Claude Agent SDK - Comprehensive Skill

Overview

The Claude Agent SDK is Anthropic's official framework for building production-ready AI agents with Claude. It provides a high-level abstraction over the Messages API, handling the agent loop, tool orchestration, context management, and extended-thinking patterns automatically.

When to Use the Agent SDK

Use the Agent SDK when:

• Building autonomous agents that need to use tools iteratively
• Implementing agentic workflows with verification and iteration
• Creating subagent hierarchies for complex task decomposition
• Integrating MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers for standardized tools
• Need production patterns like hooks, permissions, and context management

Don't use when:

• Simple single-turn API calls suffice (use Messages API directly)