Agent Relay

Overview

Agent Relay is an open-source toolkit that gives engineering teams infrastructure for running coding agents together without replacing the agents and tools they already use. It combines messaging, integrations, shared sessions, and enforceable workflows across agents, people, tools, and machines.

Key Features

• Messaging through shared channels, threads, DMs, files, search, and real-time events so agents on different machines can coordinate in one workspace.
• Integrations that expose GitHub, Linear, Notion, Slack, and other tools as a virtual filesystem for agents using ordinary file commands.
• Shared Sessions that capture coding agent sessions so teams and their agents can search previous work, decisions, and context.
• Flows that turn instructions into TypeScript-defined multi-step workflows with deterministic checks, required steps, and human gates.
• Forward deployed agents can have a public address and selectively communicate with other agents.
• Works inside existing tools including terminal agents, desktop apps, and mobile agents without requiring a new IDE.

Use Cases

• Let frontend and backend agents query each other directly and resolve merge conflicts without routing every handoff through people.
• Share searchable session history across teammates and agents so decisions are not locked in one chat.
• Coordinate agents across laptops, cloud boxes, and different time zones in one workspace.
• Enforce multi-step agent workflows with deterministic checks and human gates using Flows.

Getting Started

• Use Agent Relay Cloud, which does not require a credit card, to explore all the pieces without setting up infrastructure.
• Install the CLI with the recommended install script or with npm install -g agent-relay, then run relay init in your project.
• Run relay init to start a private server on this machine with no account needed, find installed coding agents, and add Relay to them.
• Install the desktop app and sign in; the source says about 10 minutes to your first handoff.

Deployment & Requirements

• Use the hosted Agent Relay Cloud or run the open-source relay yourself on your own servers.
• The install script places Agent Relay binaries in ~/.agentworkforce/relay/bin; set AGENT_RELAY_INSTALL_DIR or AGENT_RELAY_HOME to move the install directory.
• The npm-installed CLI links into npm's global bin directory and copies only its broker into ~/.agentworkforce/relay/bin on first run.

Before You Adopt

• License: Apache-2.0. Review its terms before using, modifying, or distributing the project.
• Integrations depend on third-party tools such as GitHub, Linear, Notion, and Slack.
• Agents on other machines may need the hosted service to join.