Expose existing workflows as tools
AWS’s October 29 announcement connects existing Step Functions workflows to AI agents through AgentCore Gateway. The agent chooses when to start and what input to provide; the workflow determines the steps and their order. Standard and Express operations have different support. Ordinary Step Functions and Gateway charges apply. [1][2][3]
A pin is only one boundary
The connector exposes ten operations. Four can pin a state machine. The other six use an execution identifier or task token supplied by the agent and are not confined by that pin. [2]
Use tightly scoped IAM for execution operations. Task-token operations lack resource-level IAM scoping, so protect the tokens as secrets. The tutorial also notes that targets on one gateway share its service role. [2][3]
Our take
For experienced AWS operators, this is useful when an agent should start an already defined process. Review each exposed operation and the workflow’s checks before connecting it. Fixed step order alone does not validate the agent’s input or prove the process implements the right policy.
We reviewed the announcement and docs without deploying or testing a workflow.