Agentao (Agent + Tao)

   ___                      _
  / _ \ ___ _ ___  ___  ___| |_  ___  ___
 /  _  // _` / -_)| _ \/ _ \  _|/ _` / _ \
/_/ |_| \__, \___||_// \___/\__|\__,_\___/
        |___/        (The Way of Agents)

"Order in Chaos, Path in Intelligence."

Agentao is a Governed Agent Runtime — a local-first, private-first, embeddable agent harness for Python hosts. Permissions, protocols, memory, plugins, and multi-session control are all first-class.

中文版本 README.zh.md

---

📚 Documentation — read this first

The full handbook lives in developer-guide/ (VitePress, bilingual). Production site: agentao.cn.

Audience	Read	Site
Coding agents — Claude Code / Codex / … embedding Agentao into another project	docs/guides/embed-for-agents.md (distilled, copy-paste playbook)	—
CLI users — driving agentao in the terminal	developer-guide/en/cli/ (13 chapters: slash commands · plan mode · memory · replay · …)	agentao.cn/en/cli/
Embedding developers — building Agentao into your app	developer-guide/en/ (Parts 1–7 + Appendix)	agentao.cn
中文	developer-guide/zh/cli/ · developer-guide/zh/	agentao.cn/zh/cli/ · agentao.cn/zh/

Browse locally:

cd developer-guide && npx vitepress dev

For schema-level reference (every config file, every env var, every public API), the canonical doc is docs/reference/configuration.md. Everything else is in the Developer Guide.

---

Embed in 30 lines

pip install agentao

from pathlib import Path
from agentao import Agentao
from agentao.llm import LLMClient
from agentao.transport import NullTransport

with Agentao(
    working_directory=Path("/tmp/agent-run-1"),
    llm_client=LLMClient(
        api_key="sk-...",
        base_url="https://api.openai.com/v1",
        model="gpt-5.4",
    ),
    transport=NullTransport(),
) as agent:
    reply = agent.chat("Summarize today's logs.")
    print(reply)

This constructs an agent with no env-discovery, no implicit network, no global state — the host owns every input. For env-driven discovery (the path the CLI uses), call agentao.embedding.build_from_environment(working_directory=...) instead.

Embedding details: Developer Guide · Part 2 (Lifecycle) and Part 4 (Host Contract).

Coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, …) tasked with embedding Agentao into another project? Read docs/guides/embed-for-agents.md — a distilled, copy-paste integration playbook with construction skeletons, import rules, and a checklist.

---

CLI Quickstart

pip install 'agentao[cli]'

# .env in your project (all three are required):
printf "OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key\nOPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1\nOPENAI_MODEL=gpt-5.4\n" > .env

# Smoke test — non-interactive
agentao -p "Reply with the single word: OK"

# Interactive REPL
agentao