Your first config

If you followed the quickstart, you have an agent connected and reporting healthy. The next thing worth doing is replacing the on-disk config it started with — and watching the live reload happen.

This walkthrough takes about five minutes.

1. Open the channel's Configurations page

In the UI, navigate to your channel and click Configurations. New channels show an empty state with three step-cards (create → version → deploy); click New config.

2. Author the config

Pick the agent type that matches your fleet — otelcol, fluent-bit, vector, telegraf, or refinery. Give the configuration a name (e.g. edge-collector) and paste in the agent's config body.

For an OpenTelemetry Collector starter:

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317

processors:
  batch:
    timeout: 5s
    send_batch_size: 1000

exporters:
  debug:
    verbosity: detailed

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [debug]

Save. Ampbase validates the config against the agent's schema before persisting, so a typo here gets flagged immediately rather than after deploy.

3. Deploy

Saving creates version 1. The version is current but not yet deployed — agents are still on whatever they booted with. Click Set as channel default.

A plain deploy sets the configuration's deployed-version pointer, and every connected agent picks up the new payload on its next OpAMP message. If you want a graduated rollout instead of an all-at-once flip, route the configuration through a feature flag — same versions, controlled fan-out.

4. Watch the agent reload

Switch back to Agents. Within a second or two, your agent's row updates:

• config_hash changes to the new version's hash.
• The agent's status stays HEALTHY once the supervisor has written the file, sent SIGHUP, and the post-apply health check passes.
• If the agent fails its health check, the supervisor reverts to the previous config and the status flips to DEGRADED with the reason shown.

You can verify on the host too. The supervisor logs:

INFO  config_apply  hash=01HJK… bytes=412  result=applied
INFO  health_check  status=healthy

5. Iterate

Edit the configuration again, save — that's version 2. The current pointer moves; the deployed pointer doesn't. Diff the two versions from the UI, deploy when you're ready.

To roll back: open the version list, pick an earlier ULID, click Set as default. Same primitive, opposite direction.

Going further

• Feature flags — turn this single 100% deploy into a 10% canary in two clicks.
• Configurations — versioning, bundles for multi-file agents, validation rules.
• Webhooks — notify your incident channel when a deploy lands.