upstash-redis-start

by upstash

Provision a zero-config, no-signup Upstash Redis database for an AI agent via a single POST to `https://upstash.com/start-redis`. Use when an agent needs…

npx skills add https://github.com/upstash/skills --skill upstash-redis-start

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Upstash Redis for Agents (`start-redis`)

A zero-config Redis database for AI agents — no signup, no UI, no SDK setup. One HTTP request returns a working endpoint + token. Databases live for 3 days unless the user claims them.

Use this when:

The agent needs Redis right now and the user has not given you credentials.
You want short-term memory across tool calls, conversation history, a sub-agent work queue, or recent-first ranked recall.

This is built for quick experiments, prototypes, and demos rather than production workloads or anything tied to a real user account — the database is temporary and unauthenticated until claimed, so keep PII, secrets, and production credentials out of it.

Create or re-fetch a database

# Generate a fresh UUIDv4 yourself, then POST it as the Idempotency-Key.
# The UUIDv4 you send becomes the database id.
curl -X POST -H "Idempotency-Key: <uuidv4>" https://upstash.com/start-redis

Sending your own UUIDv4 makes the first call retry-safe — if the response is lost, retrying with the same UUID returns the same database instead of minting a duplicate.
Re-POST with the same Idempotency-Key to re-fetch credentials for an existing database.
The header is optional. Omit it to mint a new database with a server-generated id (returned in the response — re-fetch later by passing that id back as Idempotency-Key). Only UUIDv4 is accepted.

The response is markdown containing:

Database ID, Endpoint, Token
Metrics URL (JSON: uptime, commands, keys, throughput, memory, bandwidth)
Expires date
Console URL to share with the user (where they view usage and click Claim to keep the database)
An inline quickstart for the body-style REST API

Parse these out of the markdown response and use them directly — there is no separate JSON envelope.

Calling the database (body-style REST)

The returned endpoint speaks the Upstash Redis REST API. Prefer the body-style form: POST a JSON array as the body so you don't have to URL-encode the command.

# SET with TTL
curl https://<endpoint> \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
  -d '["SET","session:abc","{\"step\":2}","EX","3600"]'

# GET
curl https://<endpoint> \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" \
  -d '["GET","session:abc"]'

You can also use the official SDKs against the same endpoint + token (@upstash/redis for TS/JS, upstash-redis for Python).

Common agent patterns

Need	Commands
Short-term memory across tool calls in one run	`SET key value EX <ttl>` / `GET key`
Conversation / turn-by-turn log	`LPUSH chat:<user> <json>` / `LRANGE chat:<user> 0 20`
Sub-agent work queue (producer/consumer)	`LPUSH jobs <json>` / `RPOP jobs`
Ranked memory (recent-first or score-first)	`ZADD memories <score> <member>` / `ZREVRANGE memories 0 9`