GitHub - docker/docker-agent: AI Agent Builder and Runtime by Docker Engineering

Build, run, and share AI agents with a declarative YAML config, rich tool ecosystem, and multi-agent orchestration.

What is Docker Agent?

docker-agent lets you create and run intelligent AI agents that collaborate to solve complex problems — no code required.

docker-agent is a docker CLI plugin and can be run with docker agent.

Define agents in YAML, give them tools, and let them work.

agents:
  root:
    model: openai/gpt-5-mini
    description: A helpful AI assistant
    instruction: |
      You are a knowledgeable assistant that helps users with various tasks.
      Be helpful, accurate, and concise in your responses.
    toolsets:
      - type: mcp
        ref: docker:duckduckgo

docker agent run agent.yaml

Key Features

• Multi-agent architecture — Create teams of specialized agents that delegate tasks automatically
• Rich tool ecosystem — Built-in tools + any MCP server (local, remote, or Docker-based)
• AI provider agnostic — OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Mistral, xAI, Docker Model Runner, and more
• YAML configuration — Declarative, versionable, shareable
• Advanced reasoning — Built-in think, todo, and memory tools
• RAG — Pluggable retrieval with BM25, embeddings, hybrid search, and reranking
• Package & share — Push agents to any OCI registry, pull and run them anywhere

Install

Docker Desktop (4.63+) — docker-agent CLI plugin is pre-installed. Just run docker agent.

Homebrew — brew install docker-agent. Run docker-agent directly or symlink the binary to ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-agent and run docker agent.

Binary releases — Download from GitHub Releases. Symlink the docker-agent binary to ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-agent to be able to use docker agent, or use docker-agent directly.

Set at least one API key (or use Docker Model Runner for local models):

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...        # or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, GOOGLE_API_KEY, etc.

Quick Start

# Run the default agent
docker agent run

# Run from the agent catalog
docker agent run agentcatalog/pirate

# Generate a new agent interactively
docker agent new

# Run your own config
docker agent run agent.yaml

More examples in the examples/ directory.

Documentation

📖 Full documentation

• Installation · Quick Start
• Agents · Models · Tools · Multi-Agent
• Configuration Reference
• TUI · CLI · MCP Mode · RAG
• Model Providers · Docker Model Runner

Contributing

Read the Contributing guide to get started. We use docker-agent to build docker-agent:

docker agent run ./golang_developer.yaml

Telemetry

We collect anonymous usage data to improve the tool. See Telemetry.

Community

Docker Community Slack · #docker-agent channel