Strands Agents

Strands Agents is an open-source toolkit from AWS — a box of parts for building AI agents. On its own, an agent can only hold conversations, but once you hook up tools like a calculator, a file reader, or search, it can actually get things done. Strands works like a standardized connector that lets you plug those tools in and pull them out.

Think of it like the socket on a robotic arm that lets you swap out different attachments. The socket follows a fixed standard, and whatever tool you attach — a screwdriver, a wrench, whatever's needed — the arm can then use it. Strands Agents works the same way: wrap any tool in the right format, and the agent can pick it out and run it on its own.

Strands itself is the blueprint for an agent. Actually running an agent built from that blueprint in the cloud is handled by a separate AWS service called AgentCore. So if Strands is the tool that decides what to build, AgentCore is closer to the place where it's kept running and operated.

One article states that "the AgentCore Runtime hosts Strands Agents in the cloud and acts as an MCP client." The easy point of confusion here is that Strands Agents and AgentCore are not the same thing. Strands is the development tool used to build agents, while AgentCore is the separate cloud service that actually runs and operates those agents once built.