AWS Step Functions + Bedrock AgentCore: The Serverless AI Blueprint đâď¸ #104
Agent Toolkit for AWS comes to AWS CLI
In the previous issue, OpenSearch is finally Serverless đâď¸ #103 looked at how AWS rewamped OpenSearch to make it Serverless.
Building multi-turn AI agentsâwhere an LLM loops through a series of think â call tool â observe cyclesâhistorically required hosting your own runtime or wrapping agent loops inside AWS Lambda. For production workloads, that approach creates severe friction. Architecturally, this integration eliminates the primary friction points of building production AI by replacing custom state-management code with the native AgentCore InvokeHarness API. Instead of wrapping non-deterministic agent loops inside AWS Lambdaâwhich constantly risks hitting the hard 15-minute execution ceiling and racks up expensive pay-for-idle compute costs while waiting synchronously for LLM streaming or external API toolsâStep Functions offloads the multi-turn execution entirely to a managed, serverless microVM context provided by AgentCore. Step Functions acts as the deterministic coordinator handling routing, retries, and state data, while AgentCore executes the long-running think-action-observation cycles. This request-response handoff radically optimizes costs by charging only for state transitions and actual Bedrock token usage, giving you true pay-as-you-go scaling with zero infrastructure overhead.
In a real-world enterprise scenario like automated medical insurance claims processing, this integration allows you to coordinate a multi-agent system through a reliable state machine. The workflow begins when a claim is submitted, prompting Step Functions to invoke a specialized Document Extraction Agent that utilizes a cost-efficient model to extract and structure data from messy PDFs into clean JSON. Step Functions then triggers a native Parallel state to spin up two concurrent specialistsâa Coverage Verification Agent to check database records for policy compliance and a Fraud Detection Agent to audit historical velocity patterns. If anomalies are flagged, the state machine utilizes per-invocation overrides to dynamically elevate the reasoning model and system prompt for a Review Agent Step, using a native RuntimeSessionId to seamlessly maintain context and memory across the entire execution. Finally, if the risk score surpasses a safe threshold, Step Functions acts as a deterministic guardrail, routing the payload to a Human Approval Step via Amazon SNS to pause the workflow until a claims adjuster can safely audit the trace.
â Pick of the month
This monthâs Pick is âWorkflows on Serverlessâ.
Harpreet Siddhu is bringing in zero-cost approval workflows with AWS Lambda for an ETL pipeline that requires human-in-the-loop approval for processing 1k documents.
Rishiâs blog on Building Human-in-the-Loop E-Commerce Workflows with AWS Durable Lambda Functions explains the need for human-in-the-loop patterns and how durable functions fits in.
Jones Zachariah Noelâs blog series on AWS Step Functions covers different aspects of Serverless workflows from bringing use-cases with AI to features of Step Functions such as Jitter Strategy, HTTP invocation and more.
đ AWSome content to learn from
Raphael Moura explains that the bottleneck was never the load, it was the hot key for space-based architectures on Serverless breaking down the challenge and how to use Serverless services and why itâs an advantage.
Pubudu Jayawardana debunks an edge case with ESM triggers for durable functions and how to trigger Lambda Durable Functions from SQS and the approach of EventBridge Pipes.
Michael Walmsley takes a look at Lambda in VPC more from an architectural POV, not with a performance-first POV, and how important it is to get the VPC configuration right.
Anna Pastushko addresses the age-old question of whether you should use SQS or EventBridge with a use-case breakdown of what fits and what doesnât, with a clear picture of the tradeoffs that have be done which choosing either.
Ghitaâs blog on Smart Notification Routing on AWS with SNS, Lambda, and CDK where having a custom notification router for type of alerts, teams all with SNS and Lambda function.
âď¸ What's happening with Serverless tools, samples, and projects
SĂŠbastien Stormacq has built out Lambda Runtime Interface Client (RIC) for C.
Kenta Goto has published cdk-local.
John Ajera has published terraform-aws-s3-vectors-rag-demo.
Jeremy Dalyâs data-api-client now support Knex compatibility layer for MySQL and PGSQL.
đď¸ Podcasts, videos, and live-streams
On the Serverless Office Hours, Erik Hanchett takes on building Agents with TypeScript.
Jaymitkumar Bhoraniya explains AWS API Gateway.
How to Fix Vercel Serverless Function Error Full Guide 2026.
đď¸ Mark your calendars
Tech Harate on July 27th, 2026.
AWS Community Days are happening -
ACD East Canada on June 20th, 2026.
ACD Midwest on June 24th, 2026.
ACD Kenya - Pwani Edition on July 4th, 2026.
ACD Bengaluru on July 11th, 2026.
ACD Ottawa on August 21st and 22nd, 2026.
ACD Singapore on August 22nd, 2026. CFP is currently open until June 7th, 2026.
ACD Poland on September 8th, 2026. CFP is currently open until July 6th, 2026.
ACD Sri Lanka on September 11th, 2026.
ACD DACH on September 15th, 2026. CFP is currently open until June 30th, 2026.
ACD Malaysia on September 26th, 2026. CFP is currently open.
ACD DMV on October 9th, 2026. CFP is currently open until August 15th, 2026.
ACD Armenia in October 2026. CFP is currently open until July 20th, 2026.
ACD South Florida on October 14th, 2026. CFP is currently open until August 15th, 2026.
ACD Mumbai on October 17th, 2026.
ACD Adria on October 22nd, 2026. CFP is currently open until June 15th, 2026.
ServerlessDays Milano on October 13th, 2026. CFP is currently open until June 15th, 2026.
AWS North Community Conf on October 15th, 2026. CFP is currently open until June 30th, 2026.
đ˘ What's new in Serverless
Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity now allows you to bring your own secrets with AWS Secrets Manager.
AWS Config now supports internal service linked rules.
AWS Step Functions adds AgentCore-powered agentic reasoning step.
Amazon Cognito now supports multi-Region replication.
The AWS MCP Server now supports cross-account and cross-role access.
Amazon ECS with AWS Fargate now supports 32vCPU compute configurations.
AWS FinOps Agent is now available in preview.
Amazon MWAA Serverless now supports Amazon EventBridge notifications.
đ¨âđť Word from the author
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