micro--go-micro/internal/website/blog/16.md

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layout	title	permalink	description
blog	Introducing micro.NewAgent()	/blog/16	Agent is now a first-class abstraction in Go Micro — alongside Service and Flow. Build intelligent agents that manage your services in Go.

Introducing micro.NewAgent()

June 5, 2026 • By the Go Micro Team

Go Micro now has three core abstractions:

service := micro.NewService("task")              // capability
agent   := micro.NewAgent("task-mgr")     // intelligence
flow    := micro.NewFlow("onboard-user")  // event-driven orchestration

Service has been the foundation since 2015. Flow added event-driven LLM orchestration. Now Agent completes the picture — an intelligent layer that manages services, with scoped tools, persistent memory, and multi-agent coordination.

What an Agent Is

A Service has endpoints and handles requests. An Agent knows how to use those endpoints intelligently. The service doesn't know about its agent. The agent knows about its services.

agent := micro.NewAgent("task-mgr",
    micro.AgentServices("task", "project"),
    micro.AgentPrompt("You manage tasks and projects. You understand deadlines, priorities, and assignments."),
    micro.AgentProvider("anthropic"),
)
agent.Run()

That's it. The agent:

• Discovers task and project from the registry
• Only sees their endpoints (scoped tools — no access to unrelated services)
• Maintains conversation memory in the store (survives restarts)
• Registers as a real service with a proto-defined Agent.Chat RPC endpoint
• Discoverable by micro chat, other agents, or any go-micro client

Under the hood, an agent IS a service. It has a real server, a real address, and a real proto definition:

service Agent {
    rpc Chat(ChatRequest) returns (ChatResponse) {}
}

This means you can call an agent the same way you call any service:

micro call task-mgr Agent.Chat '{"message": "What tasks are overdue?"}'

Talking to an Agent

Programmatically:

resp, _ := agent.Ask(ctx, "What tasks are overdue for Alice?")
fmt.Println(resp.Reply)

Via the CLI:

micro agent list
  ◆ task-mgr    manages: task, project

micro chat
> What tasks are overdue for Alice?
  [task-mgr] Checking overdue tasks...
  → task_Task_ListOverdue({"user_id":"alice"})
  ← {"records":[...],"total":"3"}

  Alice has 3 overdue tasks:
  1. Write quarterly report (due June 1)
  2. Review PR #42 (due June 2)
  3. Update deployment docs (due June 3)

micro chat discovers the agent from the registry and routes to it automatically. If multiple agents are registered, the router classifies intent and dispatches to the right one.

Multi-Service Agents

An agent can manage multiple services that form a domain:

agent := micro.NewAgent("project-mgr",
    micro.AgentServices("task", "project", "milestone"),
    micro.AgentPrompt("You manage the project system. Tasks belong to projects. Milestones track progress."),
    micro.AgentProvider("anthropic"),
)

The agent understands the relationships between its services because its prompt gives it domain knowledge. It coordinates across them without the services needing to know about each other.

Multi-Agent Systems

Multiple agents coordinate via RPC — each is a service with an Agent.Chat endpoint:

// Task management agent
taskAgent := micro.NewAgent("task-mgr",
    micro.AgentServices("task", "project"),
    micro.AgentPrompt("You manage tasks and projects."),
    micro.AgentProvider("anthropic"),
)

// Communications agent
commsAgent := micro.NewAgent("comms-mgr",
    micro.AgentServices("notification", "email"),
    micro.AgentPrompt("You handle notifications and emails."),
    micro.AgentProvider("anthropic"),
)

When you ask micro chat to "reschedule Alice's tasks and notify her," the router dispatches to both agents. Each handles its domain. The user sees one conversation.

Persistent Memory

Agents remember. Conversation history is stored in the go-micro store and persists across restarts:

agent/task-mgr/history     — conversation history

The store backend determines durability — file-backed by default, Postgres or NATS KV for production. An agent that restarts picks up where it left off.

The Three Abstractions

	Service	Agent	Flow
What	Capability	Intelligence	Event orchestration
Does	Handles requests	Manages services	Reacts to events
Knows	Its endpoints	Its services' endpoints	Its trigger topic
State	Store	Store-backed memory	Checkpointed run history
Create	micro.NewService("name")	micro.NewAgent("name")	micro.NewFlow("name")
Package	service/	agent/	flow/

They compose:

• A Service handles requests and stores data
• An Agent orchestrates one or more services intelligently
• A Flow triggers LLM orchestration when events arrive on the broker

You can use any combination. Services work without agents. Agents work without flows. Each adds a layer.

Getting Started

curl -fsSL https://go-micro.dev/install.sh | sh

# Generate services
micro run --prompt "task management system"

# In another terminal — talk to them
micro chat --provider anthropic
> Create a project called Launch and add three tasks to it

Or build an agent in Go:

package main

import "go-micro.dev/v6"

func main() {
    agent := micro.NewAgent("task-mgr",
        micro.AgentServices("task"),
        micro.AgentPrompt("You manage tasks."),
        micro.AgentProvider("anthropic"),
    )
    agent.Run()
}

The agent implementation lives under go-micro.dev/v6/agent; most users create agents through the top-level go-micro.dev/v6 API. The full interface design is documented in AGENT_DESIGN.md.

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