Getting Started

July 28, 2026 · View on GitHub

Get an agent running in under 30 seconds.

1. Install

The SDK ships as the conductor-ai NuGet package (target framework: .NET 8).

dotnet new console -n MyAgent
cd MyAgent
dotnet add package conductor-ai

Working inside this repository instead of from NuGet? Reference the project directly:

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectReference Include="path/to/sdk/csharp/src/Conductor.AI/Conductor.AI.csproj" />
</ItemGroup>

2. Point at a server

You need a running Conductor server. The defaults assume a local one at http://localhost:8080/api.

VariableDefaultDescription
CONDUCTOR_SERVER_URLhttp://localhost:8080/apiServer URL.
CONDUCTOR_AUTH_KEY—Auth key. Unset = no-auth mode (local / OSS).
CONDUCTOR_AUTH_SECRET—Auth secret. Set together with the key for Orkes Cloud.

The legacy AGENTSPAN_* names were removed and have no effect — see ../upgrading.md.

export CONDUCTOR_SERVER_URL=http://localhost:8080/api
export OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR-KEY>
export CONDUCTOR_AGENT_LLM_MODEL=openai/gpt-4o-mini
# Orkes Cloud only:
# export CONDUCTOR_AUTH_KEY=...
# export CONDUCTOR_AUTH_SECRET=...

The runtime reads the CONDUCTOR_* connection variables on construction. You can also pass them explicitly via AgentRuntimeOptions (see concepts/deploy-serve-run.md).

CONDUCTOR_AGENT_LLM_MODEL is a convention of the bundled examples, not something the SDK itself reads — an Agent takes its model from the Model property. It's shown here because every example under Conductor.AI.Examples/ picks it up.

3. Run an agent

Replace Program.cs with:

using Conductor.AI;

var agent = new Agent("greeter")
{
    Model        = "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    Instructions = "You are a friendly assistant. Keep responses brief.",
};

await using var runtime = new AgentRuntime();
var result = await runtime.RunAsync(agent, "Say hello and tell me a fun fact about C#.");
result.PrintResult();

dotnet run

That is the whole loop: define an Agent, open an AgentRuntime, await runtime.RunAsync(agent, prompt), and read the AgentResult. await using disposes the runtime (and shuts down any local tool workers) when you are done.

Reading the result

RunAsync returns an AgentResult. Common members:

result.PrintResult();                 // formatted summary to stdout
bool ok       = result.IsSuccess;     // Status == Completed
var  output   = result.Output;        // Dictionary<string, object>?; final text is usually output["result"]
var  tokens   = result.TokenUsage;    // TokenUsage? (prompt / completion / total)
var  finish   = result.FinishReason;  // FinishReason? (Stop, Length, Guardrail, Rejected, ...)
string execId = result.ExecutionId;   // durable execution id on the server

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