AWS integrates Claude, cuts agent setup

Amazon and Anthropic said last week that Claude Platform on AWS is coming soon, giving customers access to Claude through AWS accounts, billing, and identity controls. (anthropic.com) (aws.amazon.com) AWS says the service will offer the same APIs, features, and console experience customers get from Anthropic directly, but without separate credentials, contracts, or billing relationships. (aws.amazon.com) Anthropic disclosed the move alongside a broader expansion of its Amazon partnership, including plans to use up to 5 gigawatts of new AWS data center capacity over time. (anthropic.com) At the same time, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore added new features meant to shrink the work needed to deploy software agents, which are programs that call models, tools, and data sources to complete tasks. (aws.amazon.com) (docs.aws.amazon.com) AWS said the new AgentCore package includes a managed harness in preview, an AgentCore command-line interface, and AgentCore skills for coding assistants. The company said developers can get to a first working agent in minutes. (aws.amazon.com 1) (aws.amazon.com 2) The command-line tool can create, deploy, and invoke a Python agent, and AWS documentation says it requires Python 3.10 or later plus Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management permissions. (docs.aws.amazon.com 1) (docs.aws.amazon.com 2) AgentCore also added a persistent filesystem, which works like scratch storage that survives stop-and-resume cycles so agents can keep intermediate files and downloaded assets between runs. (docs.aws.amazon.com) AWS said the AgentCore command-line tool and persistent filesystem are available in all commercial AWS Regions where AgentCore runs, while coding agent skills are due by the end of April. (aws.amazon.com) The Claude announcement extends a relationship that already put Anthropic models inside Amazon Bedrock, including Claude Opus 4.7, which AWS added on April 16 with a 1 million-token context window. (aws.amazon.com 1) (aws.amazon.com 2) Taken together, the changes push more of the model layer and the agent layer inside AWS’s own control plane, so customers can buy, secure, and operate both from the same account. (aws.amazon.com) (docs.aws.amazon.com)