Big companies are starting to use many AI agents—sometimes hundreds or thousands. This creates a problem. Think of it like a massive digital zoo where the animals (agents) are running wild. Platform teams face three critical challenges when managing this many agents:
- Visibility: Knowing what agents exist across the organization.
- Control: Governing who can publish and what becomes widely available.
- Reuse: Stopping teams from rebuilding agents that already exist.
Without a central system, the number of agents grows too quickly, compliance risks increase, and effort is wasted on duplicate work.
To fix this, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched the AWS Agent Registry, now available in preview as part of its AgentCore platform. This registry is a single, central library for all your company’s AI agents, tools, and skills.
According to the company, it works for all your agents, even those not hosted on AWS. Whether your agents live in AWS, another cloud service, or your own data center, the Registry keeps track of them. It is a platform built to connect to any model or framework you use.
The Registry, AWS said, solves the two biggest challenges: finding agents and controlling them.
- Finding What You Need (Discovery)
Before the Registry, developers often wasted time rebuilding something a nearby team already finished. Now, developers search the Registry first.
It uses a smart search that doesn’t just look for exact words (keyword matching); it also understands what you mean (semantic matching). For example, a search for “payment processing” can show you tools tagged as “billing” or “invoicing,” even if the names are different. This makes finding existing, approved capabilities the simplest path.
- Controlling Who Publishes (Governance)
When you have hundreds of agents, you need a system that enforces standards automatically. The Registry gives administrators control over who can register agents and who can use them.
Every agent must follow an approval workflow: it starts as a draft, moves to pending approval, and only becomes available to the broader organization once approved. This ensures quality and helps prevent agent sprawl. The Registry also tracks agents across their entire lifecycle, from creation to retirement.
The AWS Agent Registry is available today in preview through the AgentCore Console. Companies like Southwest Airlines are already using it to create an enterprise-wide catalog and prevent teams from rebuilding capabilities from scratch.
Future plans include automatically indexing agents as they are deployed and connecting multiple registries together.
