[HN Gopher] Show HN: Agency - Unifying human, AI, and other comp...
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Show HN: Agency - Unifying human, AI, and other computing systems,
in Python
Hello hackernews! I'm excited to share a new open source python
library I just released for creating AI agent-integrated systems.
The name is `agency`. It differs from other agent libraries, most
importantly in that it's intended to address a distinct part of the
overall problem, that of agent integration. It is not an agent
toolchain like LangChain and others. `agency` is a framework
intended for safely integrating agents with computing systems and
humans in a way that all parties can easily understand and
communicate with each other. I've spent a lot of time on the
readme which contains a detailed and working walkthrough of
building an agent integrated system that includes multiple types of
agents, operating system integration, access control, and a
flask+react based web application where users can appear as
individual "agents" as well. Also worth noting is that I _just_
pushed an update to integrate with the new functions support on the
OpenAI API! (https://openai.com/blog/function-calling-and-other-
api-updat...) I'm eager to hear what people think! I developed
this in order to build a foundation for some of my own ambitious
ideas. If you find this useful for your own projects I'd love to
know! Thanks for checking it out! I hope this helps you build
amazing things!
Author : 0perand
Score : 84 points
Date : 2023-06-14 14:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| bbor wrote:
| Awesome stuff - this is the kind of high-level thinking I love to
| see. I think your "do one thing and do it well" focus is
| commendable, and the subjective choices you've taken to get there
| are all A+ to me. This isn't turning out to be a very useful
| comment but wanted to let you know that someone who's also
| thinking about abstract frameworks for agent ensembles thinks
| you're right on the money.
|
| A bit busy right now but will probably try to contribute if I
| can! I know very little about the low-level workings of Python
| and whatever the "GIL" is, but my single-process ensemble ended
| up using `AsyncIO` instead of `Thread` because of difficulty
| running a Flask server in a child thread; do you know if that
| would fix your CPU blocking concerns? Mostly asking so I know if
| I have the same problems and just haven't discovered them yet lol
|
| One very subjective opinion: The README is great but very long -
| I would consider putting either/both of the code samples from the
| bottom at the top, so someone experienced with the basic concepts
| can take a quick look and understand the gist immediately. Your
| language at the top is of course all accurate, but it's such an
| abstract project that even an accurate description leaves a lot
| of questions, IMO.
|
| P.S. I can't believe you got the github username "operand" that's
| sick
| 0perand wrote:
| thanks so much! I went to sleep and saw that this post actually
| blew up a bit :)
|
| I'm taking in all of this feedback. I hear you on the long
| readme. I'm thinking I'll break out the walkthrough into its
| own doc.
|
| Regarding the multithreading. It's something I have to still
| look into. I'm not sure that using asyncio will get around it.
| jasonwcfan wrote:
| Cool - if I'm understanding correctly it's basically an API
| between different classes of "agents"?
|
| One piece of feedback: the project sounds useful once I read into
| it a bit more but the headline is confusing since "unifying" can
| mean many different things.
| bbor wrote:
| Hmm in what sense did you think it was meant? Curious. To me it
| seemed pretty clear but I'm guessing I'm just naive to some
| corner of the industry.
| jasonwcfan wrote:
| I had no idea what "unifying" meant at first. The best guess
| I can make is something that lets humans interact with AI and
| computer systems, which is super vague.
|
| Maybe I'm just to used to all the marketing speak out there
| where "unifying" has been co-opted to mean basically nothing.
| e.g. "We unify technology with human potential!"
| bbor wrote:
| Good points. Perhaps "cooperate" is clearer? Or
| "Connecting"?
|
| Tho at a certain point we've gotta reclaim the fun academic
| terms from the MBAs!
| 0perand wrote:
| thanks for that feedback. If you guys saw my messaging just two
| weeks ago it was even more obtuse...
|
| I'll work on it some more :)
| Fiahil wrote:
| Looks very nice and I adhere to the concepts quite a lot !
|
| one thing you could add : tha ability to save messages sent
| throughout the Agency/system to a log. That would grant you
| instant replay ability.
| monkeydust wrote:
| Commend the investment in time on this and I will see if I can
| contribute. From a product lens it's great to see higher level
| thinking on how to incorporate agents. Feels like we're moving
| beyond the 'cool demos' phase now.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| It's great to see this kind of infrastructure work to integrate a
| variety of agents into whatever system you're building. Keep up
| the good work! I may crib some notes from this for use in non-
| Python projects.
| mcaledonensis wrote:
| Consider methods of directing the conversation flow. Like
| {{guidance}} or nemoguardrails.
| [deleted]
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