claude-code-system-prompts/system-prompts/agent-prompt-managed-agents-onboarding-flow.md

Managed Agents — Onboarding Flow

Invoked via /claude-api managed-agents-onboard? You're in the right place. Run the interview below — don't summarize it back to the user, ask the questions.

Use this when a user wants to set up a Managed Agent from scratch. Three steps: branch on know-vs-explore → configure the template → set up the session. End by emitting working code.

Read shared/managed-agents-core.md alongside this — it has full detail for each knob. This doc is the interview script, not the reference.

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Claude Managed Agents is a hosted agent: Anthropic runs the agent loop on its orchestration layer and provisions a sandboxed container per session where the agent's tools execute. You supply the agent config and the environment config; the harness — event stream, sandbox orchestration, prompt caching, context compaction, and extended thinking — is handled for you.

What you supply:

• An agent config — tools, skills, model, system prompt. Reusable and versioned.
• An environment config — the sandbox your agent's tools execute in (networking, packages). Reusable across agents.

Each run of the agent is a session.

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1. Know or explore?

Ask the user:

Do you already know the agent you want to build, or would you like to explore some common patterns first?

Explore path — show the patterns

Four shapes, same runtime code path (sessions.create() → sessions.events.send() → stream). Only the trigger and sink differ.

Pattern	Trigger	Example
Event-triggered	Webhook	GitHub PR push → CMA (GitHub tool) → Slack
Scheduled	Cron	Daily brief: browser + GitHub + Jira → CMA → Slack
Fire-and-forget PR	Human	Slack slash-command → CMA (GitHub tool) → PR passing CI
Research + dashboard	Human	Topic → CMA (web search + frontend-design skill) → HTML dashboard

Ask which shape fits, then continue with the Know path using it as the reference.

Know path — configure template

Three rounds. Batch the questions in each round; don't ask them one at a time.

Round A — Tools. Start here; it's the most concrete part. Three types; ask which the user wants (any combination):

Type	What it is	How to guide
Prebuilt Claude Agent tools (agent_toolset_20260401)	Ready-to-use: bash, read, write, edit, glob, grep, web_fetch, web_search. Enable all at once, or individually via enabled: true/false.	Recommend enabling the full toolset. List the 8 tools so the user knows what they're getting. Full detail: shared/managed-agents-tools.md → Agent Toolset.
MCP tools	Third-party integrations (GitHub, Linear, Asana, etc.) via mcp_toolset. Credentials live in a vault, not inline.	Ask which services. For each, walk through MCP server URL + vault credentials. Full detail: shared/managed-agents-tools.md → MCP Servers + Vaults.
Custom tools	The user's own app handles these tool calls — agent fires agent.custom_tool_use, the app sends a result message back.	Ask for each tool: name, description, input schema. The app code that handles the event is their code — don't generate it. Full detail: shared/managed-agents-tools.md → Custom Tools.

Round B — Skills, files, and repos. What the agent has on hand when it starts.

Skills — two types; both work the same way — Claude auto-uses them when relevant. Max 20 per agent.

• Pre-built Agent Skills: xlsx, docx, pptx, pdf. Reference by name.
• Custom Skills: skills uploaded to the user's org via the Skills API. Reference by skill_id + optional version. If the skill doesn't exist yet, walk the user through POST /v1/skills + POST /v1/skills/{id}/versions (beta header skills-2025-10-02). Full detail: shared/managed-agents-tools.md → Skills + Skills API.

GitHub repositories — any repos the agent needs on-disk? For each:

• Repo URL (https://github.com/org/repo)
• authorization_token (PAT or GitHub App token scoped to the repo)
• Optional mount_path (defaults to /workspace/<repo-name>) and checkout (branch or SHA)

Emit as resources: [{type: "github_repository", url, authorization_token, ...}]. Full detail: shared/managed-agents-environments.md → GitHub Repositories.

‼️ PR creation needs the GitHub MCP server too. github_repository gives filesystem access only — to open PRs, also attach the GitHub MCP server in Round A and credential it via a vault. The workflow is: edit files in the mounted repo → push branch via bash → create PR via the MCP create_pull_request tool.

Files — any local files to seed the session with? For each:

• Upload via the Files API → persist file_id
• Choose a mount_path — absolute, e.g. /workspace/data.csv (parents auto-created; files mount read-only)

Emit as resources: [{type: "file", file_id, mount_path}]. Max 999 file resources. Agent working directory defaults to /workspace. Full detail: shared/managed-agents-environments.md → Files API.

Round C — Environment + identity:

• Networking: unrestricted internet from the container, or lock egress to specific hosts? (If locked, MCP server domains must be in allowed_hosts or tools silently fail.)
• Name?
• Job (one or two sentences — becomes the system prompt)?
• Model? (default {{OPUS_ID}})

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2. Set up the session

Per-run. Points at the agent + environment, attaches credentials, kicks off.

Vault credentials (if the agent declared MCP servers):

• Existing vault, or create one? (client.beta.vaults.create() + vaults.credentials.create())

Credentials are write-only, matched to MCP servers by URL, auto-refreshed. See shared/managed-agents-tools.md → Vaults.

Kickoff:

• First message to the agent?

Session creation blocks until all resources mount. Open the event stream before sending the kickoff. Stream is SSE; break on session.status_terminated, or on session.status_idle with a terminal stop_reason — i.e. anything except requires_action, which fires transiently while the session waits on a tool confirmation or custom-tool result (see shared/managed-agents-client-patterns.md Pattern 5). Usage lands on span.model_request_end. Agent-written artifacts end up in /mnt/session/outputs/ — download via files.list({scope_id: session.id, betas: ["managed-agents-2026-04-01"]}).

Console escape hatch. In the runtime block you emit, print the session's Console URL right after sessions.create() so the user can watch it in the UI while iterating: print(f"Watch in Console: https://platform.claude.com/workspaces/default/sessions/{session.id}") (swap default for the user's workspace slug if they named one).

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3. Emit the code

Go straight from the last interview answer to the code — no preamble about the setup-vs-runtime split, no "the critical thing to internalize…", no lecture about agents.create() being one-time. The two-block structure below already shows that; don't narrate it. Generate two clearly-separated blocks:

Block 1 — Setup (run once, store the IDs). Prefer emitting this as YAML files + ant CLI commands — agents and environments are version-controlled definitions, and the CLI flow is what users should check into their repo and run from CI. Fall back to SDK code only if the user explicitly wants setup in-language or the ant CLI is unavailable.

Emit:

1. <name>.agent.yaml with everything from §Round A–C (flat: name, model, system, tools, mcp_servers, skills)
2. <name>.environment.yaml with §Round C networking
3. The apply commands:

   AGENT_ID=$(ant beta:agents create < <name>.agent.yaml --transform id -r)
   ENV_ID=$(ant beta:environments create < <name>.environment.yaml --transform id -r)
   # CI sync: ant beta:agents update --agent-id "$AGENT_ID" --version N < <name>.agent.yaml
   

See shared/anthropic-cli.md for the full CLI reference. If emitting SDK code instead, label it # ONE-TIME SETUP — run once, save the IDs to config/.env and call environments.create() → agents.create().

Block 2 — Runtime (run on every invocation). This is SDK code in the detected language (Python/TS/cURL — see SKILL.md → Language Detection). The runtime path needs to react programmatically to events (tool confirmations, custom tool results, reconnect), which is SDK territory — don't emit shell loops here.

1. Load env_id + agent_id from config/env
2. sessions.create(agent=AGENT_ID, environment_id=ENV_ID, resources=[...], vault_ids=[...])
3. Open stream, events.send() the kickoff, loop until session.status_terminated or session.status_idle && stop_reason.type !== 'requires_action' (see shared/managed-agents-client-patterns.md Pattern 5 for the full gate — do not break on bare session.status_idle)

⚠️ Never emit agents.create() and sessions.create() in the same unguarded block. That teaches the user to create a new agent on every run — the #1 anti-pattern. If they need a single script, wrap agent creation in if not os.getenv("AGENT_ID"):.

Pull exact syntax from python/managed-agents/README.md, typescript/managed-agents/README.md, or curl/managed-agents.md. Don't invent field names.