What is Ibmcloud Base Agent

The ibmcloud-base-agent is a base AI agent designed for building A2A-compatible agents for IBM Cloud. It provides built-in access to IBM Cloud CLI commands through MCP, enabling seamless integration and command execution.

Use cases

Use cases include automating cloud resource management, building intelligent agents for cloud applications, and facilitating command execution in cloud-based workflows.

How to use

To use the ibmcloud-base-agent, clone the repository from GitHub, install the necessary dependencies, and build the container image. You can then deploy it locally using Podman, Rancher, or Docker, or push it to the IBM Cloud container registry.

Key features

Key features include MCP-compliant support for a subset of IBM Cloud commands, allowing agents to execute specific commands directly. It also supports containerization for easy deployment and scalability.

Where to use

The ibmcloud-base-agent is suitable for cloud application development, particularly in environments that require integration with IBM Cloud services and command execution through agents.

☁️ IBM Cloud Base Agent 🤖 (A2A compliant)

Lightweight base AI agent for building IBM Cloud agents that have built-in access to IBM Cloud MCP tools.
Platform Engineering Agent examples Example agents for Serverless computing Redhat Openshift & Kubernetes on IBM Cloud

Features

• 🛠️MCP-compliant IBM Cloud tools: Select a subset of IBM Cloud tools that can be used by your agent.
• 🪶Lightweight 🕵️A2A-compliant protocol support via a2a-server
• 📦Runs on any Container runtime
• 🧠BYOM - Bring your own model (must support 🛠️tool calling)

❤️Simple

The heart of this agent is found in ibmcloud_base_agent/agent.py, which has:

• 🧠LLM connection - LiteLLM
• 🛠️IBMCloud MCP Server tool configuration for basic IBM Cloud commands to set target context and listing resource groups.
• 🕵️Agent 📃instructions .

This agent is the default agent that will appear when connecting to the server with a2a-cli (or other a2a client app).

To switch to the Serverless computing agent in a2a-cli, type /connect http://<host>:8000/ibmcloud_serverless_agent
To switch back to the Base agent, type /connect http://<host>:8000/ibmcloud_base_agent

🕵🏼‍♂️ Serverless Computing Agent Example

An example specialized agent for Serverless computing using Code Engine is found in ibmcloud_serverless_agent/agent.py, which has:

• 🧠LLM connection - LiteLLM
• 🛠️IBMCloud MCP Server tool configuration for Code Engine-related tasks
• 🕵️Agent 📃instructions for Serverless computing on IBM Cloud.

Installation & Setup

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/ccmitchellusa/ibmcloud-base-agent.git
cd ibmcloud-base-agent

2. Install dependencies:

uv sync --reinstall

📦Containerization

⚙️Build

Build arguments

You can customize the build process by passing build arguments using the --build-arg flag. Below are the available build arguments:

podman build --build-arg IBMCLOUD_PLUGINS="project" -t ibmcloud-base-agent:latest .

⚡️Deploy to local Podman, Rancher or Docker desktop

podman images ls

1. Get the image id that was pushed
2. Now run the image (on local podman)

Environment variables

IBMCLOUD_API_KEY=<Your IBMCloud API Key>
IBMCLOUD_REGION=us-south
IBMCLOUD_MCP_TOOLS=

LITELLM_PROXY_URL=
LITELLM_PROXY_API_KEY=
LITELLM_PROXY_MODEL=

podman run --rm -i -d --env-file=.env -p 8000:8000 ibmcloud-base-agent:latest

Build and deploy to IBM Cloud container registry

In this example, agentic is your icr NAMESPACE and a2a is your REPOSITORY name.
Replace RESOURCE_GROUP with the name of the resource group where you want the container registry.

# Log docker into the IBM Cloud container registry at icr.io
ibmcloud cr login 
ibmcloud cr namespace-add -g RESOURCE_GROUP agentic
# Build the image and push it to the container registry in the 'agentic' namespace and 'a2a' repository.
docker build -f Dockerfile --push -t icr.io/agentic/a2a .

🏃Run from source code in IBM Cloud Code Engine

1. Navigate to Containers/Serverless/Projects

2. Create a project, eg. “A2A-play”

3. Navigate to “Applications”

4. Create application
   Name: ibmcloud-agent
   Code repo URL: https://github.com/ccmitchellusa/ibmcloud-base-agent

5. Navigate to “Optional settings”
   Image start options
   Listening port: 8000

6. Scroll back up to Code section.

7. Select “Specify build details” > Next > Next >.

8. Select a container registry namespace

9. Select Done

🖥️CLI Usage

Start the agent:

./run.sh

Open browser on http://0.0.0.0:8000/agent-card.json to view card JSON.

A2A CLI Usage

To connect with Chris Hay’s A2A CLI client (Localhost):

uvx a2a-cli --server http://localhost:8000 chat

Connect a2a-cli to agent running on Code Engine:

1. In the IBM Cloud console> Code Engine > Application page, click “Test Application” in upper right corner. Copy the app’s url.
2. Replace the url in the following snippet with the actual app’s url from step 1:

uvx a2a-cli --server https://ibmcloud-base-agent.1uo9xqkaspg3.us-east.codeengine.appdomain.cloud chat
# add --log-level DEBUG for detailed output

🤝Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow these steps:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature or bug fix.
3. Submit a pull request with a detailed description of your changes.

🪪License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

• Makefile based on the work of Mihai Criveti, from MCP Context Forge under Apache v2 License.
• Agent is based on a2a-server under MIT License.
• IBM Cloud MCP Server is built into the containerized version of this agent.

👏Acknowledgments

• Special thanks to Chris Hay for the awesome work on a2a-server, a2a-cli, mcp-cli and the chuk-* collection of libraries and for providing inspiration for this project.