NetworkKit

A lightweight communication framework for distributed agents. Pub/sub messaging (ZeroMQ), HTTP ingress (FastAPI), built-in scheduling, and a single CLI to manage it all.

NetworkKit is the connective tissue for multi-agent systems. Agents don't need to know about each other — they just publish and subscribe to a shared bus. Chat bots, automation workflows, AI agents, hardware sensors — they all speak the same protocol. No broker setup, no YAML sprawl, no infrastructure overhead. One netkit start and you have a running message bus with scheduled tasks that everything can talk to.

Features

• Message bus: ZeroMQ pub/sub + HTTP POST ingress
• Scheduler: interval and cron-based message scheduling (UTC)
• Auth: optional token-based access control
• Config: TOML config file with env var overrides
• CLI: netkit for daemon and schedule management
• Persistence: schedules survive restarts

Install

pip install networkkit

Quick Start

# Start the databus
netkit start

# Check status
netkit status

# Send a message
netkit send "hello" --to agent1 --type CHAT

# Add a scheduled message (every 5 minutes)
netkit schedule add --name heartbeat --to agent1 --type CHAT --interval 5m --content "ping"

# Add a cron job (daily at 09:00 UTC)
netkit schedule add --name daily-check --to agent1 --type CHAT --cron "0 9 * * *" --content "daily review"

# List schedules
netkit schedule list

# Trigger a schedule now
netkit schedule run heartbeat

# Remove a schedule
netkit schedule remove heartbeat

# View logs
netkit log -n 50

# Stop
netkit stop

Configuration

Config file is searched in order:

1. $NETWORKKIT_CONFIG env var
2. ./networkkit.toml
3. ~/.config/networkkit/networkkit.toml

[server]
host = "0.0.0.0"
port = 8000
zmq_port = 5555
# auth_token = "your-secret-token"
data_dir = "~/.local/share/networkkit"
log_level = "INFO"

All settings can be overridden with env vars: NETWORKKIT_HOST, NETWORKKIT_PORT, NETWORKKIT_ZMQ_PORT, NETWORKKIT_AUTH_TOKEN, NETWORKKIT_DATA_DIR, NETWORKKIT_LOG_LEVEL.

Message Types

API Endpoints

All endpoints accept an optional X-NetworkKit-Token header when auth is enabled.

Message format

{
  "source": "agent1",
  "to": "agent2",
  "content": "hello",
  "message_type": "CHAT"
}

Schedule format

{
  "name": "heartbeat",
  "to": "agent1",
  "message_type": "CHAT",
  "content": "ping",
  "interval": "5m",
  "enabled": true
}

Interval supports: 30s, 5m, 1h, 1d or raw seconds. Cron uses standard 5-field UTC expressions (minute hour day month weekday, 0=Sunday).

Python API

from networkkit.messages import Message, MessageType
from networkkit.network import HTTPMessageSender, ZMQMessageReceiver

# Send a message
sender = HTTPMessageSender(publish_address="http://127.0.0.1:8000")
await sender.send_message(Message(
    source="agent1", to="agent2",
    content="hello", message_type=MessageType.CHAT,
))

# Subscribe to messages
class MySubscriber:
    name = "agent2"
    def is_intended_for_me(self, message): return message.to in (self.name, "ALL")
    async def handle_message(self, message): print(message.content)

receiver = ZMQMessageReceiver(subscribe_address="tcp://127.0.0.1:5555")
receiver.register_subscriber(MySubscriber())
await receiver.start()

Runtime Files

• Config: ~/.config/networkkit/networkkit.toml
• Schedules: ~/.local/share/networkkit/schedules.json
• PID: ~/.local/share/networkkit/databus.pid
• Log: ~/.local/share/networkkit/databus.log

License

Apache-2.0