What's new

The watsonx Orchestrate ADK version 1.4.2 is now available! This release brings powerful new features and enhancements to streamline your development workflow. You can now export tools and agents, use flows as tools, and configure custom LLM providers — all designed to give you more flexibility and control.

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🚀 New features

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Export agents and tools

You can now export agents and tools directly from your active environment. Use the new export argument with the orchestrate agents and orchestrate tools commands to get started. For more information, see:

• Exporting tools
• Exporting agents

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Flow tools (Public Preview)

You can now create flow tools. Flow tools let you sequence nodes to build dynamic, workflow-based tools. A new tool type available in public preview for the watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition. For more information, see Flow tools (Public Preview).

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Custom LLM provider (Public Preview)

You can now add and remove custom LLM providers for your agents. This feature is available in public preview for the watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition. For more information, see Managing custom LLMs (Public Preview).

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watsonx/* LLMs

You can now use watsonx/* LLMs by simply configuring a few .env variables. For more information, see Enabling watsonx/* LLMs.

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Hate, Abuse, and Profanity filtering

You can now control how your knowledge bases handle inappropriate content by using the new Hate, Abuse, and Profanity (HAP) filter settings. For more information, see Configuring Hate Abuse and Profanity (HAP) filtering.

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🔧 Enhancements

• Agent identity in chat: You can now see the agent’s name and avatar in the chat screen during conversations.
• Display names: You can now assign display names to tools and agents.
• Granite 3.2 & 3.3 support: You can now use the Granite 3.2 and 3.3 LLMs.
• Simplified command: You no longer need the --project-id argument when using the orchestrate settings observability langfuse command.
• SaaS proxy access: You can now source watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition images from the SaaS proxy without needing an entitlement.
• LLM Without API Key: You can now use a SaaS instance of watsonx Orchestrate as your LLM provider without supplying a wx.ai key.
• MCP toolkit management: You can now list your MCP toolkits and import them directly from public NPM repositories.

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🐛 Bug fixes

• Tool import hang: Fixed issue where importing multiple tools caused the ADK to hang.
• Truncated tool names: Fixed an issue in multi-file tools where the import process dropped the first letter of each tool name due to incorrect package name handling.

The watsonx Orchestrate ADK version 1.3.0 is now available. This release introduces new functionality, including support for Python-based knowledge bases and a ADK version display command. It also includes key bug fixes to improve usability.

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New features

• You can now use the --version argument in the CLI to display the currently installed version of the ADK.

• The ADK now supports creating knowledge bases using Python files. Documentation has been updated with examples and configuration details for Python-based setups. For more information, see Creating Knowledge Bases.

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Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue that prevented the use of numbers in the names of OpenAPI-based tools.

In version 1.2.0, the watsonx Orchestrate ADK introduces support for building and managing toolkits within your watsonx Orchestrate environment.

This is the first iteration of toolkit functionality in the ADK. Therefore, this feature is only available for watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition and currently supports only the MCP server.

For more information, see Managing Toolkits.

The 1.1.0 version brings numerous enhancements and bug fixes to IBM watsonx Orchestrate ADK.

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Enhancements

• Environment variable persistence: Environment variables passed during the orchestrate server start command are now cached. You no longer need to re-specify them when starting the watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition chat.

  By default, only non-sensitive variables are persisted. To persist all variables, including secrets, use the hidden -p argument.

• Toos importing error messages: Importing error messages for tools have been enhanced to provide clearer and more descriptive feedback when issues occur.

• Support for non-ZIP tool formats: The importing process now supports tools that are not packaged in ZIP format.

• Startup feedback for observability Languse platform: A new feedback message is displayed when starting the observability Languse platform. This message includes instructions on how to access the platform.

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Bug fixes

• Crash during repeated tool import: Fixed an issue that caused the application to crash when importing tools multiple times in succession.

• watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition name on CLI: Fixed the watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition name on CLI.

The 1.0.1 version brings numerous enhancements to IBM watsonx Orchestrate ADK.

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Enhancements

• Private network communication for containers: watsonx Orchestrate Developer Edition containers now communicate exclusively on the private network (excluding TRM).

• Open Source Containers from DockerHub: Open source containers are now pulled directly from DockerHub.

• Memory consumption: Enhanced memory usage to reduce memory consumption.

• Path mapping for knowledge base commands: Fixed path mappings for the knowledge commands on SaaS.

• PI publication: PyPI publication has been enabled and is now the default setting.

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New features

• New feature for observability
• New feature for managing knowledge bases
• Ability to upload multiple files to build tools
• Updated connection commands structure

• Bug fixes

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Enhancements

• A new chat completion API for watsonx Orchestrate agents exists that can be called from Agentforce
• Salesforce Agentforce agents can now be used as external agents to Orchestrator Agent
• External instances of watson assistant can be registered as collaborators to a native agent

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Bugfixes

• |python_tag| no longer appears in the response of React Style agents
• Optional fields are no longer required by the tool runtime
• Server start timeout has been increased to 7 minutes and it is more clear when a timeout happens and the server fails to start

• Bug fixes

• Adds the ability to connect to a wx.ai agent as a collaborator.