Introduction
Agent Studio is a full-stack platform for building, testing, and deploying AI agent workflows. It provides a visual workflow builder backed by a gRPC API, a workflow engine supporting CrewAI and LangGraph frameworks, and an embedded observability layer powered by Arize Phoenix. Workflows are composed of agents, tasks, tools, and MCP servers — packaged as portable templates that can be imported, exported, and deployed as production endpoints.
This guide serves two audiences:
| If you are… | Start here |
|---|---|
| Building an agent harness for rapid template development (visual canvas, telemetry, gRPC) | Architecture Reference |
| Building a validation SDK to ensure template ZIPs conform to the expected format | Template Specification and Validation Rules |
Terminology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Workflow Template | A portable, reusable blueprint for an entire workflow — aggregates agent, task, tool, and MCP templates. Exported/imported as ZIP files. |
| Tool Template | A Python package (tool.py + requirements.txt) that agents can invoke at runtime. Defines configuration parameters and invocation arguments via Pydantic models. |
| Agent Template | A reusable agent definition with role, backstory, goal, and references to its tools and MCP servers. Maps to a CrewAI Agent. |
| Task Template | A unit of work assigned to an agent, with a description and expected output. Execution order is defined by position in the workflow’s task list. |
| MCP Template | A Model Context Protocol server configuration — type (Python or Node), startup arguments, and required environment variables. |
| CollatedInput | The runtime data structure that fully describes a workflow for execution — language models, agents, tasks, tools, MCP servers, and the workflow itself. |
| Deployment Artifact | A tar.gz archive containing a workflow.yaml, collated_input.json, and all required tool code. Consumed by the workflow engine. |
| Workflow Engine | A separate Python package (FastAPI/Uvicorn) that executes workflows. Runs as sidecar processes on ports 51000+. |
Template Lifecycle
The upstream SDK’s responsibility ends at validation — ensuring the ZIP conforms to the structure documented in the Template Specification chapters. Agent Studio handles instantiation, testing, and deployment.