Overview

Managed AgentsFirst steps

Claude Managed Agents overview

Pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure. Best for long-running tasks and asynchronous work.

Anthropic offers two ways to build with Claude, each suited to different use cases:

	Messages API	Claude Managed Agents
What it is	Direct model prompting access	Pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure
Best for	Custom agent loops and fine-grained control	Long-running tasks and asynchronous work
Learn more	Messages API docs	Claude Managed Agents docs

Claude Managed Agents provides the harness and infrastructure for running Claude as an autonomous agent. Instead of building your own agent loop, tool execution, and runtime, you get a fully managed environment where Claude can read files, run commands, browse the web, and execute code securely. The harness supports built-in prompt caching, compaction, and other performance optimizations for high-quality, efficient agent outputs.

Claude Managed Agents is also available on Claude Platform on AWS, with some differences in feature availability and session behavior. See Claude Managed Agents in the Claude Platform on AWS guide.

Quickstart

Create your first agent session

Start a session

Create a session and send your first event

Reference

Event types, rate limits, CLI flags, and other lookup tables

Core concepts

Claude Managed Agents is built around four concepts:

Concept	Description
Agent	The model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills
Environment	Configuration for where sessions run: an Anthropic-managed cloud sandbox, or a self-hosted sandbox on your own infrastructure
Session	A running agent instance within an environment, performing a specific task and generating outputs
Events	Messages exchanged between your application and the agent (user turns, tool results, status updates)

How it works

Create an agent
Define the model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills. Create the agent once and reference it by ID across sessions.
Create an environment
Configure where the agent runs: a cloud sandbox, or a self-hosted sandbox on your own infrastructure.
Start a session
Launch a session that references your agent and environment configuration.
Send events and stream responses
Send user messages as events. Claude autonomously executes tools and streams back results through server-sent events (SSE). Event history is persisted server-side and can be fetched in full.
Steer or interrupt
Send additional user events to guide the agent mid-execution, or interrupt it to change direction.

When to use Claude Managed Agents

Claude Managed Agents is best for workloads that need:

Long-running execution: Tasks that run for minutes or hours with multiple tool calls
Cloud infrastructure: Secure sandboxes with pre-installed packages and network access
Self-hosted execution: Sandboxes on infrastructure you control for compliance or data-residency requirements
Minimal infrastructure: No need to build your own agent loop, sandbox, or tool execution layer
Stateful sessions: Persistent filesystems and conversation history across multiple interactions

Supported tools

Claude Managed Agents gives Claude access to a set of built-in tools:

Bash: Run shell commands in the sandbox
File operations: Read, write, edit, glob, and grep files in the sandbox
Web search and fetch: Search the web and retrieve content from URLs
MCP servers: Connect to external tool providers

See Tools for the full list and configuration options.

Beta access

Claude Managed Agents is currently in beta. All Managed Agents endpoints require the managed-agents-2026-04-01 beta header. The SDK sets the beta header automatically. Behaviors may be refined between releases to improve outputs.

To get started, you need:

A Claude API key
The managed-agents-2026-04-01 beta header on all requests
Access to Claude Managed Agents (enabled by default for all API accounts)

Within the beta, MCP tunnels and dreaming are in a more limited research preview. Request access to enable them.

Claude Managed Agents is stateful by design: sessions are long-running, resume cleanly after pauses, and store conversation history, sandbox state, and outputs server-side. Because of this, Managed Agents is not currently eligible for Zero Data Retention or HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) coverage. You retain control over this data: you can delete sessions, and separately delete any files you uploaded, at any time through the API. For eligibility across all features, see API and data retention.

See Rate limits and Branding guidelines in the reference.

Was this page helpful?

Managed AgentsFirst steps

Claude Managed Agents overview

Pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure. Best for long-running tasks and asynchronous work.

Anthropic offers two ways to build with Claude, each suited to different use cases:

	Messages API	Claude Managed Agents
What it is	Direct model prompting access	Pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure
Best for	Custom agent loops and fine-grained control	Long-running tasks and asynchronous work
Learn more	Messages API docs	Claude Managed Agents docs

Claude Managed Agents is also available on Claude Platform on AWS, with some differences in feature availability and session behavior. See Claude Managed Agents in the Claude Platform on AWS guide.

Quickstart

Create your first agent session

Start a session

Create a session and send your first event

Reference

Event types, rate limits, CLI flags, and other lookup tables

Core concepts

Claude Managed Agents is built around four concepts:

Concept	Description
Agent	The model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills
Environment	Configuration for where sessions run: an Anthropic-managed cloud sandbox, or a self-hosted sandbox on your own infrastructure
Session	A running agent instance within an environment, performing a specific task and generating outputs
Events	Messages exchanged between your application and the agent (user turns, tool results, status updates)

How it works

Create an agent
Define the model, system prompt, tools, MCP servers, and skills. Create the agent once and reference it by ID across sessions.
Create an environment
Configure where the agent runs: a cloud sandbox, or a self-hosted sandbox on your own infrastructure.
Start a session
Launch a session that references your agent and environment configuration.
Send events and stream responses
Send user messages as events. Claude autonomously executes tools and streams back results through server-sent events (SSE). Event history is persisted server-side and can be fetched in full.
Steer or interrupt
Send additional user events to guide the agent mid-execution, or interrupt it to change direction.

When to use Claude Managed Agents

Claude Managed Agents is best for workloads that need:

Long-running execution: Tasks that run for minutes or hours with multiple tool calls
Cloud infrastructure: Secure sandboxes with pre-installed packages and network access
Self-hosted execution: Sandboxes on infrastructure you control for compliance or data-residency requirements
Minimal infrastructure: No need to build your own agent loop, sandbox, or tool execution layer
Stateful sessions: Persistent filesystems and conversation history across multiple interactions

Supported tools

Claude Managed Agents gives Claude access to a set of built-in tools:

Bash: Run shell commands in the sandbox
File operations: Read, write, edit, glob, and grep files in the sandbox
Web search and fetch: Search the web and retrieve content from URLs
MCP servers: Connect to external tool providers

See Tools for the full list and configuration options.

Beta access

To get started, you need:

A Claude API key
The managed-agents-2026-04-01 beta header on all requests
Access to Claude Managed Agents (enabled by default for all API accounts)

Within the beta, MCP tunnels and dreaming are in a more limited research preview. Request access to enable them.

See Rate limits and Branding guidelines in the reference.

Was this page helpful?