Creating your first agent

Introduction

Once you've installed ↗️ the uAgents library, it's quite simple to get a minimal use case running.

The uAgents Framework streamlines agent creation by offering tools for communication, discovery, and publication within the Fetch.ai network. It empowers users and developers with flexibility, allowing them to build agents using anything from cutting-edge Large Language Models (LLMs) to simple APIs.

Let our first agent be a simple initialisation and printing out the agent's name and address.

The agent

1. Let's create a Python script for this task, and name it by running: touch agent.py

2. We then need to import the Agent and Context classes from the uagents library, and then create an agent using the class Agent:

   from uagents import Agent, Context
   agent = Agent(name="alice", seed="secret_seed_phrase")

   It is optional but useful to include a seed parameter when creating an agent to set fixed addresses ↗️. Otherwise, random addresses will be generated every time you run the agent. Your address is kind of important, as this is how other agents will identify you.

3. Let's define a say_hello() function for our agent to print a message periodically saying hello, my name is ...:

   @agent.on_event("startup")
   async def introduce_agent(ctx: Context):
       ctx.logger.info(f"Hello, I'm agent {agent.name} and my address is {agent.address}.")
    
   if __name__ == "__main__":
       agent.run()

   The .on_event("startup") decorator defines a behavior for this agent when it is run. In this case, the agent will execute the say_hello() function when the agent starts. The Context object is a collection of data and functions related to the agent. In this case, we just use the agent's name, alice. The agent executes the function and uses the ctx.logger.info() method to print the message.

4. Save the script.

The overall script should look as follows:

from uagents import Agent, Context
 
agent = Agent(name="alice", seed="secret_seed_phrase")
 
@agent.on_event("startup")
async def introduce_agent(ctx: Context):
    ctx.logger.info(f"Hello, I'm agent {agent.name} and my address is {agent.address}.")
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    agent.run()

Run your agent

Make sure to have activated your virtual environment correctly.

Run the script: python agent.py

The output would be:

[alice]: Hello, I'm agent alice and my address is <agent_address>

Congratulations, you have just created your first Agent!