Full-Code · Orchestration Frameworksactive

JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework)

Type: full-code · Vendor: Telecom Italia Lab (TILAB) · Language: Java · License: LGPL-2.0-only · Status: active · Status in practice: mature · First released: 2000

Links: homepage docs

Provide a FIPA-compliant Java platform where agents communicate through typed ACL messages and standard interaction protocols such as Contract Net.

Description. JADE is a Java software framework for developing multi-agent applications in compliance with the FIPA specifications. Agents exchange messages encoded in the FIPA Agent Communication Language, where each message carries a performative such as REQUEST or INFORM. The framework ships behaviour classes implementing standard FIPA interaction protocols, including Contract Net. It was first released as open source in 2000 by Telecom Italia under the LGPL license.

Agent loop shape. Each agent runs its behaviours and communicates with peers by sending FIPA ACL messages typed by performative; the runtime handles message transport, encoding, and the agent life-cycle, and interaction-protocol behaviour classes drive multi-step exchanges such as a Contract Net negotiation.

Primary use cases

building FIPA-compliant multi-agent systems in Java
exchanging typed ACL messages between agents
running standard interaction protocols such as Contract Net

flowchart TD fw["JADE (Java Agent DEvelopment Framework)"] fw --> p1["Contract Net Protocol (core)"] fw --> p2["Performative Message (core)"] fw --> p3["Tool/Agent Registry (core)"] fw --> p4["Inter-Agent Communication (core)"] fw --> p5["Tool Discovery (supported)"] fw --> p6["Actor-Model Agents (supported)"]

Key concepts

ACLMessage → performative-message (docs) — The unit of inter-agent communication: a FIPA-ACL message with a performative (communicative act), sender, receivers, content, content language, and ontology.
Behaviour (docs) — A task an agent carries out; an agent schedules several behaviours cooperatively (non-preemptively) on its single thread, and interaction-protocol behaviours encode multi-step exchanges.
Directory Facilitator (DF) → tool-agent-registry (docs) — The platform's yellow-pages agent where providers register service types and clients search for providers; DFs can federate across platforms.
Agent Platform / container → inter-agent-communication (docs) — The distributed runtime: agents live in containers across one or more hosts, and JADE handles message transport, encoding, and the agent life-cycle between them.