Denying the canon did not leave the Digambara without scripture. They treat as their oldest surviving authority the Shatkhandagama, the scripture in six parts, composed in Prakrit by Pushpadanta and Bhutabali and understood to preserve, at second hand, material from the lost Drishtivada on the workings of karma; and the Kasayapahuda, the treatise on the passions, ascribed to Gunadhara. Both come with monumental commentary: Virasena's Dhavala on the Shatkhandagama, continued by his pupil Jinasena and completed in the ninth century, and the Jayadhavala on the Kasayapahuda. Alongside these the Digambara give great weight to systematic treatises, Kundakunda's Prakrit works, and Umasvati's Sanskrit Tattvartha Sutra, which is the rare text both traditions accept.
Within the Svetambara there is further variation. The image-worshipping Murtipujaka accept the forty-five-text canon; the Sthanakvasi and Terapanthi, reformist groups that reject temple image worship, accept a shorter list of thirty-two, discarding texts they regard as later or as supporting practices they oppose. So the phrase "the Jain Agamas" names different collections depending on who is speaking.
In use, the Agamas function more as a monastic and liturgical resource than as a text laypeople read through. Ascetics study them under a teacher with the commentaries; passages such as the Uttaradhyayana's account of Mahavira's final teaching are recited at the annual Paryushana observance; the disciplinary texts govern the conduct of mendicants. Access has historically been restricted, with some texts held unsuitable for lay or unprepared readers, and the systematic critical editing of the Svetambara canon by Jain and Western scholars is a modern undertaking, still incomplete.