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

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.

See Set Up a Model for the full walkthrough of both paths (cloud API key or local model).

Run the default agent

docker agent run

Run from an OCI registry

docker agent run myorg/agent:tag

Generate a new agent interactively

docker agent new

Run your own config

docker agent run agent.yaml

More examples in the examples/ directory.

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.

Docker Community Slack · #docker-agent channel