What it is
Bring Your Own Agent (BYOA) means connecting an AI agent built outside Salesforce to Salesforce data and workflows through standard protocols like MCP or A2A. The external agent can then work alongside Agentforce agents under the same governance and observability. Not to be confused with BYOK (Bring Your Own Key), which is about whose model key and contract an AI feature runs on.
Why it matters
Companies with existing AI investments can protect prior work while still gaining Salesforce-native governance, security, and oversight. This flexibility matters as organizations avoid vendor lock-in and mix best-of-breed agents.
Key components
- agent registration
- interoperability protocols
- cross-platform orchestration
- unified governance
How it connects
External agents connect through open protocols such as A2A and MCP, so they can be discovered, governed, and orchestrated alongside native Agentforce agents.
Good to know
External agents should pass the same governance and red-team checks as native agents before production use.
Related terms
Agent Mesh
A distributed network connecting specialized AI agents across departments, systems, and vendors into one collaborative fabric.
A2A (Agent-to-Agent Protocol)
Google's open protocol that allows AI agents from different vendors to communicate and collaborate with each other.
Capability Registry
A structured catalog that maps AI capabilities (reasoning, structured output, tool use, vision, long context) to the models that can serve them — the substrate that makes skills portable across LLM vendors.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Anthropic's open standard for connecting AI models to external data sources and tools. Think of it as a universal adapter for AI.
BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
A model where users provide their own API keys for AI services (like OpenAI, Anthropic, or other LLM providers) instead of relying on the platform's bundled AI.
