The pillars of an agentic SDLC platform
Port is an Agentic Engineering Platform - giving engineering organizations the platform layer to run AI agents safely across the software development lifecycle. Five pillars make this possible: a context lake that provides unified engineering knowledge, AI agents that reason over it, workflows that act on it, governance that enforces standards and access, and an interface builder that keeps teams informed and in control.
Context lake
The context lake is Port's unified engineering knowledge layer. It connects data from across your entire toolchain - repositories, cloud resources, incidents, deployments, and more - into a single, semantically-rich source of truth. Everything else in Port is powered by the context lake: AI agents reason over it, workflows act on it, and dashboards visualize it.
In the onboarding: You start building your context lake in step 1 by connecting your Git provider, and continue in step 4 by connecting more integrations and populating it with services and users.
Workflows & tools
Workflows provide a visual, node-based way to build automations and self-service experiences. You can chain multiple operations together, add conditional logic, and create complex automation flows triggered manually by users or automatically in response to catalog events.
In the onboarding: You create your first agentic workflow in step 6.
Port AI
The Port AI assistant is the conversational interface available throughout the product - it guides you through setup, helps you build workflows and dashboards, and answers questions about your catalog.
In the onboarding: The entire onboarding process is driven by the Port AI assistant, starting with crafting your initial prompt in step 2.
Agent management
Agent management is the platform layer for building and governing AI agents across your SDLC - from custom agents that orchestrate engineering workflows, to an AI registry for managing skills, prompts, and MCP server access.
Interface builder
Port's interface builder lets your team both surface and act on engineering data. Dashboards give a real-time view of what's happening across your environment - service health, deployment status, open incidents, and more - so each team sees exactly what matters to them. Teams can trigger workflows on demand, and approval flows ensure nothing important happens without the right people involved.
In the onboarding: You explore your use-case dashboards in step 4 and can customize them at any time.
Governance
Governance in Port covers two areas: access controls and standards enforcement. Access controls let you manage who can do what through RBAC, SSO, teams, and audit trails. Standards enforcement lets you define quality thresholds for your services using scorecards - covering security, reliability, production readiness, or any custom criteria - and track progress across your organization.
In the onboarding: You configure access control and define roles when you invite your team in step 5.