Deploy with Docker and PostgreSQL

Once you can run the binary directly (see Deploy a standalone binary), the next step for most deployments is a container backed by PostgreSQL. The binary is statically linked and has no system dependencies beyond standard C libraries and TLS certificates, so the image can be minimal. An agent with a static Python tool additionally requires a shared CPython 3.14 installation whose libpython is available to the runtime loader.

Write a Dockerfile

Build the binary first, then copy it into a slim base image:

FROM debian:bookworm-slim

RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y ca-certificates && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

COPY artifacts/build/my_agent /usr/local/bin/my_agent
RUN chmod +x /usr/local/bin/my_agent

EXPOSE 8080

CMD ["my_agent", "serve"]

Build the binary and the image:

agentc build
docker build -t my_agent:latest .

Run it with PostgreSQL

This compose file runs the agent against a PostgreSQL container and waits for the database to be healthy before starting:

services:
  agent:
    image: my_agent:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
    environment:
      AGENT__PROVIDER__ANTHROPIC__API_KEY: ${ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}
      AGENT__DATABASE__PRIMARY: postgresql://agent:agent@db:5432/agent
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy

  db:
    image: postgres:16
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: agent
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: agent
      POSTGRES_DB: agent
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U agent"]
      interval: 5s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
    volumes:
      - pgdata:/var/lib/postgresql/data

volumes:
  pgdata:

The agent runs its database migrations automatically at startup, so no migration step is needed.

Add a health check

The HTTP server exposes a health endpoint at GET /health, which returns 200 OK when the agent is ready. Use it for container and orchestrator probes:

# Kubernetes readiness probe
readinessProbe:
  httpGet:
    path: /health
    port: 8080
  initialDelaySeconds: 5
  periodSeconds: 10

Where to go next

• Deploy a standalone binary: environment variables, database, and graceful shutdown.
• Instrument with OpenTelemetry: wire the container's telemetry to a backend.
• Observability reference: the telemetry environment variables.