Claude Managed Agents overview

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

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.

Core concepts

Claude Managed Agents is built around four concepts:

How it works

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 containers with pre-installed packages and network access
• 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 container
• File operations: Read, write, edit, glob, and grep files in the container
• 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:

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

Certain features (outcomes and multiagent) are in beta (research preview). Request access to try them.

Rate limits

Managed Agents endpoints are rate-limited per organization:

Organization-level spend limits and tier-based rate limits also apply.

Branding guidelines

For partners integrating Claude Managed Agents, use of Claude branding is optional. When referencing Claude in your product:

Allowed:

• "Claude Agent" (preferred for dropdown menus)
• "Claude" (when within a menu already labeled "Agents")
• "{YourAgentName} Powered by Claude" (if you have an existing agent name)

Not permitted:

• "Claude Code" or "Claude Code Agent"
• "Claude Cowork" or "Claude Cowork Agent"
• Claude Code-branded ASCII art or visual elements that mimic Claude Code

Your product should maintain its own branding and not appear to be Claude Code, Claude Cowork, or any other Anthropic product. For questions about branding compliance, contact the Anthropic sales team.