Preparing the runtime environment

Everything you need to run any Go example in this section. Do this once; the per-example pages then only cover what’s specific to them.

What you need

No gateway required. Every example in this section ships with an in-process mock GovernanceClient, so none of them need a live AI Agent Assembly gateway or an API key to run. The CLI runtime integration example can optionally talk to a local aasm sidecar, but it falls back to the offline mock when aasm isn’t installed.

Install the SDK (for your own code)

When you write your own agent, add the SDK to your module:

go get github.com/ai-agent-assembly/go-sdk

The examples already declare this dependency in their own go.mod, so you don’t need to run go get to use them — go mod download (below) pulls it in.

Clone the examples repository

All Go examples live under go/ in the central examples repo:

git clone https://github.com/ai-agent-assembly/agent-assembly-examples.git
cd agent-assembly-examples/go

Each subdirectory (basic-agent, tool-policy, langchaingo, cli-runtime-integration) is its own Go module.

Run an example

cd into the example you want, download its dependencies, then run it. The pattern is the same for all four:

cd basic-agent        # or tool-policy, langchaingo, cli-runtime-integration
go mod download
go run .

Run an example’s tests — all of them run offline, no gateway needed:

go test ./...

Always run go run . from inside the example directory, not from the repo root. Running from the wrong directory is the most common reason an example behaves unexpectedly.

Local / unauthenticated dev mode

These examples don’t connect to a gateway, so there are no gateway or API-key environment variables to set for them. The only environment knobs anywhere in this section belong to the CLI runtime integration example’s helper script, which honours:

When you graduate to a real gateway in your own code, the SDK’s Init reads its gateway URL and API key from options, the AAASM_GATEWAY_URL / AAASM_API_KEY environment variables, or a config file — and defaults to http://localhost:7391 for local development. See Quick Start and Configuration for that path.

Optional: install the aasm CLI

Only the CLI runtime integration example uses the aasm binary, and only for its full-sidecar path. Install it if you want to exercise that path:

# Homebrew
brew install agent-assembly/tap/aasm

# curl installer
curl -fsSL https://get.agent-assembly.io | sh

# go install
go install github.com/ai-agent-assembly/agent-assembly/cmd/aasm@latest

If aasm is not installed, that example detects it and continues in offline fallback mode.

Where to next

• Basic agent — the smallest governed agent.
• Examples overview — the full list of examples.
• Quick Start — install, init, and wrap in three steps.