agentcore remove all does not delete AWS resources

I ran agentcore remove all --force expecting it to tear down my deployed agent, and got this:

Output

{
  "success": true,
  "message": "All schemas reset to empty state",
  "note": "Your source code has not been modified. Run `agentcore deploy` to apply changes to AWS."
}

remove all only resets the agents / memories / credentials arrays in agentcore.json to empty. The CloudFormation stack and AgentCore Runtime resources on AWS remain untouched. To actually delete AWS resources, you need to deploy the empty state:

Terminal

agentcore remove all --force
agentcore deploy -y              # This tears down the CloudFormation stack

The CLI follows a consistent pattern: agentcore.json is the declarative state definition, and deploy applies that state to AWS. remove only modifies the local definition — AWS changes always go through deploy. Not intuitive at first, but it prevents accidental deletions.