Overview

Agentgateway is an open source, AI-first data plane that provides connectivity for agents, MCP tools, LLMs, and inferences in any environment. In Kubernetes environments, you can use agentgateway as the control plane to quickly spin up and manage the lifecycle of agentgateway proxies. The control plane translates Kubernetes Gateway API and agentgateway’s Kubernetes custom resources such as AgentgatewayPolicy and AgentgatewayBackend into proxy configuration for the data plane.

Agentgateway supports many agent connectivity use cases, including the following:

Agent-to-agent (A2A)
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
REST APIs as agent-native tools
AI routing to cloud and local large language models (LLMs)
Support for the Gateway API Inference Extension project

Architecture

For more information about how kgateway integrates with agentgateway, see the Architecture topic.

For more information about agentgateway resources, see the Agentgateway upstream docs.

Agentgateway resource configuration

Review the following table to understand how to configure agentgateway resources in agentgateway.

Agentgateway resource	Description	Configured in agentgateway by
Bind	The set of port bindings that associate gateway listeners with specific network ports. The bind has a unique key in the format `port/namespace/name`, such as `8080/default/my-gateway` with the value being the port number, such as `8080`.	Created automatically based on the Gateway and each unique port across Gateway listeners or ListenerSets.
Port	The port to listen on. Each port has a set of listeners that in turn have their own routes with policies and backends.	Ports in a Gateway or ListenerSet.
Listener	Listener configuration for how agentgateway accepts and processes incoming requests. Unique key for the listener Name that maps to the section name from the Gateway listener Bind key of the bind that the listener is part of Gateway name Hostname that the listener accepts traffic for Protocol (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, TLS) TLS configuration details such as certificates and termination modes Listeners can each have their own set of routes with policies and backends.	Listeners in a Gateway or ListenerSet.
Route	Routing rules for how agentgateway routes incoming requests to the appropriate backend. Unique key in the format: `namespace.name.rule.match` Route name in the format: `namespace/name` Listener key of the listener that the route is part of Rule name from the source route Traffic matching criteria (path, headers, method, query params) that are derived from the Gateway API routing resources Filters that transform request and responses, such as header modification, redirects, rewrites, mirroring, and other policies Target backend services with load balancing and health checking Hostnames that the route serves traffic for	Routing resources such as HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute, and TLSRoute.
Backend	The backing destination where traffic is routed. Unlike other resources, backends are global resources (not per-gateway) that are applied to all Gateways that use agentgateway. Each backend has a unique name in the format: `namespace/name`. Backend types include AI for model-specific LLM provider configuration, static host or IP addresses, and virtual MCP servers, including A2A use cases.	Services and Backends.
Target	The details of the backend, such as the tools in an MCP backend.	Services and Backends.
Policies	Policies for how agentgateway processes incoming requests. Request Header Modifier: Add, set, or remove HTTP request headers. Response Header Modifier: Add, set, or remove HTTP response headers. Request Redirect: Redirect incoming requests to a different scheme, authority, path, or status code. URL Rewrite: Rewrite the authority or path of requests before forwarding. Request Mirror: Mirror a percentage of requests to an additional backend for testing or analysis. CORS: Configure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) settings for allowed origins, headers, methods, and credentials. A2A: Enable agent-to-agent (A2A) communication features. Backend Auth: Set up authentication for backend services such as passthrough, key, GCP, AWS, and so on. Timeout: Set request and backend timeouts. Retry: Configure retry attempts, backoff, and which response codes should trigger retries.	Policies in HTTPRoutes and Backends.

Architecture

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Overview

Architecture

Agentgateway resource configuration

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