Update agent config safely

Agent config edits fail often, most commonly with a schema mismatch that names no field, so a blind retry just fails again. The reliable path is: read the current state first, change one well-formed field at a time, and know the cross-field constraints before you send. Follow this every time you touch agent config.

Host https://api.elevenlabs.io, header xi-api-key: $API_KEY. The engineer supplies $API_KEY, $AGENT_ID, and $BRANCH_ID.

1. Read the current state first

Fetch the branch-scoped config before writing anything:

curl -s "https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/convai/agents/$AGENT_ID?branch_id=$BRANCH_ID" \
  -H "xi-api-key: $API_KEY"

This gives you the authoritative current config: the exact dotted path you intend to change, the current value you are about to overwrite, and the surrounding settings that constrain the edit (conversation_config.agent.language, conversation_config.tts.model_id, conversation_config.agent.prompt.llm, voice_id). The workflow ships in the same response. If the agent has a workflow, config can live partly on nodes (per-node prompt, additional tool ids, additional knowledge base), so confirm whether your change belongs on the base agent or on a node before you patch. Do not edit blind.

Where an edit references tools, read them via GET /v1/convai/tools and GET /v1/convai/tools/{tool_id}. Where you plan to re-run tests after the change, list them first. Make independent reads in parallel.