Amazon Bedrock Agents (Classic), launched in November 2023, is now called Bedrock Agents Classic and moves to maintenance mode: it closes to new customers on July 30, 2026 (existing customers can keep using it). New agent work should target Amazon Bedrock AgentCore โ a modular, framework-agnostic agentic platform that works with any foundation model and any open-source framework (Strands Agents, LangGraph, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, Google ADK, OpenAI Agents SDK).
AgentCore's core services can be used independently or together:
Runtime โ serverless, session-isolated hosting for agents and tools with fast cold starts.
Gateway โ turns APIs, Lambda functions, and existing services into MCP-compatible tools in a few lines of code.
Memory โ short-term (multi-turn) and long-term (cross-session) memory, shareable across agents.
Identity โ agent auth/identity that plugs into Cognito, Okta, Entra ID, and other IdPs.
Observability, Evaluations, Optimization, Policy, Registry โ production governance: tracing, automated quality scoring, A/B-driven tuning, Cedar-based rule enforcement, and a catalog of agents/tools/MCP servers.
Key idea: Design agents as controlled workflows, not unconstrained autonomy โ bounded tools, typed inputs/outputs, and human approval for high-impact actions apply whether you build on Bedrock Agents Classic or AgentCore.
โจ HANDS-ON LABDesign an Operations Agent
โญ +150 XP
Define an incident agent with escalation, diagnostics, and summary actions/tools.
1Draft tool/action definitions.
2Add explicit approval boundaries.
lab-sandbox โ simulated environment
INFINITY LAB SANDBOX v2.6 โ simulated shell
Type the command for the current objective. Helpers: "hint", "solution", "clear".
$
OBJECTIVE 1 / 2 โ type "hint" if stuck
๐งช Knowledge Check
Press 1-4 to select1 of 3
What happens to Amazon Bedrock Agents (Classic) starting July 30, 2026?
It is deleted immediately for everyone
It closes to new customers and moves to maintenance mode; existing customers can continue
It is renamed with no functional change
It becomes free
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore: The Current Agent Platform Tutorial | Agents for Bedrock & AgentCore โ AWS Bedrock Academy