Claude’s latest update includes Claude Managed Agents, a suite of composable APIs created by Anthropic. These agents offer everything users need to build and deploy agents at scale, making them great at helping businesses execute long, complex tasks.
What is Claude Managed Agents?
Anthropic has two ways for users to build with Claude: Messages API and Claude Managed Agents. Messages API offers direct model prompting access, which is best for custom agent loops and fine-grained control. However, Claude Managed Agents differ because they offer a pre-built, configurable agent harness that allows users to run Claude as an autonomous agent. They’re more geared toward long-running tasks and asynchronous work.
To achieve this, Claude Managed Agents include access to comprehensive built-in tools, including Bash to run shell commands, file operation tools to read and edit files, and web search tools to retrieve content from websites. See Claude’s full list of tools for more information.
How Does it Work?
Claude Managed Agents are currently in Beta access, so you need a Claude API key to use them. Some features are still in research preview, so you’ll need to request access for those.
Once you have access, follow these steps:
- Create an Agent – Define the model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills to create an agent that you can reference across sessions.
- Create an Environment – Use pre-installed packages, network access rules, and mounted files to configure a cloud container.
- Start a Session – Launch a session referencing the agent and environment you created.
- Send Events – Send user messages as events, and Claude will autonomously use appropriate tools and stream back responses.
- Steer or Interrupt – You can send more user events mid-execution to help guide the agent.
When to Use Claude Managed Agents
Claude Managed Agents are designed to help with workflows that need long-running execution, cloud infrastructure, minimal infrastructure, and/or stateful sessions. Tasks that once required months of work can now be handled for you simply by defining tasks, tools, and guardrails for the agent.
Engineering teams and developers can save a lot of time by having access to these useful agents. Notion, Asana, and Rakuten are a few of the early customers who have spoken positively about their experience.
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