claude-agent-sdk

Claude Agent SDK is a leading agent sdk in the 2026 AI agent engineering landscape (7.5k★).

When to use this skill

• Build agents on the Claude Code harness programmatically (query() one-shot / ClaudeSDKClient interactive)
• ClaudeAgentOptions: allowed_tools, permission_mode, cwd, mcp_servers, system_prompt
• In-process custom tools via @tool + create_sdk_mcp_server (no subprocess MCP needed)
• Hooks (PreToolUse/PostToolUse...) for deterministic control of the agent loop
• Subagents (agents option) and session resume/fork
• Bundled Claude Code CLI in the wheel; also drives an existing CLI install
• Ecosystem overlap: Complements agent-configuration (covers CLAUDE.md/hooks at product level) — SDK-level engineering is uncovered; jeo-skills has openai-agents-python for the OpenAI equivalent

Installation

pip install claude-agent-sdk