getting-started

Getting Started

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.

Variable	Default	Description
CONDUCTOR_SERVER_URL	http://localhost:8080/api	Server 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();