Core concepts

This section covers the building blocks of Airbyte Agents: the models, resources, and platform behaviors you work with across every interface.

• Connect, Unify, Act — The three-layer model at the heart of the platform. Connect agents to any system through managed connectors, unify data from every source into one searchable layer, and let agents act on that data in real time.
• Agent operations — The unit of work in Airbyte Agents. Learn how tool calls and token usage combine into agent operations, and how AOs relate to your plan's billing.
• Context Store — A managed, searchable replica of your connector data. The Context Store gives agents fast, indexed access to business data without live API crawls.
• System architecture — How the platform is organized. Covers the four interfaces, the resource hierarchy of organizations, workspaces, and connectors, and the execution model that routes agent requests.
• Time zones — How Airbyte Agents stores, displays, and schedules dates and times across the web app, API, SDK, and MCP server.

Connect, Unify, Act

AI agents need real-time access to business data spread across dozens of systems, but building and maintaining those integrations is expensive and fragile. Airbyte Agents solves this with three layers: Connect your agents to any system, Unify data from every source into one searchable layer, and let agents Act on that data in real time.

Agent operations

An agent operation (AO) is the unit of work in Airbyte Agents. Every time an agent processes a prompt, reasons about data, or calls a tool, it consumes AOs. AOs measure the processing intensity of a task, not just the number of requests.

Context Store

The Context Store is a managed, searchable replica of select entities from all your connected data sources. Airbyte populates it from the connectors in your workspace and gives agents a fast, consistent way to search your business data in natural language, without hitting the underlying APIs for every request.

System architecture

How the platform is organized. Covers the four interfaces, the resource hierarchy of organizations, workspaces, and connectors, and the execution model that routes agent requests.

Time zones

Airbyte Agents handles dates and times the same way across every interface: display in your local time, store and transport in UTC, and schedule Automations in a time zone you choose. This page explains how that works and what to expect in each interface.