Concept card

Agentic AI in SAP

As of 2026-10-10

Edited by Cédric Mary, sole editor and publication director — 27 years in the SAP ecosystem. How these pages are produced, and where automation is used.

What is Agentic AI in SAP?

Orientation card for SAP's agent stack as of 23 Sep 2026: skills are deterministic functions, agents plan and call tools, Joule Assistants orchestrate agents; SAP ships standard agents, you build custom ones in Joule Studio, and SAP AI Agent Hub governs them all.

Agentic AI SAP?

Short answer above

Agentic AI in SAP is the move from a copilot that answers a question to software that pursues a goal: it plans a sequence of steps, calls tools against live SAP data, and stops to ask a person when a step needs a decision. This card is the entry point to the K2 cluster. It fixes the vocabulary, draws the 2026 architecture, and sends you to the card that covers each part in depth.

The vocabulary you must get right

SAP uses four terms that customers constantly mix up.

Joule skill: a deterministic unit that does one bounded thing (read a sales order, submit a leave request). SAP's own documentation describes skills as performing "tailored, and deterministic tasks". Built in Joule Studio's skill builder (see C161).
Joule agent: an AI component that takes a goal, decides which tools to call (skills, document grounding, MCP servers, other agents) and iterates until it can answer or needs input. SAP's glossary defines Joule Agents as agents that "reliably perform specific multi-step tasks". Built in the agent builder (C162) or the new Joule Studio (C113).
Joule Assistant: introduced at SAP Sapphire in May 2026. Assistants are mapped to roles; SAP's keynote recap says the out-of-the-box agents "come together into what we call assistants". In SAP SuccessFactors, agents are assigned to assistants and become available when the assistant is enabled.
Joule Work: the new user workspace (web, desktop, mobile) where people interact with assistants and agents, and where the new Joule Studio is opened through the Develop entry.

Why it matters

Skill, agent, assistant and Joule Work are four different things with different build tools, licences and governance; mixing them up is the fastest way to mis-scope a statement of work.
SAP's 2026 architecture (context layer, Joule Studio, AI Agent Hub) and its API policy define which agent designs are supported and contractually safe.
Standard, standard extended and custom agents carry different effort, risk and ownership; naming the type early settles who maintains what.

Key points

Skill = deterministic function; agent = goal-driven tool use with planning; assistant = role-level orchestrator of agents (Sapphire 2026).
SAP Business AI Platform: context layer (Knowledge Graph, Domain Models, BDC), build layer (Joule Studio), governance layer (SAP AI Agent Hub on LeanIX).
Agents call SAP APIs as MCP tools through governed paths and talk to other agents over A2A; SAP's API policy restricts autonomous API selection to those paths.
Three build types: standard (activate, configure), standard extended (add tools or instructions), custom (Joule Studio or pro-code via A2A).
Agents are Premium AI capabilities billed on agent actions; Joule Studio needs Joule Base or AI Units plus a Joule Studio SKU.
SAP AI Agent Hub launched inside SAP LeanIX on 4 November 2025, not at Sapphire 2026; its 22 September 2026 AI Governance Assistant adds EU AI Act and NIST risk classification to the agent/LLM registry.
NVIDIA OpenShell (co-developed with NVIDIA, Sapphire 2026) answers whether an action can execute safely; Joule Studio's runtime governance layer answers whether it should happen at all — two distinct gatekeepers, not one 'guardrails' feature.
SAP Domain Models (second-generation SAP-ABAP-2 plus S/4HANA/Ariba variants) run under the hood of Joule and Joule Studio and are not directly customer-exposed; available via Early Adopter Care with GA targeted for Q3 2026 (past due: no GA announcement found as of 9 October 2026).
SAP Connect (Oct 2026): AI Agent Hub described as GA for agents, LLMs and MCP servers; Signavio Agent Mining announced (date unconfirmed); 400+ agents targeted by end 2026; Forrester: test exportability of agent memory and prompts.

Terms used on this page

Joule Agent: SAP AI agent that performs specific multi-step tasks by selecting and calling tools; accessed through Joule Assistants.
Joule Assistant: Role-oriented Joule entity introduced in 2026 that orchestrates a set of agents; enabling it makes its agents available.
Agent Gateway: Governed access layer through which agents built in the new Joule Studio call SAP APIs exposed as MCP tools.
Standard extended agent: SAP-delivered agent that a customer extends with extra tools, instructions or data sources (LeanIX build type).
NVIDIA OpenShell: Open-source secure runtime, co-developed with NVIDIA, that sandboxes agent actions and answers whether an action can execute safely; distinct from Joule Studio's business-policy governance layer.
SAP AI Agent Hub: Cross-vendor registry and governance layer for agents, LLMs and MCP servers, launched inside SAP LeanIX on 4 November 2025 and positioned since 2026 as the governance foundation of the SAP Business AI Platform.
SAP Domain Models: Family of SAP-aware foundation models (including second-generation SAP-ABAP-2 and S/4HANA/Ariba variants) running under Joule and Joule Studio, not directly exposed to customers; Early Adopter Care, GA targeted Q3 2026.
AI Governance Assistant: Capability inside SAP AI Agent Hub, announced 22 September 2026, that classifies agents and LLMs against EU AI Act and NIST risk categories.

Sources

Full card available to members. What the full card adds: the full decision framework · the SAP vs Snowflake / Databricks / Fabric comparison · the common pitfalls and their fix · the cheat sheet · the architecture schemas · the code blocks · the facts worth quoting.

Open in the app →

Guides that answer with this page

These guides cite this page as one of the sources their answer rests on.

SAP AI Agents Consultant: Catalogue, GA vs Announced