Usage Pattern

Getting Started

An agent is initialized from a set of Tools. Here's an example of instantiating a ReAct agent from a set of Tools.

from llama_index.core.tools import FunctionTool
from llama_index.llms.openai import OpenAI
from llama_index.core.agent import ReActAgent


# define sample Tool
def multiply(a: int, b: int) -> int:
    """Multiple two integers and returns the result integer"""
    return a * b


multiply_tool = FunctionTool.from_defaults(fn=multiply)

# initialize llm
llm = OpenAI(model="gpt-3.5-turbo-0613")

# initialize ReAct agent
agent = ReActAgent.from_tools([multiply_tool], llm=llm, verbose=True)

An agent supports both chat and query endpoints, inheriting from our ChatEngine and QueryEngine respectively.

Example usage:

agent.chat("What is 2123 * 215123")

To automatically pick the best agent depending on the LLM, you can use the from_llm method to generate an agent.

from llama_index.core.agent import AgentRunner

agent = AgentRunner.from_llm([multiply_tool], llm=llm, verbose=True)

Defining Tools

Query Engine Tools

It is easy to wrap query engines as tools for an agent as well. Simply do the following:

from llama_index.core.agent import ReActAgent
from llama_index.core.tools import QueryEngineTool

# NOTE: lyft_index and uber_index are both SimpleVectorIndex instances
lyft_engine = lyft_index.as_query_engine(similarity_top_k=3)
uber_engine = uber_index.as_query_engine(similarity_top_k=3)

query_engine_tools = [
    QueryEngineTool(
        query_engine=lyft_engine,
        metadata=ToolMetadata(
            name="lyft_10k",
            description="Provides information about Lyft financials for year 2021. "
            "Use a detailed plain text question as input to the tool.",
        ),
        return_direct=False,
    ),
    QueryEngineTool(
        query_engine=uber_engine,
        metadata=ToolMetadata(
            name="uber_10k",
            description="Provides information about Uber financials for year 2021. "
            "Use a detailed plain text question as input to the tool.",
        ),
        return_direct=False,
    ),
]

# initialize ReAct agent
agent = ReActAgent.from_tools(query_engine_tools, llm=llm, verbose=True)

Use other agents as Tools

A nifty feature of our agents is that since they inherit from BaseQueryEngine, you can easily define other agents as tools through our QueryEngineTool.

from llama_index.core.tools import QueryEngineTool

query_engine_tools = [
    QueryEngineTool(
        query_engine=sql_agent,
        metadata=ToolMetadata(
            name="sql_agent", description="Agent that can execute SQL queries."
        ),
    ),
    QueryEngineTool(
        query_engine=gmail_agent,
        metadata=ToolMetadata(
            name="gmail_agent",
            description="Tool that can send emails on Gmail.",
        ),
    ),
]

outer_agent = ReActAgent.from_tools(query_engine_tools, llm=llm, verbose=True)

Lower-Level API

The OpenAIAgent and ReActAgent are simple wrappers on top of an AgentRunner interacting with an AgentWorker.

All agents can be defined this manner. For example for the OpenAIAgent:

from llama_index.core.agent import AgentRunner
from llama_index.agent.openai import OpenAIAgentWorker

# construct OpenAIAgent from tools
openai_step_engine = OpenAIAgentWorker.from_tools(tools, llm=llm, verbose=True)
agent = AgentRunner(openai_step_engine)

This is also the preferred format for custom agents.

Check out the lower-level agent guide for more details.

Customizing your Agent

If you wish to customize your agent, you can choose to subclass the CustomSimpleAgentWorker, and plug it into an AgentRunner (see above).

from llama_index.core.agent import CustomSimpleAgentWorker


class MyAgentWorker(CustomSimpleAgentWorker):
    """Custom agent worker."""

    # define class here
    pass


# Wrap the worker into an AgentRunner
agent = MyAgentWorker(...).as_agent()

Check out our Custom Agent Notebook Guide for more details.

Advanced Concepts (for OpenAIAgent, in beta)

You can also use agents in more advanced settings. For instance, being able to retrieve tools from an index during query-time, and being able to perform query planning over an existing set of Tools.

These are largely implemented with our OpenAIAgent classes (which depend on the OpenAI Function API). Support for our more general ReActAgent is something we're actively investigating.

NOTE: these are largely still in beta. The abstractions may change and become more general over time.

Function Retrieval Agents

If the set of Tools is very large, you can create an ObjectIndex to index the tools, and then pass in an ObjectRetriever to the agent during query-time, to first dynamically retrieve the relevant tools before having the agent pick from the candidate tools.

We first build an ObjectIndex over an existing set of Tools.

# define an "object" index over these tools
from llama_index.core import VectorStoreIndex
from llama_index.core.objects import ObjectIndex

obj_index = ObjectIndex.from_objects(
    all_tools,
    index_cls=VectorStoreIndex,
)

We then define our OpenAIAgent:

from llama_index.agent.openai import OpenAIAgent

agent = OpenAIAgent.from_tools(
    tool_retriever=obj_index.as_retriever(similarity_top_k=2), verbose=True
)

You can find more details on the object index in the full guide.

Context Retrieval Agents

Our context-augmented OpenAI Agent will always perform retrieval before calling any tools.

This helps to provide additional context that can help the agent better pick Tools, versus just trying to make a decision without any context.

from llama_index.core import Document
from llama_index.agent.openai_legacy import ContextRetrieverOpenAIAgent


# toy index - stores a list of Abbreviations
texts = [
    "Abbreviation: X = Revenue",
    "Abbreviation: YZ = Risk Factors",
    "Abbreviation: Z = Costs",
]
docs = [Document(text=t) for t in texts]
context_index = VectorStoreIndex.from_documents(docs)

# add context agent
context_agent = ContextRetrieverOpenAIAgent.from_tools_and_retriever(
    query_engine_tools,
    context_index.as_retriever(similarity_top_k=1),
    verbose=True,
)
response = context_agent.chat("What is the YZ of March 2022?")

Query Planning

OpenAI Function Agents can be capable of advanced query planning. The trick is to provide the agent with a QueryPlanTool - if the agent calls the QueryPlanTool, it is forced to infer a full Pydantic schema representing a query plan over a set of subtools.

# define query plan tool
from llama_index.core.tools import QueryPlanTool
from llama_index.core import get_response_synthesizer

response_synthesizer = get_response_synthesizer(
    service_context=service_context
)
query_plan_tool = QueryPlanTool.from_defaults(
    query_engine_tools=[query_tool_sept, query_tool_june, query_tool_march],
    response_synthesizer=response_synthesizer,
)

# initialize agent
agent = OpenAIAgent.from_tools(
    [query_plan_tool],
    max_function_calls=10,
    llm=OpenAI(temperature=0, model="gpt-4-0613"),
    verbose=True,
)

# should output a query plan to call march, june, and september tools
response = agent.query(
    "Analyze Uber revenue growth in March, June, and September"
)