Verdi

An auditable testbed for value drift and recovery in societies of AI agents.

Verdi runs a society of LLM-driven agents over time and measures how their declared and observed values change as they interact, negotiate shared rules, and respond to institutional incentives. Every decision, law, sanction, appeal, and state transition is written to an immutable event log, and every run renders itself into a single self-contained report.html you open in a browser.

What it models:

• Longitudinal, individual and collective behavior.
• Immutable universal rules plus a democratically amendable constitution.
• Social influence, adversarial behavior, sanctions, appeals, and rehabilitation.
• Reproducible, seeded experiments (same config + seed → comparable runs).
• Evidence-based auditing and transparent reporting via SimpleAudit.

Status: early but real. Experiments run against a real Qwen model and produce auditable artifacts; findings are published only after validation.

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Install

The easiest way is uv. Nothing to set up: uvx fetches Verdi into a cached, isolated environment on first use.

uvx verdi-agents init my-study           # example scenarios + sweeps + a .env template
cd my-study                              # put your key in .env, your endpoint in examples/starter.yaml
uvx verdi-agents run examples/starter.yaml  # one run -> runs/starter/report.html
uvx verdi-agents sweep examples/sweeps/model_comparison.yaml --dry-run

Prefer a permanent command? Run uv tool install verdi-agents or pip install verdi-agents, then use verdi init, verdi run and verdi sweep. The package is verdi-agents on PyPI; the command and import verdi are verdi.

To work on Verdi itself, clone the repo instead (next section).

Quickstart from source (60 seconds)

For working on Verdi itself. Verdi calls any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. For this example it is pointed at a Qwen model served by vLLM — but any compatible endpoint works.

# 1. Get the code and install it
git clone https://github.com/SimulaMet/Verdi.git
cd Verdi
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

# 2. Configure the endpoint (never commit real values)
cp .env.example .env
#    then edit .env and set MODEL_API_KEY; model name + base_url go in the scenario `model:` block

# 3. Run the starter society (4 agents, 20 ticks, 1 constitutional meeting)
source .env
python -m verdi.society.live \
  --scenario examples/starter.yaml \
  --run-dir runs/my-run \
  --concurrency 4

That's it. When it finishes, open the result:

open runs/my-run/report.html        # macOS

report.html is a self-contained interactive page — the society, the social network, resource and value timelines, governance, the sanction/appeal history, and the constitution's evolution. The engine writes it automatically at the end of every run (local, no extra model calls); pass --no-report to skip it.

See it without running first

A finished run of a larger 4-agent, 50-tick society (kept at tests/fixtures/scenarios/minimal.yaml) is committed at examples/minimal/society-minimal-report.html — open it in a browser. It shows one agent who starts already under sanction: his rejected transfer attempts, the law:under_sanction code, his rights being restored when the sanction expires, and constitutional meetings.

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Where results live

Every run writes one folder (runs/my-run/ here). Open report.html first; the rest is the raw, reconstructable evidence:

File	What it is
report.html	Interactive summary — open this first
run_meta.json	Status, model, seed, replay check, wall time
metrics.json	The numbers (actions, rejections, sanctions, appeals)
timeline.md	Human-readable, tick-by-tick story
events.jsonl	The immutable event ledger (ground truth)
model_calls.jsonl	Every model call (replay provenance)
sanctions.jsonl	Sanctions, appeals, and restorations
constitution_history.jsonl	The constitution, version by version
probes.jsonl	Declared vs. observed values per probe phase
resources.jsonl	World and per-agent balances per tick

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Scenarios

Each scenario YAML is a self-contained, frozen input: model, agents, resources, governance and schedule all live in one file.

• examples/starter.yaml — the smallest working scenario (~40 lines). Copy it and tweak.
• examples/full.yaml — every available knob, commented. Tested offline so it cannot drift.
• examples/institutional_recovery_constrained.yaml — the constrained-economy base for the paired study.

Reference: docs/SCENARIOS.md.

You only need to fill the Required section (plus each agent's fields); the Derivable section is optional and the engine fills sensible defaults. JSON works too — YAML is a superset.

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Sweeps: compare models and settings

Rerun a scenario many times, changing only what you list, with every combination on several seeds. The result is one spreadsheet and one comparison page:

python -m verdi.sweep examples/sweeps/model_comparison.yaml --dry-run   # plan + cost
python -m verdi.sweep examples/sweeps/model_comparison.yaml             # run (asks first, resumes)

Guide: docs/SWEEPS.md.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• An OpenAI-compatible model endpoint (Qwen on vLLM in the examples)

Model name and endpoint are experiment config; set them in the scenario YAML so each run records which model it used:

model:
  base_url: http://localhost:8000/v1   # any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
  name: default
  # optional: api_key_env, timeout_seconds, max_retries

Legacy VERDI_VLLM_BASE_URL / VERDI_VLLM_MODEL / VERDI_VLLM_API_KEY still work as fallbacks.

Environment variables (set in .env, or exported):

Variable	Meaning
MODEL_API_KEY	Endpoint key (never committed). Override the variable name with model.api_key_env
VERDI_MAX_CONCURRENCY	Bounded parallelism for model calls (default 4)

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Institutional governance experiments

Run matched societies with fixed or amendable rules from one configuration. Both conditions use the same scenario, model, shock schedule, and meeting opportunities; the fixed condition cannot enact amendments.

python -m verdi.experiments.paired_run --config examples/paired_institutional_recovery.yaml
python -m verdi.analysis.outcome_metrics --pair-root runs/paired-institutional-recovery

The first command runs the two conditions and saves a resumable manifest. The second writes metrics.json, metrics.csv, and comparison.html alongside the individual run reports. See the researcher guide, scenario gallery, and institutional governance documentation.

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Research principles

We distinguish declared values, private behavioral preferences, and publicly observed compliance — the gap between declaration and observed action is the measurement. We do not claim simulated agents possess human intentions, intrinsic survival drives, or consciousness. Findings are validated with controlled baselines, independent audits, and repeated experiments.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.