agentics 0.1.9

A minimal LLM agent library

Agentics

Minimalist Python library for LLM usage

Installation

pip install agentics

Why Agentics?

Compare:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI()
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}
    ]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

To this:

from agentics import LLM

llm = LLM()
response: str = llm("Hello!")
print(response)

Quickstart

Simple Chat

from agentics import LLM

llm = LLM(system_prompt="You know everything about the world")

response: str = llm("What is the capital of France?")

print(response)
# The capital of France is Paris.

Structured Output

from agentics import LLM
from pydantic import BaseModel

class ExtractUser(BaseModel):
    name: str
    age: int

llm = LLM()

res = llm.chat("John Doe is 30 years old.", response_format=ExtractUser)

assert res.name == "John Doe"
assert res.age == 30

Tool Usage

from agentics import LLM
import requests

def visit_url(url: str):
    """Fetch the content of a URL"""
    return requests.get(url).content.decode()

llm = LLM()

res = llm.chat("What's the top story on Hacker News?", tools=[visit_url])

print(res)
# The top story on Hacker News is: "Operating System in 1,000 Lines – Intro"

Tool Usage with Structured Output

from agentics import LLM
from pydantic import BaseModel
import requests

class HackerNewsStory(BaseModel):
    title: str
    points: int

def visit_url(url: str):
    """Fetch the content of a URL"""
    return requests.get(url).content.decode()

llm = LLM()

res = llm.chat(
    "What's the top story on Hacker News?", 
    tools=[visit_url], 
    response_format=HackerNewsStory
)

print(res)
# title='Operating System in 1,000 Lines – Intro' points=29

Multiple Tools with Structured Output

from agentics import LLM
from pydantic import BaseModel

def calculate_area(width: float, height: float):
    """Calculate the area of a rectangle"""
    return width * height

def calculate_volume(area: float, depth: float):
    """Calculate volume from area and depth"""
    return area * depth

class BoxDimensions(BaseModel):
    width: float
    height: float
    depth: float
    area: float
    volume: float

llm = LLM()

res = llm.chat(
    "Calculate the area and volume of a box that is 5.5 meters wide, 3.2 meters high and 2.1 meters deep", 
    tools=[calculate_area, calculate_volume],
    response_format=BoxDimensions
)

print(res)
# width=5.5 height=3.2 depth=2.1 area=17.6 volume=36.96

Text Embeddings and Similarity Search

The Embedding class provides a simple interface for generating text embeddings and performing similarity searches:

from agentics import Embedding

# Create an embedding instance
embedding = Embedding()

# Get embedding for a single string
vector = embedding("Hello, how are you?")

# Get embeddings for multiple strings at once
vectors = embedding([
    "Good morning, how's it going?",
    "Today is a great day",
    "I'm feeling sad",
    "Greetings"
])

# Compare two texts using cosine similarity
similarity = embedding.cosine_similarity(
    embedding("Hello!"),
    embedding("Hi there!")
)

# Rank texts by similarity (returns IDs by default)
reference = embedding("Hello, how are you?")
candidates = embedding([
    "Good morning, how's it going?",
    "Today is a great day",
    "I'm feeling sad",
    "Greetings"
])

# Get ranked results with similarity scores
ranked_results = embedding.rank(reference, candidates)
for idx, score in ranked_results:
    print(f"Text ID: {idx} Similarity Score: {score}")

# Rank texts by similarity but return actual vectors instead of IDs
ranked_results_vectors = embedding.rank(reference, candidates, return_vectors=True)
for vector, score in ranked_results_vectors:
    print(f"Vector: {vector[:5]}... Similarity Score: {score}")  # Show first 5 values for readability

The Embedding class features:

• Simple interface for generating embeddings from text
• Support for both single strings and lists of strings
• Built-in cosine similarity computation
• Efficient similarity ranking for multiple vectors
• Option to return either vector IDs (default) or actual vectors
• Uses OpenAI’s text embedding models (defaults to "text-embedding-3-small")

API Reference

LLM

The main interface for interacting with language models through chat completions. Provides a flexible and minimal API for handling conversations, function calling, and structured outputs.

Constructor Parameters

• system_prompt (str, optional): Initial system prompt to set context. Example:

  llm = LLM(system_prompt="You are a helpful assistant")
  

• model (str, optional): The model identifier to use (default: "gpt-4o-mini")

• client (OpenAI, optional): Custom OpenAI client instance. Useful for alternative providers:

  client = OpenAI(api_key=os.getenv("DEEPSEEK_API_KEY"), base_url="https://api.deepseek.com")
  llm = LLM(client=client, model="deepseek-chat")
  

• messages (list[dict], optional): Pre-populate conversation history:

  llm = LLM(messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Initial message"}])
  

Chat Method

Both llm.chat() and llm() provide identical functionality as the main interface for interactions.

Parameters

• prompt (str, optional): The input prompt to send to the model. If provided, appended to conversation history.
• tools (list[dict], optional): List of available function tools the model can use. Each tool should be a callable with type hints.
• response_format (BaseModel, optional): Pydantic model to structure and validate the response.
• single_tool_call_request (bool, optional): When True, limits the model to one request to use tools (can still call multiple tools in that request).
• **kwargs: Additional arguments passed directly to the chat completion API.

Return Value

• Union[str, BaseModel]: Either a string response or structured data matching response_format

Behavior Flows

1. Basic Chat (no tools/response_format):

   • Simple text completion
   • Returns string response

2. With Tools:

   • Model can choose to use available tools or respond directly
   • When tools are used, multiple tools can be called in a single request
   • Tools are called automatically and results fed back
   • Process repeats if model decides to use tools again
   • Use single_tool_call_request=True to limit the model to one request to use tools (can still call multiple tools in that request).

3. With Response Format:

   • Response is cast to specified Pydantic model
   • Returns structured data

4. Combined Tools + Response Format:

   • Follows tool flow first
   • Final text response is cast to model

The conversation history is accessible via the .messages attribute, making it easy to inspect or manipulate the context.

Embedding

The interface for generating text embeddings and performing similarity operations. Provides a simple API for embedding generation and similarity ranking.

Constructor Parameters

• model (str, optional): The model identifier to use (default: "text-embedding-3-small")
• client (OpenAI, optional): Custom OpenAI client instance. If None, creates new instance.

Methods

embed() / call()

Both embedding.embed() and embedding() provide identical functionality for generating embeddings.

Parameters

• input (Union[str, List[str]]): Text input, either a single string or a list of strings.

Returns

• Union[List[float], List[List[float]]]:
  • For single string input: a list of floats (the embedding vector)
  • For list input: a list of embeddings (list of float lists)

cosine_similarity()

Compute cosine similarity between two embedding vectors.

Parameters

• a (List[float]): The first embedding vector
• b (List[float]): The second embedding vector

Returns

• float: The cosine similarity score between -1 and 1

rank()

Rank a list of vectors by similarity to a reference vector.

Parameters

• vector (List[float]): The reference embedding vector
• vectors (List[List[float]]): A list of embedding vectors to compare against
• return_vectors (bool, optional, default=False): If True, returns the actual vectors instead of their indices.

Returns

• List[Tuple[Union[int, List[float]], float]]: A list of tuples containing:
  • If return_vectors is False: The index of the vector in the input list
  • If return_vectors is True: The actual embedding vector
  • The cosine similarity score (higher is more similar) Sorted in descending order of similarity.

Inspiration

Agentics was born from a desire to simplify LLM interactions in Python. The existing landscape often requires verbose boilerplate:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI()
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}
    ]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

When my goal in mind was to be able to simply do llm("Hello!"), with that desired interface is how I started building Agentics, this:

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI()
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="gpt-4o-mini",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}
    ]
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

now turns into this:

from agentics import LLM

llm = LLM()
response = llm("Hello!")
print(response)

Agentics makes things simple while bringing these powerful features into the same library:

• Simple API: Talk to LLMs with just a few lines of code
• Structured Output: Like instructor, turns responses into Pydantic models
• Function Calling: Like Marvin's assistants but using direct message-based communication instead of the Assistants API

I built this to make working with OpenAI's LLMs easier. It handles structured outputs and function calling without any fuss. Right now it only works with OpenAI, but it makes common LLM tasks way simpler.