Definition
Plain language
A packaged toolkit a developer (or an AI agent) uses to call an external service through well-defined functions.
As stated in the literature
A Software Development Kit, a library and set of tools exposing a system's functionality to developers or agents through structured APIs.
Why it matters: SDKs are how agents reach external services in practice, so the design of an SDK shapes what an agent can easily do and what's effectively out of reach.
For example, the OpenAI Python SDK gives a developer (or an AI agent) a single `client.chat.completions.create(...)` call that handles all the HTTP details.
Heard on the show
“Turns out it needs a different cloud SDK to actually authenticate.”Episode 049 — An AI Agent Reached for Root in Twelve Minutes, Without Being Attacked