noos-langchain

LangChain + LangGraph callback adapter for Noos — the pre-delivery reliability regulator for LLM agents.

Drop NoosCallbackHandler into any agent built on langchain-core and get tool-loop halts, cost circuit breaks, scope-drift warnings, and procedural correction memory from the agent's existing event stream. No instrumentation inside your chains.

Overhead: one on_event dispatch is 20–250 ns; a decide() check is ~2 µs. Source: Noos criterion benchmarks, Session 33. An LLM call at 200 tokens/sec runs ~500 ms per turn — the regulator sits six orders of magnitude below that floor.

Install

pip install noos noos-langchain

Requires Python ≥3.9, noos>=0.1.0, langchain-core>=0.3.0. Works with LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, and anything else using the langchain-core callback interface.

Quick start — LangChain

from noos import Regulator
from noos_langchain import NoosCallbackHandler, CircuitBreakError
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
from langchain.agents import AgentExecutor, create_openai_tools_agent
from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate

# 1. Construct a regulator per user (or per session). Persist across
#    processes via export_json / from_json.
regulator = Regulator.for_user("alice").with_cost_cap(10_000)

# 2. Wire the handler via the standard callbacks list.
handler = NoosCallbackHandler(
    regulator,
    raise_on_circuit_break=True,   # abort agent on halt decisions
)

agent = create_openai_tools_agent(
    ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini"),
    tools=[...],
    prompt=ChatPromptTemplate.from_messages([...]),
)
executor = AgentExecutor(agent=agent, tools=[...], callbacks=[handler])

try:
    result = executor.invoke({"input": "Find order #42 and email the summary."})
except CircuitBreakError as e:
    print(f"Agent halted: {e.decision.reason.kind}")
    print(f"Suggestion: {e.decision.suggestion}")

# 3. Inspect the last decision at any time.
if handler.last_decision and handler.last_decision.is_scope_drift():
    print(f"Scope drift score: {handler.last_decision.drift_score:.2f}")

Quick start — LangGraph

LangGraph uses the same langchain-core callback plumbing, so the handler works unchanged:

from langgraph.prebuilt import create_react_agent
from langchain_core.messages import HumanMessage
from noos import Regulator
from noos_langchain import NoosCallbackHandler

agent = create_react_agent(llm, tools=[...])

handler = NoosCallbackHandler(
    Regulator.for_user("alice").with_cost_cap(10_000),
    raise_on_circuit_break=True,
)

agent.invoke(
    {"messages": [HumanMessage(content="Find order 42")]},
    config={"callbacks": [handler]},
)

Full demo: examples/langgraph_agent.py.

Quick start — async

Use AsyncNoosCallbackHandler for ainvoke / astream / LangGraph async:

from noos_langchain import AsyncNoosCallbackHandler

handler = AsyncNoosCallbackHandler(regulator)
await agent_executor.ainvoke(
    {"input": "..."},
    config={"callbacks": [handler]},
)

What the handler observes

After each event that can change the regulator's decision, the handler calls regulator.decide() and stores the result on handler.last_decision. Applications choose how to consume:

1. Poll after invoke — read handler.last_decision when execution completes.
2. React mid-run — pass on_decision=callback to observe every decision transition.
3. Abort on halt — pass raise_on_circuit_break=True to raise CircuitBreakError the moment a circuit-break decision fires.

Migration patterns

From recursion_limit → tool-loop detection

LangChain / CrewAI / AutoGen's recursion_limit caps total step count regardless of what repeats. That missed the $47k LangChain incident where the agent called the same tool with the same arguments 400+ times.

# Before: crude step cap
executor = AgentExecutor(
    agent=agent, tools=tools,
    max_iterations=20,  # still lets the same tool fire 20×
)

# After: fires on the signature of the pathology
handler = NoosCallbackHandler(regulator, raise_on_circuit_break=True)
executor = AgentExecutor(agent=agent, tools=tools, callbacks=[handler])
# CircuitBreak(RepeatedToolCallLoop) fires after 5 consecutive calls
# to the same tool name, regardless of arguments.

From tenacity / manual retry → cost × quality compound halt

# Before: retry N times regardless of quality trend
@retry(stop=stop_after_attempt(5))
def call_with_retry(): ...

# After: halts when BOTH cost cap AND quality decline trip
regulator = Regulator.for_user(uid).with_cost_cap(5_000)
handler = NoosCallbackHandler(regulator, raise_on_circuit_break=True)
# CircuitBreak(CostCapReached) fires when cumulative tokens_out ≥ cap
# AND mean recent quality drops below a threshold.

Paired with Langfuse / Helicone observability

Noos decides pre-delivery; observability tools log post-delivery. Both fit:

from langfuse.callback import CallbackHandler as LangfuseHandler
from noos_langchain import NoosCallbackHandler

# Both in the callbacks list — Langfuse records traces,
# Noos emits halt/warn decisions before the response ships.
executor.invoke(
    {"input": "..."},
    config={"callbacks": [LangfuseHandler(), NoosCallbackHandler(regulator)]},
)

# Pipe Noos metrics into your existing stack:
for key, value in handler.regulator.metrics_snapshot().items():
    statsd_client.gauge(key, value)  # noos.confidence, noos.total_tokens_out, ...

Behavioural notes

• One root chain = one Noos turn. Nested chains (LLMChain inside AgentExecutor, sub-graph nodes in LangGraph) stay in the same turn; their costs sum; the final on_llm_end wins for scope-drift scoring.
• Costs are cumulative across all LLM calls within the turn. The cost cap (set via regulator.with_cost_cap(n)) trips when cumulative tokens_out crosses n AND recent quality is below threshold — see the Noos regulator guide.
• Tool-loop detection uses tool name only. Five consecutive calls to the same tool name (regardless of arguments) trigger CircuitBreak(RepeatedToolCallLoop). Threshold is fixed at 5 per the Rust crate's TOOL_LOOP_THRESHOLD constant.
• on_llm_error is a no-op. LangChain propagates the error; the regulator view stays consistent with the last turn_start. The next root on_chain_start opens a fresh turn cleanly.
• Token-per-token emission (emit_tokens=True) is off by default. LangChain doesn't surface per-token logprobs through callbacks, so the regulator uses its structural confidence fallback regardless. Enable only if you need pre-turn-complete decisions.
• Not thread-safe. A Regulator is single-threaded. Create one handler per agent run. For concurrent executions, wrap each call in its own handler + regulator, then merge state via export_json afterward.

Persistence across sessions

Procedural correction memory and learned strategies survive process restarts:

# End of session — persist the regulator's state.
snapshot = regulator.export_json()
redis.set(f"noos:{user_id}", snapshot)

# Next session — restore before constructing the handler.
saved = redis.get(f"noos:{user_id}")
regulator = Regulator.from_json(saved) if saved else Regulator.for_user(user_id)

Correction patterns require at least 3 user_correction events on the same topic cluster before they fire a ProceduralWarning. Implicit-correction detection (fast same-cluster retries without explicit UserCorrection) is available via regulator.with_implicit_correction_window_secs(30.0); see regulator-guide.md §6.5 for the gotchas.

Examples

• examples/basic_smoke.py — runs the handler against fabricated LangChain payloads. No LLM or API key required.
• examples/openai_tools_agent.py — full OpenAI tools agent with tool-loop halt protection. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY.
• examples/anthropic_tools_agent.py — same shape against Claude Haiku via langchain-anthropic. Requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.
• examples/langgraph_agent.py — LangGraph React agent with cost cap + tool-loop halt. Requires OPENAI_API_KEY.
• examples/crewai_agent.py — CrewAI agent via the LangChain LLM callback path — no separate noos-crewai package needed. Requires ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.

Related

• noos — the core regulator (Python bindings over the Rust crate).
• noos on crates.io — the Rust crate.
• Migration guide (crate) — LangChain recursion_limit / tenacity / Mem0 / Langfuse → Noos recipes.
• Regulator guide — event lifecycle, Decision recipes, P10 priority rules.

License

MIT.