OpenAI’s Agents SDK is a development library for agent applications. It is different from an end-user assistant: developers connect tools, define behavior and operate the resulting application.
This guide explains the approach and offers a suggested assessment task. It does not report independent benchmarking or provide a production setup tutorial.
What the SDK supplies
The SDK includes agents with instructions and tools, a loop for running them, delegation through handoffs or agents used as tools, validation controls, sessions and tracing. Direct use of the Responses API gives your application more responsibility for the loop and state. OpenAI Agents SDK overview.
A model is still required. Choosing the SDK does not determine your business task, approved data sources or deployment arrangement.
Follow a support-drafting task
In an illustrative design, define one agent with a case lookup and a save-draft tool. Give it the task and relevant case ID. The runtime handles model turns and tool execution until it produces a result or reaches a limit.
Keep sending unavailable for this first task. Test whether incomplete tracking produces an unresolved status instead of a guessed date. Inspect both the final draft and destination records.
Add a second agent only if you have a concrete division of work to assess. A separate specialist for every source can create extra messages, failure paths and maintenance without improving the result.
Understand delegation
A handoff transfers control to another agent. An agent used as a tool supplies a result to the agent coordinating the task. Those arrangements affect which component owns the next decision. The official tools guide explains these integration options. OpenAI tools documentation.
Before choosing a pattern, draw the return path. Who checks that the specialist answered the question? Who enforces the overall task limit? What happens if the delegated work fails?
A useful business boundary might remain in ordinary code, even when several agents contribute drafts.
What your application must decide
Define record access, action permissions and approval conditions. SDK input or output checks should be assessed alongside backend authorization. A valid tool argument can identify a record the current user may not read.
Decide where session data is stored, which trace content is recorded and how retention works. Confirm actual configuration before sending confidential records.
Set runtime and usage limits. Specify how you report unfinished work. If a tool writes to an external service, design duplicate prevention for a lost response.
Questions for your prototype
- Can one agent complete the task with two narrow tools?
- Can you connect an action record to the destination result?
- Does a denied lookup remain denied after a model retry?
- What survives interruption, and can resuming duplicate a write?
- Can a maintainer understand the failed step from recorded evidence?
Assess the same questions when comparing another SDK. They give you a more useful basis for selection than the number of agents in a demonstration.
Choosing frameworks, SDKs and runtimes ↗
Separate models, development tools and hosted products, then compare them against your task.
Prepared with AI assistance and checked against the linked documentation. Examples and numerical limits are illustrative unless stated otherwise. These guides do not report independent product testing. Check current documentation before choosing a tool.