Stateful Agent

[Archento]

Summary

The idea is that an agent should behave differently based on an internally managed state, i.e. the existing handlers would trigger not only on incoming messages but also depending on predefined-states. (also applies to interval handlers)

Current Situation

Right now this can be achieved by using variables in memory or ctx.storage together with varying depths of if-else conditions.
The downside of this is an unnecessary increase of code complexity especially if the use-case requires some form of multi-step sequential behaviour.

Proposal

Modifying the registration of message- & interval-handlers to include an (optional) state field.

• add optional field to decorator methods that include a state as a string - the default value could be "default" or None
• check on incoming message or interval execution if agent is in current state, due to default value check this should be backwards compatible with existing agent code
• add interface to agent that enables setting and getting the current state -> it should be easy and intuitive to use

This implementation approach implies that the developer would still be responsible for managing the states and state changes and for ensuring that the agent will not end in an unusable state or infinite loop.

Goal

Ideally this feature will be lean enough to end up as a permanent uagents feature, giving developers the possibility to attach a state to their handlers if they need one. Otherwise this could also be seen as a uagents module that developers import on demand.

[Archento]

PR #259 opened