Agents

^{Questions or issues? Contact us at api-support@manus.ai.} Agents are custom AI entities in Manus with their own identity (nickname and description) that can be customized for specific use cases. This includes the agents you create in the Cue app. Each agent has a main task that serves as its persistent conversation thread. You can manage agents and interact with their tasks through the API. Every account comes with a default IM (Instant Messaging) agent for general-purpose conversations. You can access it directly using shortcuts without looking up its UUID.

Quick start: talk to an agent

Every agent’s task_id from agent.list or agent.detail is its main task. Pass it as task_id to task.sendMessage to talk to that agent. For the IM agent, the shortcut agent-default-main_task resolves to the same task, so no lookup is needed:

cURL
Python

# Send a message to the IM agent
curl -X POST https://api.manus.ai/v2/task.sendMessage \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "x-manus-api-key: $MANUS_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "task_id": "agent-default-main_task",
    "message": { "content": "Summarize today's tech news" }
  }'

import requests

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.manus.ai/v2/task.sendMessage",
    headers={
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "x-manus-api-key": MANUS_API_KEY,
    },
    json={
        "task_id": "agent-default-main_task",
        "message": {"content": "Summarize today's tech news"},
    },
)
print(response.json())

Then poll for the agent’s response:

curl 'https://api.manus.ai/v2/task.listMessages?task_id=agent-default-main_task&order=desc&limit=5' \
  -H 'x-manus-api-key: $MANUS_API_KEY'

Shortcuts

The following shortcuts are available so you don’t need to look up UUIDs first:

Shortcut	Used as	Description
`agent-default-main_task`	`task_id`	The IM agent’s main task. Accepted anywhere a `task_id` is expected.
`agent-default`	`agent_id`	The IM agent. Use in task.list with `scope=agent_subtask`.

Managing agents

Use the agent.* endpoints to list, view, and update your agents:

Action	Endpoint
List all agents	agent.list
View agent details	agent.detail
Update nickname / description	agent.update

Agent subtasks

Agents can create subtasks during execution. To view an agent’s subtasks, use task.list with scope=agent_subtask:

curl 'https://api.manus.ai/v2/task.list?scope=agent_subtask&agent_id=agent-default' \
  -H 'x-manus-api-key: $MANUS_API_KEY'

Subtasks have task_type: "agent_subtask" in the response and can be interacted with like any other task — task.sendMessage, task.listMessages, task.stop, etc.

Getting Started

API Reference

Quick start: talk to an agent

Shortcuts

Managing agents

Agent subtasks

​Quick start: talk to an agent

​Shortcuts

​Managing agents

​Agent subtasks

Quick start: talk to an agent

Shortcuts

Managing agents

Agent subtasks