COMMUNICATION AND PROTOCOLS BETWEEN AGENTS

LEARNING GOALS In this chapter, you will learn how agents communicate with each other. You will learn about message buses and graph edges, standards that let agents from different teams talk, how to avoid agents getting stuck waiting on each other, and what a meta-harness is. HOW AGENTS TALK: A MAIL ROOM VERSUS PHONE CALLS Suppose a company has ten employees, and any employee may need to talk to any other. If everyone phones everyone directly, each person needs to know all nine other phone numbers and be available when they call. The number of possible connections grows quickly as people are added. Now suppose instead the company has a mail room. Everyone drops messages in the mail room labeled with a topic or a recipient, and everyone checks the mail room for messages relevant to them. Nobody needs to know everyone else's details. New employees simply start using the mail room. This contrast sums up the two main ways to connect agents.