## Why should an AI agent connect to OPC-UA?\
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OPC-UA (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) is a modern standard for data exchange between industrial devices, controllers, and SCADA systems. It is widely used in factories, energy, and transportation — from Siemens and ABB to Schneider Electric and legacy DCS systems. Data in OPC-UA comes in the form of "tags": reactor temperature, tank level, pump status, conveyor speed. Manually monitoring hundreds of such tags is a full shift of work for a dispatcher.
Connecting an AI agent to OPC-UA allows you to: read tags in real time, capture alarm events, predict equipment failures based on trends, and even send commands — for example, changing a regulator setpoint. The key point is that you don't need a programmer for this. ASI Biont will figure out the server structure on its own, form queries, and start exchanging data via REST API or an OPC-UA library (such as asyncua).
## How ASI Biont connects to any service via API\
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Forget about classic "Add Integration" panels. In ASI Biont, this process looks like this:
- You find an API key / access token for the OPC-UA server (or for a gateway that exposes a REST API over OPC-UA) in the documentation or from the vendor.
- In the chat with the AI agent, you write: "Connect to my OPC-UA server at opc.tcp://192.168.1.10:4840, here are the credentials..."
- The AI clarifies details: which tags interest you, how often to poll, where to save the data.
- After your confirmation, the agent writes and runs the integration code itself — in Python, Node.js, or another stack.
- Within a few minutes, you already see the result: data is being read, alarms are being logged, reports are being generated.
All communication takes place in a dialogue. No "add buttons" — just your request and the AI's response. The only thing required from you is an API key or an address with access. The AI agent will adapt to the specifics of your server: OPC-UA version, data types, structure of the address space.
## Step-by-step guide: connecting OPC-UA to ASI Biont\
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Let's look at a real scenario — a plant where you need to control the temperature in a reactor and receive notifications when it goes out of range. Step 1: Get access to OPC-UA via API.\
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Many modern SCADA systems already have a built-in REST API over OPC-UA. If not, there are lightweight gateways, for example the OPC-UA Gateway Server (from Unified Automation) or an open-source proxy based on Node-RED. All you need is to open an endpoint like https://your-scada:62541/opcua/read. In our example, we use this address.
Step 2: Give the AI agent access. In the ASI Biont chat, we write:
"Connect to opc.tcp://192.168.0.14:4840, read the tags
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