💡 Summary
Deep Agents is a customizable agent harness that simplifies the creation and management of AI agents.
🎯 Target Audience
🤖 AI Roast: “Powerful, but the setup might scare off the impatient.”
Risk: Medium. Review: shell/CLI command execution; outbound network access (SSRF, data egress); API keys/tokens handling and storage; filesystem read/write scope and path traversal; dependency pinning and supply-chain risk. Run with least privilege and audit before enabling in production.
What is Deep Agents?
Deep Agents is an agent harness. An opinionated, ready-to-run agent out of the box. Instead of wiring up prompts, tools, and context management yourself, you get a working agent immediately and customize what you need.
What's included:
- Planning —
write_todos/read_todosfor task breakdown and progress tracking - Filesystem —
read_file,write_file,edit_file,ls,glob,grepfor reading and writing context - Shell access —
executefor running commands (with sandboxing) - Sub-agents —
taskfor delegating work with isolated context windows - Smart defaults — Prompts that teach the model how to use these tools effectively
- Context management — Auto-summarization when conversations get long, large outputs saved to files
Quickstart
pip install deepagents # or uv add deepagents
from deepagents import create_deep_agent agent = create_deep_agent() result = agent.invoke({"messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Research LangGraph and write a summary"}]})
The agent can plan, read/write files, and manage its own context. Add tools, customize prompts, or swap models as needed.
Customization
Add your own tools, swap models, customize prompts, configure sub-agents, and more. See the documentation for full details.
from langchain.chat_models import init_chat_model agent = create_deep_agent( model=init_chat_model("openai:gpt-4o"), tools=[my_custom_tool], system_prompt="You are a research assistant.", )
MCP is supported via langchain-mcp-adapters.
Deep Agents CLI
Try Deep Agents instantly from the terminal:
uv tool install deepagents-cli deepagents
The CLI adds conversation resume, web search, remote sandboxes (Modal, Runloop, Daytona), persistent memory, custom skills, and human-in-the-loop approval. See the CLI documentation for more. Using the Deep Agents requires setting an API Key before running (ex: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY).
LangGraph Native
create_deep_agent returns a compiled LangGraph graph. Use it with streaming, Studio, checkpointers, or any LangGraph feature.
FAQ
Why should I use this?
- 100% open source — MIT licensed, fully extensible
- Provider agnostic — Works with Claude, OpenAI, Google, or any LangChain-compatible model
- Built on LangGraph — Production-ready runtime with streaming, persistence, and checkpointing
- Batteries included — Planning, file access, sub-agents, and context management work out of the box
- Get started in seconds —
pip install deepagentsoruv add deepagentsand you have a working agent - Customize in minutes — Add tools, swap models, tune prompts when you need to
Resources
- Documentation — Full API reference and guides
- Examples — Working agents and patterns
- CLI — Interactive terminal interface
Security
Deep Agents follows a "trust the LLM" model. The agent can do anything its tools allow. Enforce boundaries at the tool/sandbox level, not by expecting the model to self-police.
Pros
- Fully open source and extensible
- Provider agnostic, compatible with various models
- Includes essential features out of the box
- Quick setup and easy customization
Cons
- Requires API key setup for full functionality
- May need additional configuration for complex tasks
- Trust model relies on tool/sandbox boundaries
- Limited examples in the documentation
Related Skills
pytorch
S“It's the Swiss Army knife of deep learning, but good luck figuring out which of the 47 installation methods is the one that won't break your system.”
agno
S“It promises to be the Kubernetes for agents, but let's see if developers have the patience to learn yet another orchestration layer.”
nuxt-skills
S“It's essentially a well-organized cheat sheet that turns your AI assistant into a Nuxt framework parrot.”
Disclaimer: This content is sourced from GitHub open source projects for display and rating purposes only.
Copyright belongs to the original author langchain-ai.
