Docker Agent: Serving, Sharing, and Evaluating

Overview

This skill owns the integration surface of Docker Agent: making an agent reachable by other software (

docker agent serve

), distributing it through an OCI registry the way container images are distributed (

docker agent share

), and proving it still behaves after a change (

docker agent eval

). It assumes the agent config already exists — see

docker-agent-config

for authoring it, and

docker-agent-run

for interactive/local invocation.

When to use this skill

Activate this skill when:

The user wants an agent reachable over MCP, an OpenAI-compatible chat endpoint, a plain HTTP API, or A2A/ACP.
The user wants to publish an agent to Docker Hub (or any OCI registry) or pull one someone else published.
The user wants automated evaluations (regression tests) for an agent, or wants to gate CI on eval results.

Do not use this skill when

Do not use this skill when:

The task is authoring the agent.yaml itself (models, toolsets, sub_agents) — use
```
docker-agent-config
```
.
The task is running the agent interactively on a developer's machine, choosing
```
--safety
```
/
```
--sandbox
```
, or aliases — use
```
docker-agent-run
```
.

Core guidance

Serving an agent

Five server modes, each with its own default loopback listen address — never expose any of them beyond loopback without authentication:

Mode	Default listen	Auth flag	Has `--safety` ?
`serve mcp`	`127.0.0.1:8081`	`--auth-token` (only with `--http` )	Yes (only with `--http` )
`serve api`	`127.0.0.1:8080`	`--auth-token`	No
`serve chat`	`127.0.0.1:8083`	`--api-key` / `--api-key-env`	Yes
`serve a2a`	`127.0.0.1:8082`	`--auth-token`	Yes
`serve acp`	(stdio only)	n/a	No

bash

docker agent serve mcp ./agent.yaml --http --listen 127.0.0.1:9090 --auth-token "$TOKEN"

```
serve mcp
```
defaults to stdio transport (for local clients like Claude Desktop); pass
```
--http
```
only when you need a network-reachable MCP endpoint, and set
```
--auth-token
```
whenever you do.
Binding any server flag to a non-loopback address without an auth token/key is refused;
```
--insecure-no-auth
```
exists to force it and must be treated as a deliberate, documented exception, never a default.
```
serve mcp
```
(with
```
--http
```
),
```
serve chat
```
, and
```
serve a2a
```
expose
```
--safety
```
(
```
strict
```
/
```
balanced
```
/
```
restricted
```
/
```
autonomous
```
); Docker's docs state it defaults to
```
restricted
```
for these modes when unset.
```
serve api
```
and
```
serve acp
```
expose no
```
--safety
```
flag at all. Never raise
```
--safety
```
to
```
autonomous
```
on a network-reachable listener; if a served agent must approve more, prefer
```
balanced
```
and keep auth enabled.
```
serve api
```
accepts a directory instead of a single file: every
```
.yaml
```
/
```
.yml
```
/
```
.hcl
```
in it is exposed under
```
/api/agents
```
. Use
```
--session-workingdir-root
```
to confine session working directories when the server is reachable by more than one user.

Sharing agents via OCI registries

Push and pull agent configs the same way you push and pull images — same registry, same

docker login

auth:

bash

docker agent share push ./agent.yaml docker.io/username/my-agent:latest
docker agent share pull docker.io/username/my-agent:latest

```
instruction_file
```
contents are inlined into the pushed artifact automatically, so a published agent stays self-contained — you do not need to bundle the referenced files separately.
Pin
```
sub_agents
```
that reference the pushed artifact to a digest (
```
name@sha256:...
```
) once published, to avoid a per-run registry lookup and to guarantee the exact config a consumer gets.
Use
```
--force
```
on
```
share pull
```
only when you intend to overwrite a local copy that already exists; without it, an existing local config is left untouched.

Evaluating agents

Evals live in an
```
evals/
```
directory next to the agent config by default; each eval is one JSON session file capturing a user message, the recorded tool calls, and an
```
evals
```
object with the scoring criteria.
Create eval sessions from real conversations rather than hand-writing JSON: run the agent interactively, then use the
```
/eval
```
slash command in the TUI to save the session, and edit in
```
relevance
```
/
```
size
```
/
```
assertions
```
criteria afterward.
Four scoring dimensions: Tool Calls (F1 against the recorded sequence), Relevance (LLM-judge,
```
--judge-model
```
, default
```
anthropic/claude-opus-5
```
), Size (S/M/L/XL response-length bucket), and Assertions (deterministic checks; see the complete assertion-type list in
```
references/eval-format.md
```
). Prefer assertions over
```
relevance
```
when a check can be exact: they need no judge model and are deterministic, not approximation-prone.
Evaluations run inside containers for isolation; a Docker-compatible runtime is required. Dedicated provider API keys (
```
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
```
/
```
OPENAI_API_KEY
```
) are forwarded automatically.
```
GITHUB_TOKEN
```
/
```
GH_TOKEN
```
are not forwarded automatically (they're broad host credentials, not model keys) — pass them explicitly with
```
-e GITHUB_TOKEN
```
when an agent's provider needs one (e.g.
```
github-copilot
```
).
Gate CI on regressions, not on absolute scores, with
```
--baseline
```
:
bash
```
docker agent eval ./agent.yaml --baseline results/2026-08-01-run.json --regression-tolerance 0.05
```
A previously-passing eval that now fails always gates regardless of tolerance; cost changes are reported but never gate. A baseline or run with zero evaluations (e.g. an
```
--only
```
pattern matching nothing) is rejected rather than reported as passing.
Use
```
--keep-containers
```
plus your runtime's
```
exec
```
to inspect a failed eval's container; the eval's
```
.db
```
session file holds the full conversation for offline debugging.

Verify

After changing a served agent's config, re-run its evals with the same explicit
```
--safety
```
value used in the deployment before restarting the listener — this catches an approval-policy regression before it reaches traffic. If a rollout must be rolled back, restore the prior config and safety flag; never restore an unauthenticated listener as a rollback shortcut.

Related skills

For writing or changing the underlying
```
agent.yaml
```
, use
```
docker-agent-config
```
.
For local/interactive runs, safety-mode choice, and sandboxing, use
```
docker-agent-run
```
.

References

```
references/eval-format.md
```
— full eval session JSON schema and CLI flag table.
```
references/sources.md
```
— provenance of every rule in this skill.

Assets

```
assets/eval-session-example.json
```
— a minimal eval session file to copy and adapt.

Checks

```
checks/verification.md
```
— Verification runbook for serving, sharing, and evaluating an agent.

docker-agent-deploy

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content