Agents are the primary identity in RenLayer. Every trace, policy, and rate limit is anchored to an agent, and every API key is scoped to an agent. The Agents page is where you register, configure, and rotate them.
Registering an agent
To create an agent, click New agent and provide:
- Name: human-readable; appears in the dashboard and audit log (e.g.
support-bot-v1). - Description: optional one-liner so other operators know what this agent is for.
- Upstream: the model provider or tool API the agent will talk through (OpenAI, Anthropic, an internal vLLM endpoint, an MCP server).
- Default policy set: which policies this agent inherits from the tenant defaults.
When you save, the console returns the agent ID and an initial API key. The API key is shown once; copy it into your secret manager immediately.
API keys
Each agent can hold multiple active API keys at once, which makes rotation safe:
- Generate a new key.
- Roll it out to your agent’s secret store alongside the old key.
- Switch traffic to the new key.
- Revoke the old key.
Revocation is immediate and propagates to every proxy instance on the next request.
Per-agent rate limits
The agent’s Limits tab exposes per-agent and per-user rate limits (requests/minute, tokens/minute, daily ceilings). See rate limits for the model.
Upstream configuration
The Upstream tab controls where the proxy forwards this agent’s traffic. You can:
- Override the base URL (useful for routing to staging vs production endpoints).
- Inject upstream headers (e.g. an upstream API key, kept server-side, never exposed to the agent).
- Pin the agent to a specific model.
Header injection is the recommended pattern for keeping your real OpenAI key off the agent’s host, the proxy holds the secret, and the agent uses only the RenLayer-issued key.
Sessions for this agent
The agent detail page includes a filtered Sessions view so you can see this agent’s traces in isolation. Useful when triaging a single misbehaving agent without losing the wider context.
Audit and history
Every change to an agent (created, key minted, key revoked, upstream edited, limit raised) is recorded in the audit log with the operator, timestamp, and diff.
Where to go next
- Policies: write rules that target specific agents.
- Sessions: investigate what an agent did.
- Proxy: deployment: how to point your agent at the proxy.