agentsociety2 2.8.3

A modern, LLM-native agent simulation platform for social science research

AgentSociety 2

English · 中文

AgentSociety 2 is a modern, LLM-native agent simulation platform designed for social science research and experimentation.

Features

• LLM-Native Design: Built from the ground up for LLM-driven agents
• Flexible Environment System: Modular environment components with hot-pluggable tools
• Multiple Reasoning Patterns: CodeGen (default), ReAct, Plan-Execute, Two-Tier, and Search routers
• Scalable Execution: Agents are workspace-bound stateless records driven by Ray Tasks; env / LLM clients / trace / replay handles are passed behind a single ServiceProxy
• Developer-Friendly: Pythonic API with type hints and comprehensive documentation
• Experiment Replay: Catalog-driven JSONL replay with DuckDB-powered reads and distributed tracing
• MCP Support: Model Context Protocol integration for tool extensibility

Installation

pip install agentsociety2

Requirements

• Python >= 3.11
• An LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or any provider supported by LiteLLM)

Quick Start

Before running the examples, set the LLM environment variables described in Configuration. The package validates them when agentsociety2 is imported.

Create Your First Agent

import asyncio
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path
from agentsociety2.env import CodeGenRouter
from agentsociety2.contrib.env import SimpleSocialSpace
from agentsociety2.society import AgentSociety

async def main():
    # Declare agent metadata (id / profile / config); agents are NOT instantiated here.
    # AgentSociety batch-creates their workspaces during init().
    agent_specs = [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "profile": {
                "name": "Alice",
                "age": 28,
                "personality": "friendly and curious",
                "bio": "A software engineer who loves hiking and reading.",
            },
            "config": {},
        }
    ]
    names = [(s["id"], s["profile"]["name"]) for s in agent_specs]

    # Create environment module with agent info
    social_env = SimpleSocialSpace(agent_id_name_pairs=names)

    # Create environment router (in-process CodeGenRouter; production uses an EnvRouterProxy Ray actor)
    env_router = CodeGenRouter(env_modules=[social_env])

    # Create the society
    society = AgentSociety(
        agent_specs=agent_specs,
        agent_class_name="PersonAgent",
        env_router=env_router,
        start_t=datetime.now(),
        run_dir=Path("run"),
    )

    # Initialize (batch-creates agent workspaces, binds the environment)
    await society.init()

    # Query (read-only)
    response = await society.ask("What's your favorite activity?")
    print(f"Agent: {response}")

    # Close the society
    await society.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Create a Custom Environment Module

from agentsociety2.env import EnvBase, tool

class MyCustomEnvironment(EnvBase):
    """A custom environment module."""

    @tool(readonly=True, kind="observe")
    def get_weather(self, agent_id: int) -> str:
        """Get the current weather for an agent."""
        return "The weather is sunny and 25°C."

    @tool(readonly=False)
    def set_mood(self, agent_id: int, mood: str) -> str:
        """Change the mood of an agent."""
        return f"Agent {agent_id}'s mood is now {mood}."

# Use the custom module
from agentsociety2.env import CodeGenRouter

env_router = CodeGenRouter(env_modules=[MyCustomEnvironment()])

Run a Complete Experiment

import asyncio
from datetime import datetime
from pathlib import Path
from agentsociety2.env import CodeGenRouter
from agentsociety2.contrib.env import SimpleSocialSpace
from agentsociety2.society import AgentSociety

async def main():
    # Declare agent metadata
    agent_specs = [
        {"id": i, "profile": {"name": f"Player{i}", "personality": "friendly"}, "config": {}}
        for i in range(1, 4)
    ]
    names = [(s["id"], s["profile"]["name"]) for s in agent_specs]

    # Create environment router (replay is enabled by default -> run/replay/)
    env_router = CodeGenRouter(env_modules=[SimpleSocialSpace(agent_id_name_pairs=names)])

    # Create the society
    society = AgentSociety(
        agent_specs=agent_specs,
        agent_class_name="PersonAgent",
        env_router=env_router,
        start_t=datetime.now(),
        run_dir=Path("run"),
    )
    await society.init()

    # Query (read-only)
    answer = await society.ask("What are the names of all agents?")
    print(f"Answer: {answer}")

    # Intervene (read-write)
    result = await society.intervene("Set all agents' happiness to 0.8")
    print(f"Result: {result}")

    await society.close()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Core Concepts

Agents

Agents are autonomous entities that interact with environments through LLM-powered reasoning:

• AgentBase: Abstract base class for all agents
• PersonAgent: Skills-based agent — a lightweight orchestrator whose capabilities are provided by a pluggable skill pipeline
• Agents support two interaction modes:
  • ask(question, readonly=True): Query without side effects
  • intervene(instruction): Make changes to the environment

Agent Skills

PersonAgent follows a metadata-first, selected-only model. Skills are self-contained directories; the only built-in skill is daily-guidance (daily behavior / needs-decay guidance). The old observation / cognition / plan / memory skills have been removed — those capabilities are now expressed via custom skills + workspace state files + ask_env.

agent/skills/
└── daily-guidance/     # SKILL.md + scripts/daily_guidance.py (pre_step hook)

Each skill has:

• SKILL.md — YAML frontmatter (name, description, optional script / hooks) + behavior docs
• scripts/*.py — optional scripts. By default these run in-process via an entrypoint(argv, ctx) contract (millisecond, concurrency-safe), with dynamic-wrapper and subprocess fallbacks.

Skills follow metadata-first selection:

• the catalog exposes only name/description until activation
• execution is tool-loop driven (activate_skill / read_skill_file / execute_skill_script)
• pre_step / post_step lifecycle hooks are rendered into a dedicated <skill_hooks> block

Custom skills can be placed in <workspace>/custom/skills/ and hot-loaded at runtime.

Environment Modules

Environment modules encapsulate specific functionality through tools:

• EnvBase: Base class for creating custom modules
• @tool decorator: Register methods as discoverable tools
• Tool kinds:
  • observe: Single-parameter observation functions
  • statistics: No-parameter aggregation functions
  • Regular tools: Full read/write operations

Routers

Routers mediate agent-environment interactions using different reasoning patterns:

• ReActRouter: Reasoning + Acting loop
• PlanExecuteRouter: Plan-first, then execute
• CodeGenRouter: Code generation based tool use
• TwoTierReActRouter: Two-level reasoning hierarchy
• TwoTierPlanExecuteRouter: Two-level planning hierarchy

Storage

AgentSociety 2 currently has two persistence paths:

from agentsociety2.storage import ReplayReader, ReplayWriter
from pathlib import Path

writer = ReplayWriter(Path("run/replay"))
await writer.init()

# Replay schema sidecar: run/replay/_schema.json

# Environment modules can register and write their own replay tables.
from agentsociety2.storage import ColumnDef, TableSchema
schema = TableSchema(
    name="custom_metrics",
    columns=[
        ColumnDef("metric_id", "INTEGER", nullable=False),
        ColumnDef("value", "REAL"),
    ],
    primary_key=["metric_id"],
)
await writer.register_table(schema)

reader = ReplayReader(Path("run/replay"))
print(reader.load_dataset_catalog())
reader.close()

• ReplayWriter / ReplayReader: write sharded JSONL replay datasets plus _schema.json metadata, then read them through DuckDB-backed views.
• PersonAgent workspace: stores per-agent local files under run/agents/agent_xxxx/, such as config.json, AGENT.json, AGENT_MEMORY.md, state/*.json, and .runtime/logs/*.jsonl.
• Trace: the agentsociety2.trace module writes distributed tracing spans (sharded writer + background-thread actor) for profiling steps and LLM calls.

Legacy SQLite tables like agent_profile, agent_status, and agent_dialog are kept only for compatibility when reading old experiment databases; new runs write run/replay/ instead.

Configuration

Set your LLM API credentials via environment variables. The examples below use the OpenAI API endpoint and gpt-5.5; other LiteLLM-supported providers can be used by changing the base URL and model id.

Required Configuration

# Default LLM (required - used for most operations)
export AGENTSOCIETY_LLM_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export AGENTSOCIETY_LLM_API_BASE="https://api.openai.com/v1"
export AGENTSOCIETY_LLM_MODEL="gpt-5.5"

Optional Configuration

For specialized tasks, you can configure separate LLM instances:

# Code Generation LLM (for code-related tasks)
# Falls back to default LLM if not set
export AGENTSOCIETY_CODER_LLM_API_KEY="your-coder-api-key"
export AGENTSOCIETY_CODER_LLM_API_BASE="https://api.openai.com/v1"
export AGENTSOCIETY_CODER_LLM_MODEL="gpt-5.5"

# Nano LLM (for high-frequency, low-latency operations)
# Falls back to default LLM if not set
export AGENTSOCIETY_NANO_LLM_API_KEY="your-nano-api-key"
export AGENTSOCIETY_NANO_LLM_API_BASE="https://api.openai.com/v1"
export AGENTSOCIETY_NANO_LLM_MODEL="gpt-5.5"

# Embedding Model (for text embeddings and semantic search)
# Falls back to default LLM if not set
export AGENTSOCIETY_EMBEDDING_API_KEY="your-embedding-api-key"
export AGENTSOCIETY_EMBEDDING_API_BASE="https://api.openai.com/v1"
export AGENTSOCIETY_EMBEDDING_MODEL="text-embedding-3-large"
export AGENTSOCIETY_EMBEDDING_DIMS="1024"

# Data directory (optional, default: ./agentsociety_data)
export AGENTSOCIETY_HOME_DIR="/path/to/your/data"

Or use a .env file:

# From the repository root:
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your credentials before importing agentsociety2

Note AgentSociety 2 validates AGENTSOCIETY_LLM_API_KEY at import time. Make sure it is set before importing agentsociety2, or load .env early in your entrypoint.

Examples

The examples/ directory contains ready-to-run examples:

• basics/: Basic agent and environment usage
• games/: Classic game theory simulations
  • Prisoner's Dilemma
  • Public Goods Game
  • Trust Game
  • Volunteer's Dilemma
  • Commons Tragedy
• advanced/: Advanced usage patterns
  • Custom environment modules
  • Multi-router setups
  • Experiment replay and analysis

Documentation

• English Documentation
• 中文文档
• API Reference

Development

For development guidelines, see docs/development.rst.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Citation

If you use AgentSociety 2 in your research, please cite:

@software{agentsociety2,
  title = {AgentSociety 2: A Modern LLM-Native Agent Simulation Platform},
  author = {Zhang, Jun and others},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://github.com/tsinghua-fib-lab/agentsociety}
}

License

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE for details.

Acknowledgments

AgentSociety 2 builds upon excellent open-source projects:

• litellm - Unified LLM API
• FastAPI - Backend API framework
• Pydantic - Data validation

Contact

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions

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For the original AgentSociety (v1.x) focused on city simulation, see the agentsociety package.