Agent Runtime
The live environment that actually runs the agent — holding its state, executing its tools, and keeping the loop turning.
Think of it like
The engine bay under the hood — you don’t look at it, but it’s where the running actually happens.
Example
When the deployed agent handles a support ticket, the runtime is the process spinning up its tools, tracking the conversation, and enforcing the token budget.
How it actually works
The framework is the design-time toolkit; the runtime is the thing executing in production, managing concurrency, timeouts, and resource limits. A weak runtime is where agents that looked great in a demo fall over — leaked memory, stuck loops, tools that hang. It’s the unglamorous layer that decides whether your agent is reliable at scale.
For product teams
Demo quality and production quality diverge here — the runtime is where reliability is won or lost.
For engineers
It manages process lifecycle, concurrency, resource limits, and tool execution for a running agent.
Related
- Agent Framework — The framework defines it; the runtime runs it.
- Agent State — What the runtime keeps between steps.
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