Framework · Orchestration Frameworks

AutoGen

Build scalable, event-driven multi-agent AI applications in which conversable agents exchange asynchronous messages, optionally execute code, and coordinate through group chats or actor-style pub/sub.

Description

AutoGen is Microsoft's open-source programming framework for agentic AI. It is layered: AutoGen Core is a low-level event-driven runtime that builds event-driven, distributed, scalable agent systems on the Actor model; AutoGen AgentChat is a higher-level conversational API on Core; AutoGen Studio is a low-code web UI. The v0.4 release (2025-01-10) was a from-the-ground-up rewrite introducing the actor / event-driven foundation; v0.2 (the original ConversableAgent / GroupChatManager design) is still maintained on the 0.2 branch.

Solution

Multi-agent conversational model. In AgentChat one or more AssistantAgents (LLM + tools) and an optional UserProxyAgent participate in a Team — RoundRobinGroupChat, SelectorGroupChat, Swarm, or MagenticOneGroupChat — that drives speaker turns until a termination condition fires. In Core, agents are independent actors that exchange asynchronous messages and can subscribe to topics for pub/sub routing. Tools are passed to AssistantAgent and executed in the same run() call; code via CodeExecutorAgent (typically Docker).

Primary use cases

  • multi-agent conversational systems with role-defined assistants
  • code-executing agents in Docker sandboxes
  • actor-style distributed agent systems with pub/sub
  • Magentic-One style orchestrated worker teams

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