Amazon WorkSpaces unveils AI agent-only desktops in preview

Amazon WorkSpaces has unveiled a preview that provides managed desktops for AI agents as well. Agents can directly operate desktop apps without needing to convert existing applications into APIs or rebuild them.

Behind this lies a dependency on legacy systems. The article cites a 2024 Gartner report noting that 75% of organizations use legacy applications without modern APIs, and 71% of Fortune 500 companies run core processes on mainframes.

Agents authenticate via AWS IAM, and their activity is tracked through CloudTrail and CloudWatch. MCP is supported, allowing connections to frameworks like LangChain, CrewAI, and Strands Agents.

Configuration is done through the WorkSpaces Applications stack in the AWS console.

• Select Add AI Agents instead of the default No AI agent access.
• Enable Computer input, Computer vision, and screenshot storage.
• In the desktop screen layout, specify resolution 1280×720 and image format PNG.
• Then connect the agent framework to the managed MCP endpoint and provide IAM credentials.

In the demo, an agent based on the Strands Agent SDK and Amazon Bedrock handled prescription refill tasks on a sample pharmacy system. This feature is offered as a public preview at no additional cost, and is available in the US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris), and Asia (Tokyo, Mumbai, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore) regions.