Agent Class

Base abstraction for all Semantic Kernel agents.

An agent instance may participate in one or more conversations. A conversation may include one or more agents. In addition to identity and descriptive meta-data, an Agent must define its communication protocol, or AgentChannel.

Create a new model by parsing and validating input data from keyword arguments.

Raises [ValidationError][pydantic_core.ValidationError] if the input data cannot be validated to form a valid model.

self is explicitly positional-only to allow self as a field name.

Constructor

Agent(*, arguments: KernelArguments | None = None, description: str | None = None, id: str = None, instructions: str | None = None, kernel: Kernel = None, name: Annotated[str, _PydanticGeneralMetadata(pattern='^[0-9A-Za-z_-]+$')] = None, prompt_template: PromptTemplateBase | None = None)

Keyword-Only Parameters

Name	Description
arguments Required
description Required
id Required
instructions Required
kernel Required
name Required
prompt_template Required

Methods

create_channel	Create a channel.
format_instructions	Format the instructions.
get_channel_keys	Get the channel keys.
get_response	Get a response from the agent. This method returns the final result of the agent's execution as a single ChatMessageContent object. The caller is blocked until the final result is available. Note: For streaming responses, use the invoke_stream method, which returns intermediate steps and the final result as a stream of StreamingChatMessageContent objects. Streaming only the final result is not feasible because the timing of the final result's availability is unknown, and blocking the caller until then is undesirable in streaming scenarios.
invoke	Invoke the agent. This invocation method will return the intermediate steps and the final results of the agent's execution as a stream of ChatMessageContent objects to the caller. Note: A ChatMessageContent object contains an entire message.
invoke_stream	Invoke the agent as a stream. This invocation method will return the intermediate steps and final results of the agent's execution as a stream of StreamingChatMessageContent objects to the caller. Note: A StreamingChatMessageContent object contains a chunk of a message.

create_channel

Create a channel.

async create_channel() -> AgentChannel

Returns

Type	Description
	An instance of AgentChannel.

format_instructions

Format the instructions.

async format_instructions(kernel: Kernel, arguments: KernelArguments | None = None) -> str | None

Parameters

Name	Description
kernel Required	The kernel instance.
arguments Required	The kernel arguments. Default value: None

Returns

Type	Description
	The formatted instructions.

get_channel_keys

Get the channel keys.

get_channel_keys() -> Iterable[str]

Returns

Type	Description
	A list of channel keys.

get_response

Get a response from the agent.

This method returns the final result of the agent's execution as a single ChatMessageContent object. The caller is blocked until the final result is available.

Note: For streaming responses, use the invoke_stream method, which returns intermediate steps and the final result as a stream of StreamingChatMessageContent objects. Streaming only the final result is not feasible because the timing of the final result's availability is unknown, and blocking the caller until then is undesirable in streaming scenarios.

abstract async get_response(*args, **kwargs) -> ChatMessageContent

invoke

Invoke the agent.

This invocation method will return the intermediate steps and the final results of the agent's execution as a stream of ChatMessageContent objects to the caller.

Note: A ChatMessageContent object contains an entire message.

abstract invoke(*args, **kwargs) -> AsyncIterable[ChatMessageContent]

invoke_stream

Invoke the agent as a stream.

This invocation method will return the intermediate steps and final results of the agent's execution as a stream of StreamingChatMessageContent objects to the caller.

Note: A StreamingChatMessageContent object contains a chunk of a message.

abstract invoke_stream(*args, **kwargs) -> AsyncIterable[StreamingChatMessageContent]

Attributes

arguments

The arguments for the agent

arguments: KernelArguments | None

channel_type

The type of the agent channel

channel_type: ClassVar[type[AgentChannel] | None] = None

description

The description of the agent

description: str | None

id

The unique identifier of the agent If no id is provided, a new UUID will be generated.

id: str

instructions

The instructions for the agent (optional)

instructions: str | None

kernel

The kernel instance for the agent

kernel: Kernel

name

The name of the agent

name: str

prompt_template

The prompt template for the agent

prompt_template: PromptTemplateBase | None