Google/ax: Google's open agentic orchestrator

Google released AX, an open-source declarative orchestrator for running autonomous agent workloads at scale, built on top of Agent Substrate for sandboxed execution and designed to run billions of tasks per cluster. AX is expressed through ax.io/v1alpha1 manifests with four primitives — Task, Workspace, Gateway, and Model — and is installed via `go install github.com/google/ax/cmd/ax@latest`, requiring a Kubernetes cluster, ko, a container registry, and a reachable Agent Substrate Control API. Google warns the project is still actively refining its core concepts, protocols, and specifications and will likely introduce major breaking changes prior to a stable release.

Warning We are still actively refining our core concepts, protocols, and specifications. We will likely to introduce major breaking changes prior to a stable release. Declare an agentic task with workspaces and gateway specifications. AX sandboxes it, wires up its workspace, fences its network, and helps running it at scale. AX is a high-throughput, declarative orchestrator to run billions of autonomous agent workloads in a cluster. It runs on top of Agent Substrate https://github.com/agent-substrate/substrate for sandboxed execution and is built to run billions of tasks per cluster. If you have used Kubernetes, ax will feel similar. task.yaml apiVersion: ax.io/v1alpha1 kind: Workspace metadata: name: golang spec: git: - repo: https://github.com/golang/go.git branch: "my-fix" --- apiVersion: ax.io/v1alpha1 kind: Task metadata: name: test spec: workspaces: - name: golang goal: "Ensure that Go tool chain is available and is built from source" debug: true lets you ax ssh into the sandbox Then apply it, watch it come up, and look over the agent's shoulder: ax apply -f task.yaml ax watch task test ax ssh test -- ls -al /workspace Agents are a new kind of workload. They are neither stateless microservices nor run-to-completion batch jobs. They accumulate state, need strict isolation, call out to model APIs and tool servers, and can burn money in a loop if nobody is watching. AX gives you four small primitives that handle all of that declaratively: | You want to... | AX gives you | |---|---| | Run untrusted agent code in an isolated sandbox with CPU/memory limits | Task | | Pre-wire Git repos, MCP servers, and skill packages so every agent starts warm | Workspace | | Lock outbound traffic down to an explicit host allowlist | Gateway | | Configure which LLM the platform itself uses, with credentials from a Kubernetes secret | Model | | Pause an idle agent and pick up exactly where it left off | ax suspend / ax resume | | Shell into a running agent to see what it is doing | ax ssh | Everything is expressed as ax.io/v1alpha1 manifests and applied with a single command. go install github.com/google/ax/cmd/ax@latest This puts the ax binary in $ go env GOPATH /bin . Make sure that directory is on your PATH . You need a Kubernetes cluster, ko https://ko.build/ brew install ko , a container registry your cluster can pull from, and a reachable Agent Substrate Control API in-cluster default: api.ate-system.svc.cluster.local:443 . make deploy AX IMAGE REPO=<your-registry This deploys Redis, then builds and deploys the control plane images with ko . Everything lands in the ax-system namespace. ax apply -f examples/task.yaml Task + Workspace + Gateway + Model in one file ax get tasks NAME ATESPACE PHASE ACTOR WORKER-IP AGE task123 default Running task123 10.20.3.67 1m ax watch task task123 stream phase and condition changes live ax ssh task123 -- ls -la /workspace poke around inside the sandbox ax suspend task task123 checkpoint and pause ax resume task task123 pick up where it left off Want to see the whole lifecycle end to end? Run ./demo.sh https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/demo.sh . It applies a custom workspace, waits for readiness, runs commands over ax ssh , and suspends the task. | Guide | Read it to... | |---|---| | Concepts https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/concepts.md | Learn what a Task , Workspace , Gateway , and Model each do, and how a task moves through phases and conditions. | | Manifests https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/manifests.md | Write your own YAML, with an annotated example of every kind. | | Sandbox https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/sandbox.md | See what the runner does on boot and what your command can rely on: metadata server, guest services, environment. | | Runners https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/runner.md | Understand the contract between the control plane and the task container, and build your own runner image to replace the default. | | Networking https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/networking.md | Reach a running task through the atenet router from the cluster, your laptop, or a gRPC client. | | Architecture https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/DESIGN.md | Understand how the control plane fits together, plus the API reference https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/DESIGN.md api-reference . | | Development https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/docs/development.md | Build, test, and ship changes to AX itself. | ax talks to the control plane over gRPC. It is deliberately kubectl -shaped: apply , get , describe , watch , delete , plus a few agent-specific verbs. Apply anything multi-document YAML, file or stdin ax apply -f examples/task.yaml Tasks ax get tasks list ax get tasks -a my-atespace list in another atespace ax get task task123 full spec + live status as YAML ax describe task task123 human-readable detail ax watch task task123 stream status and condition transitions ax suspend task task123 checkpoint actor state and pause ax resume task task123 resume a suspended task ax delete task task123 Shell into the running sandbox ax ssh task123 interactive shell task needs spec.debug: true ax ssh task123 -- ls -la /workspace one-off command ax ssh task123 -- python3 main.py Gateways, workspaces, models follow the same pattern ax get gateways NAME ATESPACE LISTENERS EGRESS-HOSTS default-gateway default 8494/gRPC,8080/HTTP ax describe gateway default-gateway ax delete gateway default-gateway ax get workspaces NAME ATESPACE GIT-REPOS MCP-SERVERS default-workspace default 1 1 ax describe workspace default-workspace ax delete workspace default-workspace ax get models NAME ATESPACE PROVIDER MODEL default-model default google gemini-3.8-flash ax describe model default-model ax delete model default-model Connection plumbing ax ctx active kube context and how ax is reaching the control plane ax tunnel list background tunnels state lives in ~/.ax/tunnels ax tunnel stop ax version ax follows your active Kubernetes context. Switch clusters and ax resolves and tunnels to that cluster's control plane in the background. kubectx staging-cluster ax get tasks kubectx prod-cluster ax get tasks Or target a context without switching ax --context=dev-cluster get tasks | Flag | Description | Default | |---|---|---| | -a , --atespace | Atespace scope for the command | default | | -n , --namespace | Kubernetes namespace where AX is installed | ax-system | | --context | Kubernetes context to target | active kubectx / current-context | | --server | Control plane address, bypassing auto-detection | derived from kube context, or $AX SERVER | Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE https://github.com/google/ax/blob/main/LICENSE for details.