v0.5.0: Incremental Development and Optimized Messaging Mechanism

Release Highlights

Overall

1. Multilingual Support (Experimental): Now supports both Chinese and English, and theoretically other languages.
2. Multiple Programming Languages Support (Experimental): Support for various programming languages is now available, allowing for the natural generation of JavaScript projects. However, it's noted that GPT-4-turbo has significantly stronger capabilities in Python, and there is considerable room for improvement with other programming languages.
3. Incremental Development (Experimental): It's now possible to incrementally raise requirements and bug fixes, allowing for further optimization of the generated repo.
4. CLI Support: You can now use metagpt "make a 2048 game" to let metagpt write software directly in the command line. More features can be unlocked with metagpt --help.
5. PIP Support: pip install metagpt is now available for installing and using metagpt, enabling direct access to the command-line version of metagpt.
6. Enhanced Code Review: The generated code now undergoes a more comprehensive code review, which significantly improves code quality.
7. File Management with Git: An independent documentation workspace with a complete git history is now used to record changes in historical code.
8. Optimized Messaging Mechanism: Privatized Role memory, providing an inter-Role messaging mechanism that supports broadcasting, group messaging, and private messaging.

Details

Category	Content
Action Optimization	Action Optimization: Atomic ActionNode design. Multiple roles now use ActionNode. SummarizeCode Action: Summarizing based on code. CodeReview Action Enhancement: Mandatory question answering for higher success. LGTM/LBTM responses; stops on LGTM without rewriting code. code_review_k_times parameter in settings, set to 2. Potential non-compliance, need for ActionNode structure long-term. WriteDesign: Removed project_name correction code; prompt format changed from ## to JSON.
Data Structures	Document Standardization: Git management in project folders, CONFIG.git_repo -> FileRepository for project code files handling; FileRepository with text file capabilities. FileRepository: Data lineage recording for rebuilding data. Repo Structure: For Document and metadata loading; FileRepository is live. RepoParser: Simple AST parser, symbol library for the entire repository. Role objects: Privatized memory. Message Function: Retained for event notification, weakened data transportation.
Configuration Optimization	Default to gpt-4-1106-preview. ~/.metagpt for highest priority config, reading config.yaml. METAGPT_PROJECT_ROOT for workspace path specification. project_name specification via command line, generated by ProductManager.
CLI Support	metagpt as default command line. New METAGPT_ROOT generation method for CLI installation. Switched to typer for command line. Flexible project_name specification. --project-path parameter for project specification.
Other	Support for multiple languages, Chinese tested. Naming change: BossRequirement -> UserRequirement. Error text corrections for readability. Prompt word optimization for accuracy. Blocked LongtermMemory logic due to loading time. Fixed description errors in installation package. Removed redundant base modification in config. Fixed JSON storage issues with Chinese, ensure_ascii=False.

What's Changed

Backwards Incompatible Changes

• Remove Role.recv and Role.handle. Corresponding logic is moved into Role._observe
• Role._publish_message -> Role.publish_message
• Team.start_project -> Team.run_project. Given we support incremental development, we use "run" to refer to project execution in general, as opposed to "starting" a project from scratch

We will explain incremental development and the new messaging mechanism on the documentation site, stay tuned!

Features

• IMPORTANT: Multilingual support (experimental), multiple programming languages support (experimental), incremental development (experimental), CLI support, pip support, enhanced code review, documentation mechanism, optimized messaging mechanism by @iorisa @geekan #552 . Check out the highlights above for details.

Bugfixes and improvements

• Add gpt-4-turbo and gpt-3-turbo-1106 in openai token count by @WannaTen #548
• Fix spelling errors in prompt by @0aaryan #554