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Introduction

Agno is a powerful framework for building autonomous AI agents that can reason, use tools, maintain memory, and access knowledge bases. Portkey enhances Agno agents with enterprise-grade capabilities for production deployments. Portkey transforms your Agno agents into production-ready systems by providing:
  • Complete observability of agent reasoning, tool usage, and knowledge retrieval
  • Access to 1600+ LLMs through a unified interface
  • Built-in reliability with fallbacks, retries, and load balancing
  • Cost tracking and optimization across all agent operations
  • Advanced guardrails for safe and compliant agent behavior
  • Enterprise governance with budget controls and access management

Agno AI Official Documentation

Learn more about Agno’s agent framework and core concepts

Setting Up Portkey

If this is your first time using Portkey, you will need to connect your LLM Provider in the app to use them in your Agno AI agents.
1

Create an Integration

Navigate to the Integrations section on Portkey’s Sidebar. This is where you’ll connect your LLM providers.
  1. Find your preferred provider (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
  2. Click Connect on the provider card
  3. In the “Create New Integration” window:
    • Enter a Name for reference
    • Enter a Slug for the integration
    • Enter your API Key and other provider specific details for the provider
  4. Click Next Step
In your next step you’ll see workspace provisioning options. You can select the default “Shared Team Workspace” if this is your first time OR chose your current one.
2

Configure Models

On the model provisioning page:
  • Leave all models selected (or customize)
  • Toggle Automatically enable new models if desired
Click Create Integration to complete the integration
3

Copy the Provider Slug

Once your Integration is created:
  1. Go to Model CatalogAI Providers tab
  2. Find your integration
  3. Copy the slug (e.g., openai-dev)
This slug is your provider’s unique identifier - you’ll need it for the next step.

Quickstart

You will need
  • Portkey API Key & Portkey AI Provider slug from Step 1
1

Install required packages

pip install -U agno portkey-ai
2

Get your Portkey API Key

Sign up at app.portkey.ai to get your API key.Once you are on the Portkey follow this guide to create your first AI provider and integration that will help us connect Agno to any LLM provider.
3

Configure Portkey with Agno

Agno makes integration incredibly simple - just use the OpenAILike model class with Portkey’s configuration:
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike

portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",  # you need to use "@provider-slug/model-name" for any provider
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
)

Simple E2E example agent

Let’s create a simple Agno agent that uses Portkey for LLM calls:
simple_agent.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike

# Configure Portkey as the model provider
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",  # You can use any model available on Portkey
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
)

# Create an Agno agent with Portkey
agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    instructions="Be concise and informative.",
    markdown=True,
)

# Run the agent
agent.print_response("What is Portkey AI?", stream=True)
Visit your Portkey dashboard to see detailed logs of your agent’s execution, including tool calls and model responses!

Production Features

1. Enhanced Observability

Portkey provides comprehensive observability for your Agno agents, helping you understand exactly what’s happening during each execution.
  • Traces
  • Logs
  • Metrics & Dashboards
  • Metadata Filtering
Traces provide a hierarchical view of your agent’s execution, showing the sequence of LLM calls, tool invocations, and state transitions.
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Add tracing to your Agno agents
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        trace_id="unique_execution_trace_id",  # Add unique trace ID
    )
)

agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant.",
    markdown=True
)

2. Reliability - Keep Your Agents Running Smoothly

When running agents in production, things can go wrong - API rate limits, network issues, or provider outages. Portkey’s reliability features ensure your agents keep running smoothly even when problems occur. It’s this simple to enable fallback in your Agno agents:
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Create a config with fallbacks
# It's recommended that you create the Config in Portkey App rather than hard-code the config JSON directly
config = {
  "strategy": {
    "mode": "fallback"
  },
  "targets": [
    {
      "override_params": {"model": "@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o"}
    },
    {
      "override_params": {"model": "claude-3-opus-20240229"}
    }
  ]
}

# Configure Portkey model with fallback config
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(config=config)
)

agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant.",
    markdown=True
)
This configuration will automatically try Claude if the GPT-4o request fails, ensuring your agent can continue operating.

3. Prompting in Agno Agents

Portkey’s Prompt Engineering Studio helps you create, manage, and optimize the prompts used in your Agno agents. Instead of hardcoding prompts or instructions, use Portkey’s prompt rendering API to dynamically fetch and apply your versioned prompts.
Prompt Playground Interface

Manage prompts in Portkey's Prompt Library

  • Prompt Playground
  • Using Prompt Templates
  • Prompt Versioning
  • Mustache Templating for variables
Prompt Playground is a place to compare, test and deploy perfect prompts for your AI application. It’s where you experiment with different models, test variables, compare outputs, and refine your prompt engineering strategy before deploying to production. It allows you to:
  1. Iteratively develop prompts before using them in your agents
  2. Test prompts with different variables and models
  3. Compare outputs between different prompt versions
  4. Collaborate with team members on prompt development
This visual environment makes it easier to craft effective prompts for each step in your Agno agent’s workflow.

Prompt Engineering Studio

Learn more about Portkey’s prompt management features

4. Guardrails for Safe Agents

Guardrails ensure your Agno agents operate safely and respond appropriately in all situations. Why Use Guardrails? Agno agents can experience various failure modes:
  • Generating harmful or inappropriate content
  • Leaking sensitive information like PII
  • Hallucinating incorrect information
  • Generating outputs in incorrect formats
Portkey’s guardrails protect against these issues by validating both inputs and outputs. Implementing Guardrails
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Create a config with input and output guardrails
# It's recommended you create Config in Portkey App and pass the config ID in the client
config = {
    "input_guardrails": ["guardrails-id-xxx", "guardrails-id-yyy"],
    "output_guardrails": ["guardrails-id-xxx"]
}

# Configure Agno model with guardrails
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        config=config,
    )
)

agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant that provides safe responses.",
    markdown=True
)
Portkey’s guardrails can:
  • Detect and redact PII in both inputs and outputs
  • Filter harmful or inappropriate content
  • Validate response formats against schemas
  • Check for hallucinations against ground truth
  • Apply custom business logic and rules

Learn More About Guardrails

Explore Portkey’s guardrail features to enhance agent safety

5. User Tracking with Metadata

Track individual users through your Agno agents using Portkey’s metadata system. What is Metadata in Portkey? Metadata allows you to associate custom data with each request, enabling filtering, segmentation, and analytics. The special _user field is specifically designed for user tracking.
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Configure model with user tracking
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        metadata={
            "_user": "user_123",  # Special _user field for user analytics
            "user_name": "John Doe",
            "user_tier": "premium",
            "user_company": "Acme Corp"
        }
    )
)

agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    user_id="user_123",  # Also use Agno's user_id for agent-level tracking
    instructions="You are a personalized assistant.",
    markdown=True
)
Filter Analytics by User With metadata in place, you can filter analytics by user and analyze performance metrics on a per-user basis:

Filter analytics by user

This enables:
  • Per-user cost tracking and budgeting
  • Personalized user analytics
  • Team or organization-level metrics
  • Environment-specific monitoring (staging vs. production)

Learn More About Metadata

Explore how to use custom metadata to enhance your analytics

6. Caching for Efficient Agents

Implement caching to make your Agno agents more efficient and cost-effective:
  • Simple Caching
  • Semantic Caching
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

portkey_config = {
  "cache": {
    "mode": "simple"
  },
}

# Configure Agno model with caching
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(config=portkey_config)
)

agent = Agent(
    model=portkey_model,
    instructions="You are a helpful assistant.",
    markdown=True
)
Simple caching performs exact matches on input prompts, caching identical requests to avoid redundant model executions.

7. Model Interoperability: using different LLMs

One of Portkey’s key strengths is providing access to 1600+ LLMs through a unified interface. Here’s how to use different providers with Agno:

Supported Providers

See the full list of LLM providers supported by Portkey
  • OpenAI
  • Anthropic
  • Google
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
)

End-to-End Examples

Level 1: Agent with Tools and Observability

Let’s build an agent that uses tools while leveraging Portkey’s observability features:
agent_with_tools.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from agno.tools.yfinance import YFinanceTools
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Configure Portkey with enhanced tracking
portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@anthropic/claude-3-sonnet-20240320",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        trace_id="agno_finance_agent",
        metadata={
            "agent_type": "financial_analyst",
            "environment": "production"
        }
    )
)

agent = Agent(
    name="Financial Analyst",
    model=portkey_model,
    tools=[
        YFinanceTools(
            stock_price=True,
            company_info=True,
            analyst_recommendations=True,
            company_news=True
        )
    ],
    instructions=[
        "Provide comprehensive financial analysis",
        "Use tables for numerical data",
        "Include relevant news and recommendations",
        "Be concise but thorough"
    ],
    markdown=True,
    debug_mode=True  # See detailed agent reasoning
)

# Run analysis
agent.print_response(
    "Analyze Tesla's current financial position and recent performance",
    stream=True
)

Level 2: Agent with Knowledge Base and Caching

Enhance your Agno agent with knowledge retrieval while using Portkey’s caching to optimize costs:
agent_with_knowledge.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from agno.knowledge.url import UrlKnowledge
from agno.vectordb.lancedb import LanceDb, SearchType
from agno.embedder.openai import OpenAIEmbedder
from agno.storage.sqlite import SqliteStorage
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Configure Portkey with caching
cache_config = {
    "cache": {
        "mode": "semantic",
        "max_age": 3600  # Cache for 1 hour
    }
}

portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        config=cache_config,
        metadata={"agent_type": "knowledge_assistant"}
    )
)

# Set up knowledge base
knowledge = UrlKnowledge(
    urls=["https://docs.agno.com/introduction.md"],
    vector_db=LanceDb(
        uri="tmp/lancedb",
        table_name="agno_docs",
        search_type=SearchType.hybrid,
        embedder=OpenAIEmbedder(id="text-embedding-3-small", dimensions=1536),
    ),
)

# Configure storage
storage = SqliteStorage(table_name="agent_sessions", db_file="tmp/agent.db")

agent = Agent(
    name="Agno Assistant",
    model=portkey_model,
    knowledge=knowledge,
    storage=storage,
    instructions=[
        "Always search the knowledge base before answering",
        "Provide accurate information from the documentation",
        "If information isn't found, clearly state that"
    ],
    add_history_to_messages=True,
    num_history_runs=5,
    markdown=True
)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # Load knowledge base (only needed first time)
    agent.knowledge.load(recreate=False)

    # Ask questions - responses will be cached by Portkey
    agent.print_response("What are the key features of Agno?", stream=True)

Level 3: Agent with Memory, Reasoning, and Reliability

Build a sophisticated agent that leverages Agno’s advanced features with Portkey’s reliability configurations:
advanced_agent.py
from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.models.openai.like import OpenAILike
from agno.memory.v2.memory import Memory
from agno.memory.v2.db.sqlite import SqliteMemoryDb
from agno.tools.reasoning import ReasoningTools
from agno.tools.yfinance import YFinanceTools
from portkey_ai import createHeaders

# Configure Portkey with fallbacks and retries
reliability_config = {
    "strategy": {
        "mode": "fallback"
    },
    "targets": [
        {
            "override_params": {"model": "@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o"}
        },
        {
            "override_params": {"model": "@anthropic-provider-slug/@anthropic-provider-slug/claude-3-opus-20240229"}
        }
    ],
    "retry": {
        "attempts": 3,
        "delay": 2
    }
}

portkey_model = OpenAILike(
    id="@opeani-provider-slug/gpt-4o",
    api_key="YOUR_PORTKEY_API_KEY",
    base_url="https://api.portkey.ai/v1",
    default_headers=createHeaders(
        config=reliability_config,
        trace_id="advanced_trading_agent"
    )
)

# Set up memory
memory = Memory(
    model=portkey_model,
    db=SqliteMemoryDb(table_name="user_memories", db_file="tmp/agent.db"),
    delete_memories=True,
    clear_memories=True,
)

agent = Agent(
    name="Trading Assistant",
    model=portkey_model,
    tools=[
        ReasoningTools(add_instructions=True),
        YFinanceTools(
            stock_price=True,
            analyst_recommendations=True,
            company_info=True,
            company_news=True
        ),
    ],
    user_id="trader_1",
    instructions=[
        "Remember user preferences and trading patterns",
        "Use reasoning to analyze market conditions",
        "Provide data-driven recommendations",
        "Display results in clear tables"
    ],
    memory=memory,
    enable_agentic_memory=True,
    markdown=True,
)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    # First interaction - agent learns preferences
    agent.print_response(
        "I'm interested in tech stocks, particularly AI companies like NVIDIA and Microsoft",
        stream=True,
        show_full_reasoning=True,
    )

    # Second interaction - agent uses memory
    agent.print_response(
        "Based on my interests, what stocks should I watch today?",
        stream=True,
        show_full_reasoning=True,
    )

Set Up Enterprise Governance for Agno AI agents

Why Enterprise Governance? If you are using Agno AI agents inside your orgnaization, you need to consider several governance aspects:
  • Cost Management: Controlling and tracking AI spending across teams
  • Access Control: Managing which teams can use specific models
  • Usage Analytics: Understanding how AI is being used across the organization
  • Security & Compliance: Maintaining enterprise security standards
  • Reliability: Ensuring consistent service across all users
Portkey adds a comprehensive governance layer to address these enterprise needs. Let’s implement these controls step by step. Enterprise Implementation Guide Portkey allows you to use 1600+ LLMs with your Agno AI agents setup, with minimal configuration required. Let’s set up the core components in Portkey that you’ll need for integration.

Step 1: Implement Budget Controls & Rate Limits

Model Catalog enables you to have granular control over LLM access at the team/department level. This helps you:
  • Set up budget limits
  • Prevent unexpected usage spikes using Rate limits
  • Track departmental spending

Setting Up Department-Specific Controls:

  1. Navigate to Model Catalog in Portkey dashboard
  2. Create new Provider for each engineering team with budget limits and rate limits
  3. Configure department-specific limits

Step 2: Define Model Access Rules

As your AI usage scales, controlling which teams can access specific models becomes crucial. You can simply manage AI models in your org by provisioning model at the top integration level.
Portkey allows you to control your routing logic very simply with it’s Configs feature. Portkey Configs provide this control layer with things like:
  • Data Protection: Implement guardrails for sensitive code and data
  • Reliability Controls: Add fallbacks, load-balance, retry and smart conditional routing logic
  • Caching: Implement Simple and Semantic Caching. and more…

Example Configuration:

Here’s a basic configuration to load-balance requests to OpenAI and Anthropic:
{
	"strategy": {
		"mode": "load-balance"
	},
	"targets": [
		{
			"override_params": {
				"model": "@YOUR_OPENAI_PROVIDER-SLUG/MODEL_NAME"
			}
		},
		{
			"override_params": {
				"model": "@YOUR_ANTHROPIC_PROVIDER-SLUG/MODEL_NAME"
			}
		}
	]
}
Create your config on the Configs page in your Portkey dashboard. You’ll need the config ID for connecting to Cline’s setup.
Configs can be updated anytime to adjust controls without affecting running applications.

Step 3: Implement Access Controls

Create User-specific API keys that automatically:
  • Track usage per developer/team with the help of metadata
  • Apply appropriate configs to route requests
  • Collect relevant metadata to filter logs
  • Enforce access permissions
Create API keys through:Example using Python SDK:
from portkey_ai import Portkey

portkey = Portkey(api_key="YOUR_ADMIN_API_KEY")

api_key = portkey.api_keys.create(
    name="frontend-engineering",
    type="organisation",
    workspace_id="YOUR_WORKSPACE_ID",
    defaults={
        "config_id": "your-config-id",
        "metadata": {
            "environment": "development",
            "department": "engineering",
            "team": "frontend"
        }
    },
    scopes=["logs.view", "configs.read"]
)
For detailed key management instructions, see our API Keys documentation.

Step 4: Deploy & Monitor

After distributing API keys to your engineering teams, your enterprise-ready Cline setup is ready to go. Each developer can now use their designated API keys with appropriate access levels and budget controls. Apply your governance setup using the integration steps from earlier sections Monitor usage in Portkey dashboard:
  • Cost tracking by engineering team
  • Model usage patterns for AI agent tasks
  • Request volumes
  • Error rates and debugging logs

Enterprise Features Now Available

Agno AI agents now has:
  • Departmental budget controls
  • Model access governance
  • Usage tracking & attribution
  • Security guardrails
  • Reliability features

Frequently Asked Questions

Portkey adds production-grade features to Agno agents including comprehensive observability (traces, logs, analytics), reliability (fallbacks, retries, load balancing), access to 1600+ LLMs, cost management, and enterprise governance - all without changing your agent logic.
Yes! Portkey provides access to 1600+ LLMs from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Cohere, and many more. Just change the model ID in your configuration to switch between providers.
Portkey automatically tracks costs for all LLM calls. You can segment costs by agent type, user, or custom metadata. Set up AI Provider integrations with budget limits to control spending on Model Catalog.
Yes! Portkey works seamlessly with all Agno features including tools, reasoning, memory, knowledge bases, and storage. It adds observability and reliability without limiting any Agno functionality.
Portkey’s detailed logs and traces make debugging easy. You can see the complete execution flow, including failed tool calls, LLM errors, and retry attempts. Filter by trace ID or metadata to find specific issues.

Resources

I