Meet Bedrock AgentCore Gateway: A Zero-Code Bridge for Enterprise AI Agents

What AgentCore Gateway does

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Gateway is a managed, serverless service from AWS that streamlines how AI agents connect to tools and services in large enterprises. It focuses on four core problems: interoperability, security, tool discovery, and infrastructure management, offering a protocol-native approach that scales as organizations add hundreds or thousands of tools.

Zero-code MCP tool creation

One of the most impactful features is automatic conversion of existing REST APIs and AWS Lambda functions into tools compatible with the Model Context Protocol (MCP). If APIs are defined in OpenAPI or Smithy models, AgentCore Gateway can register and convert them without custom code. That means engineering teams only need to register their APIs; the Gateway handles conversion, schema translation, and protocol plumbing so agents can invoke internal services and serverless functions as MCP tools.

Built-in, dual-sided security

Security is central to the Gateway design. It enforces dual-sided authentication for both inbound and outbound traffic. Inbound requests use OAuth-based validation and integrate with identity providers such as Amazon Cognito, Okta, or Auth0. Administrators can whitelist client IDs and audiences to control which agents can call which tools. For outbound calls, the Gateway supports AWS IAM roles for Lambda and Smithy targets, and API key or OAuth 2LO flows for REST endpoints, with resource credentials managed via AgentCore Identity. The result is a consistent, auditable access model across agent interactions.

Intelligent tool discovery with semantic search

As tool catalogs grow, manual selection becomes error prone. AgentCore Gateway includes an optional semantic search capability that provisions an 'x_amz_bedrock_agentcore_search' tool. Agents can query the tool registry in natural language, allowing the platform to pick the most relevant tool for a task. This reduces hallucinations and incorrect tool calls that happen when agents rely on static lists or simple matching.

Fully managed infrastructure and observability

The Gateway is serverless and fully managed, removing hosting and scaling concerns from teams. Observability is integrated with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudTrail, providing metrics, error rates, performance data, and audit logs for each agent and API interaction. Teams can set up dashboards and alerts to maintain reliability and troubleshoot issues as application complexity increases.

Native MCP support and interoperability

Built with native support for the Model Context Protocol, AgentCore Gateway enables protocol-agnostic, consistent communication between agents and tools. Whether teams use custom agents, languages and frameworks like LangChain, or orchestration platforms, they can interact with tools through MCP methods and rely on consistent schemas, access policies, and tooling behavior.

Developer experience and real-world examples

Developers can configure gateways and targets through multiple interfaces, including the AWS CLI, SDKs such as Boto3, the Management Console, and AgentCore starter toolkits. The platform provides features that ease development, such as an exceptionLevel property for more granular debugging messages. Innovaccer has used the Gateway to create a Healthcare MCP on Bedrock, converting healthcare APIs into MCP-accessible tools that improve scalability, trust, and compliance for AI-driven workflows.

Governance and best practices

AWS recommends grouping APIs by business domain and outbound authorization requirements to simplify governance. Enriching tool metadata with natural-language descriptions and usage scenarios helps semantic discovery work better. Synchronizing the Gateway registry with centralized MCP repositories and continuously validating semantic search results ensure the tool inventory stays accurate as agent capabilities evolve.