reference deployment-check cron runs daily by default. This env var owns the schedule's toggle (re-asserted on every boot); the workflow is runnable on demand regardless.
EVALS_TAG	no	smoke	Eval tag run by the run-evals workflow.
EVALS_CASE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	no	90	Default per-case timeout for run-evals runs; applies only to cases that don't set their own timeout_seconds.
EVALS_SUITE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS	no	derived	Whole-suite timeout for run-evals runs; per-case timeouts are the granular limit. Unset, it is derived from the cases the tag selects. Set it to override.
PARALLEL_API_KEY	no	none	Authenticates Agno's and the Studio registry's web search tools (Parallel SDK when set; keyless MCP fallback). Also the fast route for ingesting a product's docs — clean markdown per page, JS-rendered pages and PDFs included; without it ingestion still works, page by page, just slower.
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN / SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET	no	none	Both must be set to enable the Slack interface. The bot token also lights up the registry's send-only Slack toolkit for built agents.
DB_HOST / DB_PORT / DB_USER / DB_PASS / DB_DATABASE	no	matches compose	Postgres connection.
DB_DRIVER	no	postgresql+psycopg	SQLAlchemy driver.
AGNO_DEBUG	no	False	If True, Agno emits verbose debug logs. Compose sets this for dev.
WAIT_FOR_DB	no	False	If True, the entrypoint blocks on the DB before starting. Compose sets this.

Learn more

• Agno documentation
• AgentOS introduction
• Agno on GitHub. Drop a star if this is useful.