AI Agent SDKs Explained
🧠Knowledge Series #70 - Everything you need to know about AI Agent SDKs. What they are and how product teams can use them. Real world examples.
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AI Agent SDKs are pretty hot right now. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen the release of a bunch of new AI agent SDKs from the likes of Google, Amazon, OpenAI and others as agentic experiences start to take shape and product teams start dipping their toes into building their own AI Agents.
But what exactly are these AI Agent SDKs and how can product teams use them in their development processes?
In this Knowledge Series, we’re going to dig into the most important technical concepts worth knowing about AI Agent SDKs as a non-engineer.
We’ll explore some of the most common attributes and capabilities of AI Agent SDKs from leading companies like OpenAI, Google and others, with notes on what they do and how product teams can use them with real world examples for use cases like taking payments, sharing user credentials and more.
What are SDKs again? A quick refresh
What are AI Agent SDKs? The essential concepts worth knowing about unpacked
Use cases: how product teams can use AI agent SDKs
Real world examples of companies offering AI Agent SDKS - OpenAI, Stripe, 1Password and more
How OpenAI and Google are battling for developer mindshare with open-source agent frameworks that work across multiple AI models
A fascinating real-world example of a YouTube Shorts Agent using three specialized sub-agents to write scripts, create visuals, and format content
What are SDKs again? A quick refresh
Before we take a look at some AI agent SDKs, it’s probably helpful to get a quick refresh on some of the most important bits to know about SDKs in general.
What is an SDK?
An SDK is a software development kit and for non-engineering members of product teams, you’ve probably come across the term either when you’re speaking to engineers or browsing API documentation for a third party you’re thinking about integrating with.
One of the reasons SDKs can often be quite confusing to get your head around is because they’re actually a combination of various different technologies bundled into one package. Different companies will offer different types of SDKs depending on their value proposition.
But, despite the differences between different companies, an SDK will typically include a mix of one or more of the following: