Managing your agents

Once an agent is deployed it runs continuously until you pause or delete it. Use the ast agent commands to manage it over its lifetime.

Inspect

List all agents in the active account:

$
ast agent list

Get full details for a specific agent:

$
ast agent get <name>

Agent names are the display names set at deploy time. If two deployments share a name, pass --id <deployment-id> on commands that support it to target one unambiguously.

Observe

Fetch recent logs from the agent container:

$
ast agent logs <name> --container app

Stream logs continuously as they arrive:

$
ast agent logs <name> --container app --tail

To fetch logs from the messaging sidecar instead:

$
ast agent logs <name> --container messaging

Control

Pause an agent to stop it from handling requests without deleting it:

$
ast agent pause <name>

Resume it when ready:

$
ast agent resume <name>

Restart the agent process in-place (useful after a transient failure):

$
ast agent restart <name> --component agent

Update

Redeploy an existing agent in-place (without changing its deployment ID or URL) to pick up new variables or a different build:

$
ast agent redeploy <name> --var ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=@ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

This is the right command after rotating a secret or pushing a new blueprint build. It accepts the same --var, --vars-file, --adapter, and --build flags as ast blueprint deploy. If --adapter is omitted, the adapter defaults to web; pass it explicitly to preserve or change a non-web setup.

Delete

$
ast agent delete <name>

You will be prompted to confirm. Pass --confirm <name> to skip the prompt in scripts.