Introduction
Amodal hosts agents defined by source files. The files describe the agent's instructions, API connections, knowledge, tools, stores, and evals. You can start from a template with source stored in Amodal, or connect a Git repository.
Amodal builds and deploys the agent, serves its chat UI or custom app, and records sessions, tool calls, logs, and usage.
How It Works
- Define the agent. Add an
amodal.jsonmanifest and the files described in Project Structure. - Configure the deployment. Choose a model, set secrets, and configure access in Amodal.
- Build and test. Deploy a source version, chat with it, and run evals.
- Select production. Make a tested deploy active so the persistent agent URL serves it.
- Inspect and improve. Review sessions and traces, edit the source, and deploy again.
During a conversation, the model can call the tools available to the agent, use their results, and answer the user. Skills provide instructions for particular tasks. Named agents can limit the tools, connections, skills, and stores available to a workflow.
Core Concepts
| Concept | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Agent | A deployed definition of instructions and capabilities. | support-agent |
| Session | One conversation, including messages, tool calls, approvals, and usage. | A ticket investigation |
| Scope | An identifier that labels sessions and partitions memory, non-shared runtime stores, and scoped credentials. | tenant:acme |
| Scope context | Facts the application supplies for the current turn. | { "ticket_id": "123", "page": "support" } |
| Named agent | A prompt and a selected set of capabilities for a workflow. | review |
Use scope_id to identify the application boundary and session_id to continue a conversation. Several sessions can share a scope. Sending the same scope_id starts a separate conversation unless you also pass its session_id.
Scope context supplies information to the model. Tenant isolation requires backend authorization for each scope, session, and operation, even with scoped runtime tokens. Tools and connections must also enforce tenant access; see Embedding & Multi-tenancy.
Next Steps
- Build With A Coding Agent: give your coding agent the setup prompt.
- Project Structure: learn where each file belongs.
- Build A Support Agent: create an agent that reads a public demo API.
- Source & Deploy In Amodal: create, deploy, and inspect an agent.
- Embedding & Multi-tenancy: add the agent to your product.