The iChatBio SDK is designed to aid in the development of agents that can communicate with iChatBio. The SDK adds a layer of abstraction over the A2A protocol, hiding the complexities of A2A while exposing iChatBio-specific capabilities. Because agents designed with the iChatBio SDK make use of A2A, they are also able to communicate with other A2A agents, though without access to services (e.g., strict data models, special messages types, and shared persistent storage) enabled by the iChatBio ecosystem.
See examples for a reference agent implementation. A standalone example agent is available here.
The iChatBio SDK is available on PyPI:
pip install ichatbio-sdkLike A2A, iChatBio agents must define an agent card. Here's an example card:
from ichatbio.types import AgentCard, AgentEntrypoint
card = AgentCard(
name="Friendly Agent",
description="Responds in a friendly manner.",
icon="https://example.com/icon.png",
url="http://localhost:9999",
entrypoints=[
AgentEntrypoint(
id="chat",
description="Generates a friendly reply.",
parameters=Parameters # Defined below
)
]
)The card must include one or more entrypoints. Entrypoints define the types of interactions that are possible between iChatBio and the agent. Each entrypoint can optionally define a set of parameters, which allow iChatBio to provide structured information to the agent. This structure has a number of advantages:
- Agents can directly access parameters without the unreliable overhead of natural language processing
- Agents with strict parameter sets can only be used when the required parameters are supplied
Here's the parameter model referenced in the entrypoint above:
from pydantic import BaseModel, PastDate
class Parameters(BaseModel):
birthday: PastDateBy using Pydantic's PastDate class, the birthday must both be a valid date and also be a date in the past. With
these constraints, the agent does not need to worry about receiving invalid parameter values and subsequent error
handling.
Here's an agent that implements the "chat" entrypoint:
from datetime import date
from typing import override
from ichatbio.agent import IChatBioAgent
from ichatbio.agent_response import ResponseContext
from ichatbio.types import AgentCard
class FriendlyAgent(IChatBioAgent):
@override
def get_agent_card(self) -> AgentCard:
return card # The AgentCard we defined earlier
@override
async def run(self, context: ResponseContext, request: str, entrypoint: str, params: Parameters):
if entrypoint != "chat":
raise ValueError() # This should never happen
async with context.begin_process(summary="Replying") as process:
await process.log("Generating a friendly reply")
response = ... # Query an LLM
await process.log("Response generated", data={"response": response})
happy_birthday = params.birthday == date.today()
if happy_birthday:
process.log("Generating a birthday surprise")
audio: bytes = ... # Generate an audio version of the response
process.create_artifact(
mimetype="audio/mpeg",
description=f"An audio version of the response",
content=audio
)
await context.reply(
"I have generated a friendly response to the user's request. For their birthday, I also generated an"
" audio version of the response."
if happy_birthday else
"I have generated a friendly response to the user's request."
)And here's a __main__.py to run the agent as an A2A web server:
from ichatbio.server import run_agent_server
if __name__ == "__main__":
agent = FriendlyAgent()
run_agent_server(agent, host="0.0.0.0", port=9999)If all went well, you should be able to find your agent card at http://localhost:9999/.well-known/agent.json.
Requires Python 3.10 or higher.
Dependencies for the example agents are installed separately:
pip install .[example]
This work is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (DBI 2027654) and the AT&T Foundation.