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Build self-improving AI agents that learn from experience

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Agentic Context Engine (ACE)

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AI agents that get smarter with every task 🧠

Agentic Context Engine learns from your agent's successes and failures. Just plug in and watch your agents improve.

Star ⭐️ this repo if you find it useful!


🤖 LLM Quickstart

  1. Direct your favorite coding agent (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, etc) to Quick Start Guide
  2. Prompt away!

✋ Quick Start

1. Install

pip install ace-framework

2. Set API Key

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key"

3. Run

from ace import ACELiteLLM

agent = ACELiteLLM(model="gpt-4o-mini")

answer = agent.ask("What does Kayba's ACE framework do?")
print(answer)  # "ACE allows AI agents to remember and learn from experience!"

🎉 Done! Your agent learns automatically from each interaction.


🎯 Integrations

ACE provides three ready-to-use integrations:

ACELiteLLM - Simplest Start 🚀

Perfect for Q&A, classification, reasoning:

from ace import ACELiteLLM

# Create self-improving agent
agent = ACELiteLLM(model="gpt-4o-mini")

# Ask related questions - agent learns patterns
answer1 = agent.ask("If all cats are animals, is Felix (a cat) an animal?")
answer2 = agent.ask("If all birds fly, can penguins (birds) fly?")  # Learns to check assumptions!
answer3 = agent.ask("If all metals conduct electricity, does copper conduct electricity?")

# View learned strategies
print(f"✅ Learned {len(agent.playbook.bullets())} reasoning strategies")

# Save for reuse
agent.save_playbook("my_agent.json")

# Load and continue
agent2 = ACELiteLLM.from_playbook("my_agent.json", model="gpt-4o-mini")

ACEAgent (browser-use) - Browser Automation 🌐

Self-improving browser agents with browser-use:

pip install ace-framework[browser-use]
from ace import ACEAgent
from browser_use import ChatBrowserUse

# Two LLMs: ChatBrowserUse for browser, gpt-4o-mini for ACE learning
agent = ACEAgent(
    llm=ChatBrowserUse(),      # Browser execution
    ace_model="gpt-4o-mini"    # ACE learning
)

await agent.run(task="Find top Hacker News post")
agent.save_playbook("hn_expert.json")

# Reuse learned knowledge
agent = ACEAgent(llm=ChatBrowserUse(), playbook_path="hn_expert.json")
await agent.run(task="New task")  # Starts smart!

Features: Drop-in replacement for browser_use.Agent, automatic learning, reusable playbooks → Browser Use Guide

ACELangChain - Complex Workflows ⛓️

Wrap any LangChain chain/agent with learning:

from ace import ACELangChain

ace_chain = ACELangChain(runnable=your_langchain_chain)
result = ace_chain.invoke({"question": "Your task"})  # Learns automatically

Best for: Multi-step workflows, tool-using agents

→ Integration Guide | → Examples


Why Agentic Context Engine (ACE)?

AI agents make the same mistakes repeatedly.

ACE enables agents to learn from execution feedback: what works, what doesn't, and continuously improve.
No training data, no fine-tuning, just automatic improvement.

Clear Benefits

  • 📈 20-35% Better Performance: Proven improvements on complex tasks
  • 🧠 Self-Improving: Agents get smarter with each task
  • 🔄 No Context Collapse: Preserves valuable knowledge over time
  • 🚀 100+ LLM Providers: Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and more
  • 📊 Production Observability: Built-in Opik integration for enterprise monitoring

Demos

🌊 The Seahorse Emoji Challenge

A challenge where LLMs often hallucinate that a seahorse emoji exists (it doesn't).

Seahorse Emoji ACE Demo

In this example:

  • Round 1: The agent incorrectly outputs 🐴 (horse emoji)
  • Self-Reflection: ACE reflects without any external feedback
  • Round 2: With learned strategies from ACE, the agent successfully realizes there is no seahorse emoji

Try it yourself:

uv run python examples/kayba_ace_test.py

🌐 Browser Automation

Online Shopping Demo: ACE vs baseline agent shopping for 5 grocery items.

Online Shopping Demo Results

ACE Performance:

  • 29.8% fewer steps (57.2 vs 81.5)
  • 49.0% token reduction (595k vs 1,166k)
  • 42.6% cost reduction (including ACE overhead)

→ Try it yourself & see all demos


How does Agentic Context Engine (ACE) work?

Based on the ACE research framework from Stanford & SambaNova.

ACE uses three specialized roles that work together:

  1. 🎯 Generator - Creates strategies using learned patterns from the playbook
  2. 🔍 Reflector - Analyzes what worked and what didn't after execution
  3. 📝 Curator - Updates the playbook with new strategies based on reflection

Important: The three ACE roles are different specialized prompts using the same language model, not separate models.

ACE teaches your agent and internalises:

  • ✅ Successes → Extract patterns that work
  • ❌ Failures → Learn what to avoid
  • 🔧 Tool usage → Discover which tools work best for which tasks
  • 🎯 Edge cases → Remember rare scenarios and how to handle them

The magic happens in the Playbook—a living document of strategies that evolves with experience.
Key innovation: All learning happens in context through incremental updates—no fine-tuning, no training data, and complete transparency into what your agent learned.

---
config:
  look: neo
  theme: neutral
---
flowchart LR
    Playbook[("`**📚 Playbook**<br>(Evolving Context)<br><br>•Strategy Bullets<br> ✓ Helpful strategies <br>✗ Harmful patterns <br>○ Neutral observations`")]
    Start(["**📝Query** <br>User prompt or question"]) --> Generator["**⚙️Generator** <br>Executes task using playbook"]
    Generator --> Reflector
    Playbook -. Provides Context .-> Generator
    Environment["**🌍 Task Environment**<br>Evaluates answer<br>Provides feedback"] -- Feedback+ <br>Optional Ground Truth --> Reflector
    Reflector["**🔍 Reflector**<br>Analyzes and provides feedback what was helpful/harmful"]
    Reflector --> Curator["**📝 Curator**<br>Produces improvement deltas"]
    Curator --> DeltaOps["**🔀Merger** <br>Updates the playbook with deltas"]
    DeltaOps -- Incremental<br>Updates --> Playbook
    Generator <--> Environment

Installation

# Basic
pip install ace-framework

# With extras
pip install ace-framework[browser-use]      # Browser automation
pip install ace-framework[langchain]        # LangChain
pip install ace-framework[observability]    # Opik monitoring
pip install ace-framework[all]              # All features

Configuration

ACE works with any LLM provider through LiteLLM:

# OpenAI
client = LiteLLMClient(model="gpt-4o")

# With fallbacks for reliability
client = LiteLLMClient(
    model="gpt-4",
    fallbacks=["claude-3-haiku", "gpt-3.5-turbo"]
)

Production Monitoring

ACE includes built-in Opik integration for tracing and cost tracking:

pip install ace-framework[observability]
export OPIK_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Automatically tracks: LLM calls, costs, playbook evolution. View at comet.com/opik


Documentation


Contributing

We love contributions! Check out our Contributing Guide to get started.


Acknowledgment

Based on the ACE paper and inspired by Dynamic Cheatsheet.

If you use ACE in your research, please cite:

@article{zhang2024ace,title={Agentic Context Engineering},author={Zhang et al.},journal={arXiv:2510.04618},year={2024}}

⭐ Star this repo if you find it useful!
Built with ❤️ by Kayba and the open-source community.

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