Concepts

This section gives short explanations of Akka concepts and their main trade-offs. Read the topics relevant to your task; you do not need to read this section in order. Each overview links to the development, testing, training, or operations guide that owns the details.

The groups

Foundations: The vocabulary and the shape of the whole system. Platform model names the parts, Anatomy of a request follows one request through all of them, and Distributed systems principles gives the principles the platform is built on.
Building services: How state and processes behave. See Components and effects, State and read models, Durable execution, and Events and streaming.
Agents: How agents use models, memory, tools, and coordination. See Agents, Memory and context, Tools and agent protocols, and Multi-agent coordination.
Specifications: How requirements, project rules, and acceptance checks fit together. See Specifications and conformance.
Governance: How controls run in the runtime and what they leave behind as evidence. See Governance and the runtime, Controls, Evaluation, From risk to controls and The ledger and evidence.
Models: How inference and model improvement relate. See Models and inference and Model improvement and cost.
Runtime and operations: How services run, recover, and stay secure. See The runtime, Deployment and operations, Multi-region operations, Availability and recovery, Security and identity, and Observability.

Reading paths

If you	Read
Build services and agents	Start with Components and effects; use the service and agent topics as needed
Choose, serve or train models	Start with Models and inference; continue in Inference or Training
Run Akka in production	Start with Deployment and operations; use Runtime and operations for the concepts you need
Govern AI systems	Start with Governance and the runtime; use Specifications for development acceptance

If you

Read

Build services and agents

Start with Components and effects; use the service and agent topics as needed

Choose, serve or train models

Start with Models and inference; continue in Inference or Training

Run Akka in production

Start with Deployment and operations; use Runtime and operations for the concepts you need

Govern AI systems

Start with Governance and the runtime; use Specifications for development acceptance

For what the platform is and how its solutions fit together, see About Akka. For definitions of individual terms, see the glossary.