The agent builder

What it is, and what it is not

The builder is itself an ordinary agent — an AgentClass named agent-builder, installed by oap install when you name who may start it. It runs under the same guardrails as everything else here: a plan it must declare, stages you approve, tools it calls through the platform, an audit trail. What makes it different is where it works and what it produces.

• It works in a workshop. Every build runs inside its own isolated space, created for that session and torn down when the session ends. The draft agent lives there, is tested there, and never touches the cluster's other agents until an admin installs it.
• It produces a draft, not a deployment. The output of a build is a .oap bundle — the same portable format every agent here ships as. You keep it. Nothing runs anywhere until someone with the right to install agents says so.
• It never asks you for a key. The platform connects accounts itself: your own accounts through your accounts page, a shared account through a secure card the builder sends. If an agent would need a credential the builder cannot arrange, it says so and stops.

The six stages

The workshop page shows a timeline of six stages. The builder moves through them in order and paints the page as it goes, so you always see where it is and what has been settled.

Stage	What happens
Intake	You describe the agent in your own words. The builder restates what it understood, records what is settled, and asks one clarifying question at a time.
Tools	For each service the job needs, it finds the least-code way to reach it — a connector the cluster already offers first — validates it, and tries it.
Permissions	A plain-language interview: what the agent may do on its own, what it must ask about first, what it can never do. The page keeps a "will / will ask / won't" summary.
Build	It composes the agent from everything gathered, applies it, and keeps fixing it until the platform reports it valid.
Test	You start a real session of the new agent, embedded on the page, and the builder watches what it actually does — its tool calls and results, not its prose.
Deliver	It saves a portable copy of exactly what you tested, and offers to install it for real.

Each stage that changes the draft is something you approve once, on a card the builder raises before it starts. Every change inside that stage then runs without another card; a stage the builder never planned for raises a fresh one. The details are in Your first custom agent.

Who can use it

Access is set when the builder is installed: oap install --builder-starters names the people and groups who may start it. Anyone else does not see it in the session picker at all. See Turn on the agent builder.

A person may have a small number of workshops open at once — three by default. Starting a fourth is refused with the list of the ones still open and a way out: open one of them and ask it to close the others. A finished build releases its workshop on its own. See Workshops and limits.

What an admin sees

"Install for real" does not install anything. It records a request that a platform admin reviews in the admin console: the suggested name, who asked, and the draft as tested. The admin installs it into the namespace it belongs in, or declines it, and the person is told either way. The saved draft is the person's regardless — they can hand it to someone else, or ask again later.

In this section

• Turn on the agent builder — the one oap install flag, and how to find your identity.
• Your first custom agent — a full build, stage by stage, with the page as it changes.
• Testing, delivery, and install — what the test card tells you, what the saved draft is, and how an admin installs it.
• Workshops and limits — the per-person limit, closing workshops, and what releases one.