Agent Catalog is the official agent asset distribution platform of Alibaba Cloud, providing Agents, Skills, Plugins, and Tools. It supports using official Agents or extending your own agents with cloud capabilities.-Cloud Agent Catalog(CSP)-阿里云帮助中心

Key concepts

AI Agent: An AI application that autonomously plans and executes tasks toward a goal, such as the agent clients Qoder, Claude Code, and Cursor. AI Agents can extend their cloud operation capabilities by loading assets such as Skills and Plugins.
Official Agent: A pre-built agent from Alibaba Cloud with complete task flows and the required tools built in. Use it directly in the corresponding cloud product console. No installation is required.
Agent Skills: An open standard that packages the instructions, scripts, and reference resources required for a specific task into a reusable capability package for AI Agents to load and run on demand. For more information, see Learn about Agent Skills.
Plugin: A domain-specific suite of advanced capabilities for agent clients, typically integrating Skills, sub-agents, and execution auditing in that domain. For example, a HITL plugin introduces human confirmation before high-risk operations. For more information, see Identify high-risk AI Agent operations with the HITL plug-in.
Tools: Cloud development tools and interfaces that agents can invoke, including MCP Server, CLI, Terraform, and SDK.

Features

Agent Catalog is published by Alibaba Cloud and provides four categories of assets: Agents, Skills, Plugins, and Tools.

Agents: official agents ready to use

Official Agents cover cloud products such as ApsaraMQ for Kafka, Operation Orchestration Service (OOS), Resource Access Management (RAM), and Cloud Config. Use them directly in the corresponding cloud product consoles. Some Agents also provide OpenAPI access for integration into your own systems. Each Agent's detail page lists its features, fee and billing description, and access methods.

Skills: search, trial, and one-click installation

Search and category browsing: Search by keyword, or browse by cloud product category.
Skill details: The detail page shows the capability description, quality badges, download count, and full SKILL.md (including Prerequisites and the usage flow) of a Skill, and provides the source code link.
Online trial: Some Skills support an online trial through Skill Trial in the navigation bar. Complete OAuth authorization before the trial. The trial runs against real cloud resources.
Multiple installation methods: On the detail page, choose between letting the Agent install autonomously and running a CLI command to install. After installation, the agent client automatically discovers and loads the Skill. No additional configuration is required.
Multi-client compatibility: Skills follow the Agent Skills open specification and are compatible with mainstream agent clients such as Cursor, Claude Code, Qwen Code, Qoder, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, and OpenClaw.

Plugins: domain-oriented capability suites

The catalog provides Plugins such as the alibabacloud-core base toolkit, alibabacloud-ecs-ops, and alibabacloud-spec-ops. The detail page shows compatible agent clients (such as Qoder, Codex, and Claude Code) and the last update time.

Tools: unified entry to cloud development tools

The catalog provides a unified entry to cloud development tools that agents can invoke. Each entry links to the Alibaba Cloud OpenAPI developer portal, where you configure and use the tool:

MCP Server: Exposes Alibaba Cloud OpenAPIs to agents through the API MCP Server, supporting both public network and VPC endpoints.
CLI: Command-line tools that agents can orchestrate directly, provided by cloud product.
Terraform: Infrastructure as Code. An IaC service for agents.
SDK: Multi-language SDKs that simplify API invocation and integration for agents.

For the specific steps to install and use Skills, see Install and use your first Skill.

Billing

Agent Catalog itself is free. Both Skills and Plugins are available at no cost.
Official Agents fall into two categories: free and paid. The category is clearly indicated in the fee and billing description on the detail page of each Agent, for example, "This Agent is free." or "This Agent is paid. Check the fee information on the product page before use." Before using a paid Agent, check the fee description on its detail page.
Cloud resources that agents create or use through these assets are still billed according to the billing rules of the corresponding cloud products.

Use cases

Use official Agents in product consoles

When you want to complete a task specific to a cloud product (such as troubleshooting or data queries), chat directly with the official Agent in the corresponding cloud product console.

Daily cloud resource management

To query or manage cloud resources, enter a single natural-language instruction in your agent client instead of repeating manual operations across multiple console pages.

Example: Enter "Show all running ECS instances." The Agent invokes the Resource Center global resource search Skill (alibabacloud-resourcecenter-search) and returns a formatted instance list.

Solution deployment

When you want to deploy an official Alibaba Cloud solution on the cloud, hand the solution link to the Agent. It automatically parses the solution architecture and completes resource planning and environment setup.

Example: Enter "Help me deploy this solution" and provide the solution link. The Agent invokes the solution deployment Skill (alibabacloud-solution-deploy), creates the required cloud resources in sequence as the solution requires, completes the configuration, and reports the deployment result.

Cross-product task orchestration

When the task to handle spans multiple cloud products, describe only the final goal to the Agent. It combines multiple Skills, automatically breaks down the task, and completes it step by step.

Example: Enter "Troubleshoot the public network connectivity issue of this ECS instance." The Agent combines the resource search and network diagnosis Skills (alibabacloud-resourcecenter-search and alibabacloud-ecs-vpc-publicnetwork-troubleshoot), locates the instance first, and then completes the connectivity diagnosis.

Learn about Agent Catalog