Module Summary

  • Goal: Create a manager agent to orchestrate your developer agents
  • Estimated Time: 10-20 minutes
  • Prerequisites: Two developer agents from Module 3, GitHub account

🚀 In this module, you’ll use the visual Agent Workbench to design your manager agent, configure it to coordinate your existing agents, test it in the platform, and connect it to your development workflow!

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🔧 Access the xpander.ai Workbench

First, let’s access the xpander.ai platform to create your manager agent:

  1. Go to https://app.xpander.ai and sign in with your credentials
  2. In the left navigation menu, go to AI Agents
  3. Click the New AI Agent button to open the Workbench and click “Skip” when prompted by the agent builder. This time we’ll create the agent manually.

Creating a new agent in the Workbench

Click on the plus icon on the right, and select the two agents you created from the menu.

Adding your developer agents to the manager

In just a few minutes, we’ve exposed two agents to the manager agent, allowing it to delegate tasks using the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol. Behind the scenes, the xpander.ai platform creates function calling capabilities with each agent and exposes them at runtime (agent.get_tools() will now return agents as well as tools). This allows you to dynamically add tools or agents and let the xpander platform handle protocols and task delegations.

Now let’s add tools to the manager:

  1. Add the “GitHub Pull Requests” app by authenticating to GitHub
  2. Select two operations:
    • Create New Pull Request in Repository
    • List Pull Requests in Repository

Your agent should now look like this:

Manager agent with GitHub operations

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⚙️ Configure the Manager Agent

Now let’s configure the manager agent:

  1. Navigate to the Settings tab
  2. Click on “Generate Details”
  3. Enter the following prompt:

An AI agent that manages two AI developers. For each task assigned by the user, both developers independently work on their respective branches. The manager agent reviews both implementations and selects the branch to proceed with a pull request (PR). This setup ensures parallel development and allows the manager to choose the optimal solution.

Configuring manager agent settings

Navigate to the Instructions tab to customize the agent’s instructions according to your preferences!

Once you’ve finished configuring your agent, click “Save” and then “Deploy”!

Your AI Manager is now ready to use:

Deployed manager agent ready for use

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🧪 Testing Your Manager Agent

Use the Tester tab to interact with your manager agent. Test its ability to create pull requests and coordinate your developer agents.

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🔌 Connecting to MCP

Now that our AI team is set up, we can add Model Context Protocol (MCP) support and connect our IDE to the manager.

  1. Click on the plus icon and select “Sources” -> “MCP”
  2. Once added to the canvas, click “Deploy” to save the changes
  3. Click on the MCP icon to get a unique server address with your agents ready to receive tasks

Adding MCP to your manager agent

This URL contains API keys for your agents. Don’t share this URL with anyone.

You can add MCP to anything - tools, agents, multiple agents. Think of MCP as a REST API for the agent ecosystem. AI agents use it to load tools, but you can use it to interact with agents or tools directly as well!

Now, load this URL into Cursor by going to Cursor settings -> MCP or (vi ~/.cursor/mcp.json)

{
  "mcpServers":{
	"ai_development_manager": {
	  "command": "npx",
	  "args": [
		"xpander-mcp-remote",
		"https://mcp.xpander.ai/<your-mcp>/"
	  ]
	}
  }
}

You should be able to see the MCP auto-added to all your cursor chat

MCP enabled in Cursor IDE

Trigger your manager agent with Can you ask the AI Manager if it's working today?

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âś… Checkpoint

By completing this module, you should now be able to:

  1. Create a manager agent using the xpander.ai Workbench
  2. Configure the manager to coordinate your developer agents
  3. Add GitHub Pull Request capabilities to your manager
  4. Connect your manager agent to Cursor IDE using MCP
  5. Test the manager’s ability to delegate tasks to your developer agents

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🔄 Next Steps

Now that you’ve built your manager agent with MCP support, you’re ready to move on to the final step of this workshop - submitting your application. In the next module, you’ll finalize your project and prepare it for submission.