Restart or Stop an Agent
You can stop, start, and restart agents to manage resources or apply configuration changes. Each action affects the agent's underlying Knative service.
Prerequisites
- A created agent
Steps
1. Navigate to the agent
You can manage agent lifecycle from two places:
- Agents list -- find the agent in the list and use the action buttons on its row.
- Agent Profile -- open the agent's profile page and use the controls at the top.
2. Choose an action
Stop the agent
Click Stop. This shuts down the agent's Knative service and scales the pod to zero. The agent goes offline and stops processing messages, emails, and tasks.
Stopping an agent interrupts any in-progress tasks. The agent does not gracefully finish its current work -- it stops immediately. In-progress tasks remain in their current status (e.g., Doing) and are not automatically resumed after a restart. You may need to manually move them back to Todo for the agent to pick them up again, or reassign them. Make sure the agent is idle or that you are comfortable with the interruption before stopping it.
Start the agent
Click Start. This deploys the agent from its existing configuration. The agent's Knative service starts up and the pod scales from zero. Once the status shows Running, the agent is back online.
Restart the agent
Click Restart. This performs a stop followed by a start. Restarting is the standard way to pick up configuration changes such as updated procedures, skills, or environment variables.
Verify
- After Stop: the agent's status shows Stopped in the Agents list and it no longer responds to messages.
- After Start or Restart: the agent's status shows Running and it responds to messages in conversations.
If you have made changes to an agent's procedures, skills, or shared tools, restart the agent so it picks up the new configuration.