Migrating from the Bedrock AgentCore Starter Toolkit to the AgentCore CLI

Migrating from the Bedrock AgentCore Starter Toolkit to the AgentCore CLI

This guide walks you through migrating an existing [Bedrock AgentCore Starter Toolkit](https://github.com/aws/bedrock-agentcore-starter-toolkit) project to the [AgentCore CLI](https://github.com/aws/agentcore-cli). The CLI provides a richer feature set including a terminal UI, CDK/CloudFormation-managed infrastructure, evaluations, local development server, and more.

Overview

The AgentCore CLI includes an `agentcore import` command that automates the migration of your Starter Toolkit project. It reads your existing `.bedrock_agentcore.yaml` configuration, imports your deployed AWS resources (agents, memories, credentials) into a new CLI-managed CloudFormation stack, and copies your agent source code into the CLI project structure — all without downtime or resource re-creation.

Prerequisites

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Step 1: Install the AgentCore CLI

npm install -g @aws/agentcore

If you still have the old Python-based Starter Toolkit CLI installed, uninstall it to avoid command conflicts (both use the `agentcore` command name):

# Uninstall using whichever tool you originally used:
pip uninstall bedrock-agentcore-starter-toolkit    # if installed via pip
pipx uninstall bedrock-agentcore-starter-toolkit   # if installed via pipx
uv tool uninstall bedrock-agentcore-starter-toolkit # if installed via uv

Step 2: Create a New CLI Project

Create a new AgentCore CLI project that will receive the imported resources:

agentcore create --name my-project
cd my-project

You can also use the interactive wizard by running `agentcore create` without flags.

Step 3: Run the Import Command

From within your new CLI project directory, run the import command pointing to your Starter Toolkit YAML config file:

agentcore import --source /path/to/your/starter-toolkit-project/.bedrock_agentcore.yaml

Command Options

Option	Description
--source	(Required) Path to the .bedrock_agentcore.yaml configuration file
--target	Deployment target name (only needed if your CLI project has multiple targets)
-y, --yes	Auto-confirm prompts

What the Import Does

The import command performs a 3-phase migration:

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