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Invocations protocol for Azure AI Hosted Agents

Project description

Azure AI Agent Server Invocations client library for Python

The azure-ai-agentserver-invocations package provides the invocation protocol endpoints for Azure AI Hosted Agent containers. It plugs into the azure-ai-agentserver-core host framework and supports two transports on the same host:

  • HTTP (invocations protocol) — POST /invocations, GET /invocations/{id}, POST /invocations/{id}/cancel, GET /invocations/docs/openapi.json.
  • WebSocket (invocations_ws protocol) — full-duplex streaming at /invocations_ws, registered with @app.ws_handler.

Getting started

Install the package

pip install azure-ai-agentserver-invocations

This automatically installs azure-ai-agentserver-core as a dependency.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.10 or later

Key concepts

InvocationAgentServerHost

InvocationAgentServerHost is an AgentServerHost subclass that adds invocation protocol endpoints. It provides decorator methods for registering handler functions:

  • @app.invoke_handlerRequired. Handles POST /invocations.
  • @app.get_invocation_handler — Optional. Handles GET /invocations/{id}.
  • @app.cancel_invocation_handler — Optional. Handles POST /invocations/{id}/cancel.
  • @app.ws_handler — Optional. Handles WebSocket connections at /invocations_ws.

Protocol endpoints

Method Route Required Description
POST /invocations Yes Execute the agent
GET /invocations/{invocation_id} No Retrieve invocation status or result
POST /invocations/{invocation_id}/cancel No Cancel a running invocation
GET /invocations/docs/openapi.json No Serve the agent's OpenAPI 3.x spec
WS /invocations_ws No Full-duplex WebSocket transport (invocations_ws protocol)

Request and response headers

The SDK automatically manages these headers on every invocation:

Header Direction Description
x-agent-invocation-id Request & Response Echoed if provided, otherwise a UUID is generated
x-agent-session-id Response (POST only) Resolved from agent_session_id query param, FOUNDRY_AGENT_SESSION_ID env var, or generated UUID

Session ID resolution

Session IDs group related invocations into a conversation. The SDK resolves the session ID in order:

  1. agent_session_id query parameter on POST /invocations
  2. FOUNDRY_AGENT_SESSION_ID environment variable
  3. Auto-generated UUID

The resolved session ID is available in handler functions via request.state.session_id.

Handler access to SDK state

Inside handler functions, the SDK sets these attributes on request.state:

  • request.state.invocation_id — The invocation ID (echoed or generated).
  • request.state.session_id — The resolved session ID (POST /invocations only).

Distributed tracing

When tracing is enabled on the AgentServerHost, invocation spans are automatically created with GenAI semantic conventions:

  • Span name: invoke_agent {FOUNDRY_AGENT_NAME}:{FOUNDRY_AGENT_VERSION}
  • Span attributes: gen_ai.system, gen_ai.operation.name, gen_ai.response.id, gen_ai.agent.id, gen_ai.agent.name, gen_ai.agent.version, microsoft.session.id
  • Error tags: azure.ai.agentserver.invocations.error.code, .error.message
  • Baggage keys: azure.ai.agentserver.invocation_id, .session_id

Examples

Simple synchronous agent

from azure.ai.agentserver.invocations import InvocationAgentServerHost
from starlette.requests import Request
from starlette.responses import JSONResponse, Response

app = InvocationAgentServerHost()


@app.invoke_handler
async def handle(request: Request) -> Response:
    data = await request.json()
    return JSONResponse({"greeting": f"Hello, {data['name']}!"})

app.run()

Long-running operations with polling

import asyncio
import json

from azure.ai.agentserver.invocations import InvocationAgentServerHost
from starlette.requests import Request
from starlette.responses import JSONResponse, Response

_tasks: dict[str, asyncio.Task] = {}
_results: dict[str, bytes] = {}

app = InvocationAgentServerHost()


@app.invoke_handler
async def handle(request: Request) -> Response:
    data = await request.json()
    invocation_id = request.state.invocation_id
    task = asyncio.create_task(do_work(invocation_id, data))
    _tasks[invocation_id] = task
    return JSONResponse({"invocation_id": invocation_id, "status": "running"})

@app.get_invocation_handler
async def get_invocation(request: Request) -> Response:
    invocation_id = request.state.invocation_id
    if invocation_id in _results:
        return Response(content=_results[invocation_id], media_type="application/json")
    return JSONResponse({"invocation_id": invocation_id, "status": "running"})

@app.cancel_invocation_handler
async def cancel_invocation(request: Request) -> Response:
    invocation_id = request.state.invocation_id
    if invocation_id in _tasks:
        _tasks[invocation_id].cancel()
        del _tasks[invocation_id]
        return JSONResponse({"invocation_id": invocation_id, "status": "cancelled"})
    return JSONResponse({"error": "not found"}, status_code=404)

Streaming (Server-Sent Events)

import json

from azure.ai.agentserver.invocations import InvocationAgentServerHost
from starlette.requests import Request
from starlette.responses import Response, StreamingResponse

app = InvocationAgentServerHost()


@app.invoke_handler
async def handle(request: Request) -> Response:
    async def generate():
        for word in ["Hello", " ", "world", "!"]:
            yield json.dumps({"delta": word}).encode() + b"\n"

    return StreamingResponse(generate(), media_type="text/event-stream")

Multi-turn conversation

Use the agent_session_id query parameter to group invocations into a conversation:

# First turn
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8088/invocations?agent_session_id=session-abc" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"message": "My name is Alice"}'

# Second turn (same session)
curl -X POST "http://localhost:8088/invocations?agent_session_id=session-abc" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"message": "What is my name?"}'

The session ID is available in the handler via request.state.session_id.

Serving an OpenAPI spec

Pass an OpenAPI spec dict to enable the discovery endpoint at GET /invocations/docs/openapi.json:

app = InvocationAgentServerHost(openapi_spec={
    "openapi": "3.0.3",
    "info": {"title": "My Agent", "version": "1.0.0"},
    "paths": { ... },
})

WebSocket protocol (invocations_ws)

The same InvocationAgentServerHost object also exposes a WebSocket transport at /invocations_ws. Container authors do not install or import a second package — registering an @app.ws_handler is the only step. A multi-protocol agent shares one host, one session, and one process.

Quick start

from azure.ai.agentserver.invocations import InvocationAgentServerHost
from starlette.requests import Request
from starlette.responses import JSONResponse, Response
from starlette.websockets import WebSocket

app = InvocationAgentServerHost()


@app.invoke_handler                 # POST /invocations (HTTP)
async def invoke(request: Request) -> Response:
    payload = await request.json()
    return JSONResponse({"echo": payload})


@app.ws_handler                     # /invocations_ws (WebSocket)
async def ws(websocket: WebSocket) -> None:
    async for message in websocket.iter_text():
        await websocket.send_text(message)


app.run()

What the SDK does for @app.ws_handler

  • Registers /invocations_ws on the same Starlette host as /invocations and /readiness.
  • Calls await websocket.accept() before invoking your handler.
  • Runs WebSocket Ping/Pong keep-alive in the background — disabled by default; enable by setting the WS_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL environment variable (auto-injected by AgentService into hosted-agent containers). Set the value to 0 to disable. Frames are sent at the WebSocket protocol layer (RFC 6455 opcode 0x9/0xA) by the underlying Hypercorn server, which keeps the connection alive across upstream proxy / load-balancer idle timeouts without any extra application traffic.
  • Closes the connection cleanly on handler return (close code 1000) or maps an uncaught handler exception to close code 1011.
  • Emits a structured close-event log line carrying azure.ai.agentserver.invocations_ws.session_id, azure.ai.agentserver.invocations_ws.close_code, and azure.ai.agentserver.invocations_ws.duration_ms. The same fields are recorded as OpenTelemetry span attributes so the connection lifetime is visible end-to-end.
  • Inherits /readiness, OpenTelemetry export, graceful shutdown, and the x-platform-server identity header from azure-ai-agentserver-core.

Per-connection tracing

A WebSocket connection is wrapped by the SDK in a single connection-scoped websocket_session OpenTelemetry span. The span carries the GenAI semantic-convention attributes plus azure.ai.agentserver.invocations_ws.session_id, close_code, and duration_ms. Any child spans your handler opens — e.g. via opentelemetry.trace.get_tracer(...).start_as_current_span(...) — are automatically parented to the connection span.

Handler signature

The handler receives a Starlette WebSocket and returns None. The full WebSocket API — iter_text, iter_bytes, iter_json, send_text, send_bytes, send_json, close, headers, query_params, client, state — is available, so application protocols on top of invocations_ws are entirely under your control.

Reference: configuration

Environment variable Default Description
WS_KEEPALIVE_INTERVAL unset (disabled) Platform-injected WebSocket Ping interval, in seconds. 0 disables keep-alive. Surfaced on app.config.ws_ping_interval and wired into Hypercorn's websocket_ping_interval by AgentServerHost.

Reference: close codes

Close code Meaning
1000 Handler returned cleanly (normal close).
1011 Handler raised an unhandled exception (mapped by the SDK).
4000-4999 Application-defined codes (set by the handler via await websocket.close(code=...) — surfaced unchanged to the client).

Troubleshooting

Reporting issues

To report an issue with the client library, or request additional features, please open a GitHub issue here.

Next steps

Visit the Samples folder for complete working examples:

Sample Description
simple_invoke_agent Minimal synchronous request-response
async_invoke_agent Long-running operations with polling and cancellation
ws_invoke_agent Combined POST /invocations (HTTP) and /invocations_ws (WebSocket) host
ws_bidirectional_streaming_agent Full-duplex /invocations_ws agent: concurrent token streams + mid-flight cancel (relies on the SDK's WS protocol Ping/Pong keep-alive, not application-level heartbeats)

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information, see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

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