Getting Started with Agent Substrate: Run AI Agents at Scale with kagent
AI agents are long-lived, stateful, and idle much of the time, which makes running them like traditional Kubernetes workloads inefficient. Agent Substrate introduces a new runtime designed specifically for agentic workloads, while kagent provides the Kubernetes-native framework for building and managing those agents. Together, they enable secure, sandboxed execution, fast startup times, and significantly better infrastructure utilization.
In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how Agent Substrate works, why it exists, and how to deploy your first sandboxed agent with kagent.
You'll learn how to:
- Understand the Agent Substrate architecture and runtime model
- Deploy kagent with Agent Substrate on Kubernetes
- Create and run sandboxed AI agents
- Explore WorkerPools, Actors, and agent lifecycle management
- See how agents are scheduled, isolated, and managed at runtime
You'll leave with:
- A working kagent + Agent Substrate environment
- A solid understanding of when and why to use Agent Substrate
- Practical experience deploying sandboxed agents on Kubernetes
AI agents are long-lived, stateful, and idle much of the time, which makes running them like traditional Kubernetes workloads inefficient. Agent Substrate introduces a new runtime designed specifically for agentic workloads, while kagent provides the Kubernetes-native framework for building and managing those agents. Together, they enable secure, sandboxed execution, fast startup times, and significantly better infrastructure utilization.
In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how Agent Substrate works, why it exists, and how to deploy your first sandboxed agent with kagent.
You'll learn how to:
- Understand the Agent Substrate architecture and runtime model
- Deploy kagent with Agent Substrate on Kubernetes
- Create and run sandboxed AI agents
- Explore WorkerPools, Actors, and agent lifecycle management
- See how agents are scheduled, isolated, and managed at runtime
You'll leave with:
- A working kagent + Agent Substrate environment
- A solid understanding of when and why to use Agent Substrate
- Practical experience deploying sandboxed agents on Kubernetes
Speakers
Nathan Pearce
Nathan is a Principal Technologist for Enterprise AI at Solo.io, where he focuses on the delivery, security, and visibility of agentic AI systems. He brings two decades of experience working with web proxy technologies to solve problems across HTTP and API delivery, security, and observability — expertise he now applies exclusively to the emerging challenges of Enterprise AI infrastructure. Over the course of his career he has held positions across engineering, product, sales, and marketing, giving him a broad generalist's perspective on go-to-market strategy. He is also an accomplished keynote speaker, messaging architect, and platform integrations expert.
