Feature: Get Nested Agents in a GroupChat

[WaelKarkoub]

Why are these changes needed?

Adds the capability to get all the agents in a given a GroupChatManager. Improves quality of life for the following use case:

--- file_a

def some_team():
    member1 = AssistantAgent(...)
    member2 = UserProxyAgent(...)

    gc = GroupChat(agents=[member1, member2], ...)
    return GroupChatManager(groupchat=gc, ...)

--- file_b

import file_a

team1 = file_a.some_team()

# I need access to the agents in team1
agents = team1.all_agents()

Example use case.

Related issue number

Closes #1632

Checks

• I've included any doc changes needed for https://microsoft.github.io/autogen/. See https://microsoft.github.io/autogen/docs/Contribute#documentation to build and test documentation locally.
• I've added tests (if relevant) corresponding to the changes introduced in this PR.
• I've made sure all auto checks have passed.

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

Attention: 2 lines in your changes are missing coverage. Please review.

Comparison is base (b270a2e) 39.41% compared to head (c8028ee) 50.93%.

Files	Patch %	Lines
autogen/agentchat/groupchat.py	88.88%	2 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #1636       +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage   39.41%   50.93%   +11.51%     
===========================================
  Files          56       57        +1     
  Lines        5990     6006       +16     
  Branches     1334     1456      +122     
===========================================
+ Hits         2361     3059      +698     
+ Misses       3436     2702      -734     
- Partials      193      245       +52     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	50.84% <90.90%> (+11.43%)	⬆️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

[WaelKarkoub]

@WaelKarkoub please read the following Contributor License Agreement(CLA). If you agree with the CLA, please reply with the following information.

@microsoft-github-policy-service agree [company="{your company}"]

Options:

• (default - no company specified) I have sole ownership of intellectual property rights to my Submissions and I am not making Submissions in the course of work for my employer.

@microsoft-github-policy-service agree

• (when company given) I am making Submissions in the course of work for my employer (or my employer has intellectual property rights in my Submissions by contract or applicable law). I have permission from my employer to make Submissions and enter into this Agreement on behalf of my employer. By signing below, the defined term “You” includes me and my employer.

@microsoft-github-policy-service agree company="Microsoft"

Contributor License Agreement

Contribution License Agreement

This Contribution License Agreement (“Agreement”) is agreed to by the party signing below (“You”), and conveys certain license rights to Microsoft Corporation and its affiliates (“Microsoft”) for Your contributions to Microsoft open source projects. This Agreement is effective as of the latest signature date below.

1. Definitions.
   “Code” means the computer software code, whether in human-readable or machine-executable form,
   that is delivered by You to Microsoft under this Agreement.
   “Project” means any of the projects owned or managed by Microsoft and offered under a license
   approved by the Open Source Initiative (www.opensource.org).
   “Submit” is the act of uploading, submitting, transmitting, or distributing code or other content to any
   Project, including but not limited to communication on electronic mailing lists, source code control
   systems, and issue tracking systems that are managed by, or on behalf of, the Project for the purpose of
   discussing and improving that Project, but excluding communication that is conspicuously marked or
   otherwise designated in writing by You as “Not a Submission.”
   “Submission” means the Code and any other copyrightable material Submitted by You, including any
   associated comments and documentation.
2. Your Submission. You must agree to the terms of this Agreement before making a Submission to any
   Project. This Agreement covers any and all Submissions that You, now or in the future (except as
   described in Section 4 below), Submit to any Project.
3. Originality of Work. You represent that each of Your Submissions is entirely Your original work.
   Should You wish to Submit materials that are not Your original work, You may Submit them separately
   to the Project if You (a) retain all copyright and license information that was in the materials as You
   received them, (b) in the description accompanying Your Submission, include the phrase “Submission
   containing materials of a third party:” followed by the names of the third party and any licenses or other
   restrictions of which You are aware, and (c) follow any other instructions in the Project’s written
   guidelines concerning Submissions.
4. Your Employer. References to “employer” in this Agreement include Your employer or anyone else
   for whom You are acting in making Your Submission, e.g. as a contractor, vendor, or agent. If Your
   Submission is made in the course of Your work for an employer or Your employer has intellectual
   property rights in Your Submission by contract or applicable law, You must secure permission from Your
   employer to make the Submission before signing this Agreement. In that case, the term “You” in this
   Agreement will refer to You and the employer collectively. If You change employers in the future and
   desire to Submit additional Submissions for the new employer, then You agree to sign a new Agreement
   and secure permission from the new employer before Submitting those Submissions.
5. Licenses.

• Copyright License. You grant Microsoft, and those who receive the Submission directly or
  indirectly from Microsoft, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license in the
  Submission to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, and distribute
  the Submission and such derivative works, and to sublicense any or all of the foregoing rights to third
  parties.
• Patent License. You grant Microsoft, and those who receive the Submission directly or
  indirectly from Microsoft, a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable license under
  Your patent claims that are necessarily infringed by the Submission or the combination of the
  Submission with the Project to which it was Submitted to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell and
  import or otherwise dispose of the Submission alone or with the Project.
• Other Rights Reserved. Each party reserves all rights not expressly granted in this Agreement.
  No additional licenses or rights whatsoever (including, without limitation, any implied licenses) are
  granted by implication, exhaustion, estoppel or otherwise.

6. Representations and Warranties. You represent that You are legally entitled to grant the above
   licenses. You represent that each of Your Submissions is entirely Your original work (except as You may
   have disclosed under Section 3). You represent that You have secured permission from Your employer to
   make the Submission in cases where Your Submission is made in the course of Your work for Your
   employer or Your employer has intellectual property rights in Your Submission by contract or applicable
   law. If You are signing this Agreement on behalf of Your employer, You represent and warrant that You
   have the necessary authority to bind the listed employer to the obligations contained in this Agreement.
   You are not expected to provide support for Your Submission, unless You choose to do so. UNLESS
   REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING, AND EXCEPT FOR THE WARRANTIES
   EXPRESSLY STATED IN SECTIONS 3, 4, AND 6, THE SUBMISSION PROVIDED UNDER THIS AGREEMENT IS
   PROVIDED WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY WARRANTY OF
   NONINFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
7. Notice to Microsoft. You agree to notify Microsoft in writing of any facts or circumstances of which
   You later become aware that would make Your representations in this Agreement inaccurate in any
   respect.
8. Information about Submissions. You agree that contributions to Projects and information about
   contributions may be maintained indefinitely and disclosed publicly, including Your name and other
   information that You submit with Your Submission.
9. Governing Law/Jurisdiction. This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Washington, and
   the parties consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in the federal courts sitting in King County,
   Washington, unless no federal subject matter jurisdiction exists, in which case the parties consent to
   exclusive jurisdiction and venue in the Superior Court of King County, Washington. The parties waive all
   defenses of lack of personal jurisdiction and forum non-conveniens.
10. Entire Agreement/Assignment. This Agreement is the entire agreement between the parties, and
    supersedes any and all prior agreements, understandings or communications, written or oral, between
    the parties relating to the subject matter hereof. This Agreement may be assigned by Microsoft.

@microsoft-github-policy-service agree

[WaelKarkoub]

@sonichi let me know what you think of this approach. One downside of this approach is it doesn't account for conflicting names.

I have two solutions in mind:

1. Just simply return all the agents in a single list.
2. Store the agents in a list for each key (Dict[str, List[Agent]])
3. Store the agents in a nested dictionary, where the key can be the group chat manager's name

I'm leaning towards 1, it's simpler to implement, and conflicting names can't happen

[sonichi]

I don't know the downstream use case, so I don't know if name conflict is an issue. Presumably it is. One way to handle it is to add a bool "raise_on_name_conflict". The desired structure of it also depends on the downstream use case.

I recommend moving the public methods into GroupChat. We don't recommend adding public methods in Agents because it hinders composability.
cc @ekzhu

[ekzhu]

@WaelKarkoub Thanks for the PR! Could you share your usage scenario that requires this feature? I am curious why you need to access all agents from a specific team? What's the operation you are performing on these agents?

[Tylersuard]

I'm not sure if this is relevant to this discussion or @WaelKarkoub 's PR, but a paper came out saying that the more agents used for a task, the better the performance, as long as the result is voted on by the agents. Perhaps adding all agents to a group chat manager would allow the user to run more agents at once?

[WaelKarkoub]

Hi @ekzhu! My specific use case requires me to access the history between specific agents in nested teams. This is my current implementation:
-- team_factory.py

def team(name: str) -> GroupChatManager:
    member1 = autogen.AssistantAgent(name=f"member1_{name}", ...)
    member2 = autogen.AssistantAgent(name=f"member2_{name}", ...)
    gc = autogen.GroupChat(agents=[member_1, member_2], ...)   
    
    return autogen.GroupChatManager(groupchat=gc, ...)

def some_team() -> GroupChatManager:
    engineering = team("engineering")
    hr = team("hr")
    
    gc = autogen.GroupChat(agents=[engineering, hr], ...)    
    return autogen.GroupChatManager(groupchat=gc, ...)

-- some_chatbot.py

import team_factory

class SomeChatBot:
    def __init__(...):
         self._user = autogen.UserProxyAgen(...)
         self._some_team = team_factory.some_team()

        self._gc = autogen.GroupChat(...)
        self._manager = autogen.GroupChatManager(name="some_chatbot", groupchat=self._gc, ...)
        ...

    ...

    def _last_message(self) -> str:
        engineering = self._gc.agent_by_name("engineering")
        member1 = engineering._groupchat.agent_by_name("member1_engineering")
        member2 = engineering._groupchat.agent_by_name("member2_engineering")
        messages = member1.chat_messages.get(member2)
        ...

I had to access _groupchat, which is a private variable. I can redefine team_factory.some_team() -> Tuple[GroupChat, GroupChatManager], but I think this doesn't look good, especially for nested teams. This problem can be rectified if I define each team and agent inside __init__ in SomeChatBot, but I also think that doesn't look good and will clutter SomeChatBot (I could be wrong here).

Here's an example of how I ideally want to define _last_message():

def __init__(...):
    ...
    self._gc = autogen.GroupChat(...)
    self._manager = autogen.GroupChatManager(groupchat=self._gc, ...)
    ...

def _last_message(self) -> str:
    all_agents = self._gc.all_agents()
    member1 = all_agents["member1_engineering"]
    member2 = all_agents["member2_engineering"]
    
    messages = member2.chat_messages[member1]
    ...

I reworked the implementation slightly to account for @sonichi 's concerns about composability, which I agree with. This implementation should also work for deeply nested teams. Let me know what you think.

[joshkyh]

Thanks for the PR, excited about the prospect of team operations.

[afourney]

Quick question: If we just made the group_chat reference public in GroupChatManager, would that be sufficient? https://github.com/microsoft/autogen/blob/d01063d23122ae2a4bbaa3014519d6ae75e95de1/autogen/agentchat/groupchat.py#L467C33-L467C36

You can get all the agents from there.