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Dapr Agents is a framework for building LLM-powered autonomous agentic applications using Dapr’s distributed systems capabilities. It provides tools for creating AI agents that can execute tasks, make decisions, and collaborate through workflows, while leveraging Dapr’s state management, messaging, and observability features for reliable execution at scale.
Dapr Agents is a developer framework for building production-grade, resilient AI agent systems powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). Built on the battle-tested Dapr project, it enables developers to create autonomous systems that reason through problems, make dynamic decisions, and collaborate seamlessly. It includes built-in observability and stateful workflow execution to ensure agentic workflows complete successfully, regardless of complexity. Whether you’re developing single-agent applications or complex multi-agent workflows, Dapr Agents provides the infrastructure for intelligent, adaptive systems that scale across environments.
Dapr Agents provides specialized modules designed for creating intelligent, autonomous systems. Each module is designed to work independently, allowing you to use any combination that fits your application needs.
| Building Block | Description |
|---|---|
| LLM Integration | Uses Dapr Conversation API to abstract LLM inference APIs for chat completion, or provides native clients for other LLM integrations such as embeddings, audio, etc. |
| Structured Outputs | Leverage capabilities like OpenAI’s Function Calling to generate predictable, reliable results following JSON Schema and OpenAPI standards for tool integration. |
| Tool Selection | Dynamic tool selection based on requirements, best action, and execution through Function Calling capabilities. |
| MCP Support | Built-in support for Model Context Protocol enabling agents to dynamically discover and invoke external tools through standardized interfaces. |
| Memory Management | Retain context across interactions with options from simple in-memory lists to vector databases, integrating with Dapr state stores for scalable, persistent memory. |
| Durable Agents | Workflow-backed agents that provide fault-tolerant execution with persistent state management and automatic retry mechanisms for long-running processes. |
| Headless Agents | Expose agents over REST for long-running tasks, enabling programmatic access and integration without requiring user interfaces or human intervention. |
| Event-Driven Communication | Enable agent collaboration through Pub/Sub messaging for event-driven communication, task distribution, and real-time coordination in distributed systems. |
| Agent Orchestration | Deterministic agent orchestration using Dapr Workflows with higher-level tasks that interact with LLMs for complex multi-step processes. |
Dapr Agents enables a comprehensive set of patterns that represent different approaches to building intelligent systems.
These patterns exist along a spectrum of autonomy, from predictable workflow-based approaches to fully autonomous agents that can dynamically plan and execute their own strategies. Each pattern addresses specific use cases and offers different trade-offs between deterministic outcomes and autonomy:
| Pattern | Description |
|---|---|
| Augmented LLM | Enhances a language model with external capabilities like memory and tools, providing a foundation for AI-driven applications. |
| Prompt Chaining | Decomposes complex tasks into a sequence of steps where each LLM call processes the output of the previous one. |
| Routing | Classifies inputs and directs them to specialized follow-up tasks, enabling separation of concerns and expert specialization. |
| Parallelization | Processes multiple dimensions of a problem simultaneously with outputs aggregated programmatically for improved efficiency. |
| Orchestrator-Workers | Features a central orchestrator LLM that dynamically breaks down tasks, delegates them to worker LLMs, and synthesizes results. |
| Evaluator-Optimizer | Implements a dual-LLM process where one model generates responses while another provides evaluation and feedback in an iterative loop. |
| Durable Agent | Extends the Augmented LLM by adding durability and persistence to agent interactions using Dapr’s state stores. |
Dapr Agents is a Python framework built on top of the Python Dapr SDK, providing a comprehensive development experience for building agentic systems.
Get started with Dapr Agents by following the instructions on the Getting Started page.
Dapr Agents integrates with popular Python frameworks and tools. For detailed integration guides and examples, see the integrations page.
Dapr Agents inherits Dapr’s enterprise-grade operational capabilities, providing comprehensive support for production deployments of agentic systems.
These capabilities enable teams to monitor agent performance, secure multi-agent communications, and ensure reliable execution of complex agentic workflows in production environments.
Whether you’re interested in enhancing the framework, adding new integrations, or improving documentation, we welcome contributions from the community.
For development setup and guidelines, see our Contributor Guide.
While simple examples in Dapr Agents can be used without the sidecar, the recommended mode is with the Dapr sidecar. To benefit from the full power of Dapr Agents, install the Dapr CLI for running Dapr locally or on Kubernetes for development purposes. For a complete step-by-step guide, follow the Dapr CLI installation page.
Verify the CLI is installed by restarting your terminal/command prompt and running the following:
dapr -h
Initialize Dapr locally to set up a self-hosted environment for development. This process fetches and installs the Dapr sidecar binaries, runs essential services as Docker containers, and prepares a default components folder for your application. For detailed steps, see the official guide on initializing Dapr locally.
To initialize the Dapr control plane containers and create a default configuration file, run:
dapr init
Verify you have container instances with daprio/dapr, openzipkin/zipkin, and redis images running:
docker ps
Python >=3.10. For installation instructions, visit the official Python installation guide.
Let’s create a weather assistant agent that demonstrates tool calling with Dapr state management used for conversation memory.
Create a .env file with your OpenAI API key:
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
This API key is essential for agents to communicate with the LLM, as the default LLM client in the agent uses OpenAI’s services. If you don’t have an API key, you can create one here.
Create a components directory and add historystore.yaml:
apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
name: historystore
spec:
type: state.redis
version: v1
metadata:
- name: redisHost
value: localhost:6379
- name: redisPassword
value: ""
This component will be used to store the conversation history, as LLMs are stateless and every chat interaction needs to send all the previous conversations to maintain context.
Create weather_agent.py:
import asyncio
from dapr_agents import tool, Agent
from dapr_agents.memory import ConversationDaprStateMemory
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()
@tool
def get_weather() -> str:
"""Get current weather."""
return "It's 72°F and sunny"
async def main():
agent = Agent(
name="WeatherAgent",
role="Weather Assistant",
instructions=["Help users with weather information"],
memory=ConversationDaprStateMemory(store_name="historystore", session_id="hello-world"),
tools=[get_weather],
)
# First interaction
response1 = await agent.run("Hi! My name is John. What's the weather?")
print(f"Agent: {response1}")
# Second interaction - agent should remember the name
response2 = await agent.run("What's my name?")
print(f"Agent: {response2}")
if __name__ == "__main__":
asyncio.run(main())
This code creates an agent with a single weather tool and uses Dapr for memory persistence.
For the latest version of Dapr Agents, check the PyPI page.
Create a requirements.txt file with the necessary dependencies:
dapr-agents
python-dotenv
Create and activate a virtual environment, then install the dependencies:
# Create a virtual environment
python3.10 -m venv .venv
# Activate the virtual environment
# On Windows:
.venv\Scripts\activate
# On macOS/Linux:
source .venv/bin/activate
# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt
dapr run --app-id weatheragent --resources-path ./components -- python weather_agent.py
This command starts a Dapr sidecar with the conversation component and launches the agent that communicates with the sidecar for state persistence. Notice how in the agent’s responses, it remembers the user’s name from the first chat interaction, demonstrating the conversation memory in action.
Dapr uses Redis by default for state management and pub/sub messaging, which are fundamental to Dapr Agents’s agentic workflows. To inspect the Redis instance, a great tool to use is Redis Insight, and you can use it to inspect the agent memory populated earlier. To run Redis Insights, run:
docker run --rm -d --name redisinsight -p 5540:5540 redis/redisinsight:latest
Once running, access the Redis Insight interface at http://localhost:5540/
Inside Redis Insight, you can connect to a Redis instance, so let’s connect to the one used by the agent:
host.docker.internal:6379)Redis Insight makes it easy to visualize and manage the data powering your agentic workflows, ensuring efficient debugging, monitoring, and optimization.
Here you can browse the state store used in the agent and explore its data.
Now that you have Dapr Agents installed and running, explore more advanced examples and patterns in the quickstarts section to learn about multi-agent workflows, durable agents, and integration with Dapr’s powerful distributed capabilities.
Dapr Agents is an open-source framework for building and orchestrating LLM-based autonomous agents that leverages Dapr’s proven distributed systems foundation. Unlike other agentic frameworks that require developers to build infrastructure from scratch, Dapr Agents enables teams to focus on agent intelligence by providing enterprise-grade scalability, state management, and messaging capabilities out of the box. This approach eliminates the complexity of recreating distributed system fundamentals while delivering production-ready agentic workflows.RetryClaude can make mistakes. Please double-check responses.
Many agentic frameworks today attempt to redefine how microservices are built and orchestrated by developing their own platforms for core distributed system capabilities. While these efforts showcase innovation, they often lead to steep learning curves, fragmented systems, and unnecessary complexity when scaling or adapting to new environments.
These frameworks require developers to adopt entirely new paradigms or recreate foundational infrastructure, rather than building on existing solutions that are proven to handle these challenges at scale. This added complexity diverts focus from the primary goal: designing and implementing intelligent, effective agents.
Dapr Agents takes a different approach by building on Dapr, leveraging its proven APIs and patterns including workflows, pub/sub messaging, state management, and service communication. This integration eliminates the need to recreate foundational components from scratch.
By integrating with Dapr’s runtime and modular components, Dapr Agents empowers developers to build and deploy agents that work as collaborative services within larger systems. Whether experimenting with a single agent or orchestrating workflows involving multiple agents, Dapr Agents allows teams to concentrate on the intelligence and behavior of LLM-powered agents while leveraging a proven framework for scalability and reliability.
Dapr Agents is designed to place agents, powered by LLMs, at the core of task execution and workflow orchestration. This principle emphasizes:
While Dapr Agents centers around agents, it also recognizes the versatility of using LLMs directly in deterministic workflows or simpler task sequences. In scenarios where the agent’s built-in task-handling patterns, like tool calling or ReAct loops, are unnecessary, LLMs can act as core components for reasoning and decision-making. This flexibility ensures users can adapt Dapr Agents to suit diverse needs without being confined to a single approach.
Dapr Agents places durability at the core of its architecture, leveraging Dapr Workflows as the foundation for durable agent execution and deterministic multi-agent orchestration.
By integrating workflows as the foundational layer, Dapr Agents enables systems that combine the reliability of deterministic execution with the intelligence of LLM-powered agents, ensuring production-grade reliability and scalability.
Dapr Agents utilizes Dapr’s pluggable component framework and building blocks to simplify development and enhance flexibility:
Dapr Agents emphasizes the use of Pub/Sub messaging for event-driven communication between agents. This principle ensures:
Dapr Agents ensures a clean separation between agents and the underlying infrastructure, emphasizing simplicity, scalability, and adaptability:
Dapr Agents uses a durable-execution workflow engine that guarantees each agent task executes to completion despite network interruptions, node crashes, and other disruptive failures. Developers do not need to understand the underlying workflow engine concepts—simply write an agent that performs any number of tasks and these will be automatically distributed across the cluster. If any task fails, it will be retried and recover its state from where it left off.
Dapr Agents builds on Dapr’s Workflow API, which represents each agent as an actor, a single unit of compute and state that is thread-safe and natively distributed. This design enables a scale-to-zero architecture that minimizes infrastructure costs, making AI adoption accessible to organizations of all sizes. The underlying virtual actor model allows thousands of agents to run on demand on a single machine with low latency when scaling from zero. When unused, agents are reclaimed by the system but retain their state until needed again. This design eliminates the trade-off between performance and resource efficiency.
With built-in connectivity to over 50 enterprise data sources, Dapr Agents efficiently handles structured and unstructured data. From basic PDF extraction to large-scale database interactions, it enables data-driven AI workflows with minimal code changes. Dapr’s bindings and state stores, along with MCP support, provide access to numerous data sources for agent data ingestion.
Dapr Agents provides AI features that give developers a complete API surface to tackle common problems, including:
By building on Dapr, platform and infrastructure teams can apply Dapr’s resiliency policies to the database and message broker components used by Dapr Agents. These policies include timeouts, retry/backoff strategies, and circuit breakers. For security, Dapr provides options to scope access to specific databases or message brokers to one or more agentic app deployments. Additionally, Dapr Agents uses mTLS to encrypt communication between its underlying components.
As part of the CNCF, Dapr Agents is vendor-neutral, eliminating concerns about lock-in, intellectual property risks, or proprietary restrictions. Organizations gain full flexibility and control over their AI applications using open-source software they can audit and contribute to.
Dapr Agents provides a structured way to build and orchestrate applications that use LLMs without getting bogged down in infrastructure details. The primary goal is to make AI development by abstracting away the complexities of working with LLMs, tools, memory management, and distributed systems, allowing developers to focus on the business logic of their AI applications. Agents in this framework are the fundamental building blocks.
Agents are autonomous units powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), designed to execute tasks, reason through problems, and collaborate within workflows. Acting as intelligent building blocks, agents combine reasoning with tool integration, memory, and collaboration features to get to the desired outcome.
Dapr Agents provides two agent types, each designed for different use cases:
The standard Agent class is a conversational agent that manages tool calls and conversations using a language model. It provides, synchronous execution with built-in conversation memory.
@tool
def my_weather_func() -> str:
"""Get current weather."""
return "It's 72°F and sunny"
async def main():
weather_agent = Agent(
name="WeatherAgent",
role="Weather Assistant",
instructions=["Help users with weather information"],
tools=[my_weather_func],
memory=ConversationDaprStateMemory(store_name="historystore", session_id="some-id"),
)
response1 = await weather_agent.run("What's the weather?")
response2 = await weather_agent.run("How about now?")
This example shows how to create a simple agent with tool integration. The agent processes queries synchronously and maintains conversation context across multiple interactions using Dapr State Store API.
The DurableAgent class is a workflow-based agent that extends the standard Agent with Dapr Workflows for long-running, fault-tolerant, and durable execution. It provides persistent state management, automatic retry mechanisms, and deterministic execution across failures.
travel_planner = DurableAgent(
name="TravelBuddy",
role="Travel Planner",
instructions=["Help users find flights and remember preferences"],
tools=[search_flights],
memory=ConversationDaprStateMemory(
store_name="conversationstore", session_id="my-unique-id"
),
# DurableAgent Configurations
message_bus_name="messagepubsub",
state_store_name="workflowstatestore",
state_key="workflow_state",
agents_registry_store_name="registrystatestore",
agents_registry_key="agents_registry",
)
travel_planner.as_service(port=8001)
await travel_planner.start()
This example demonstrates creating a workflow-backed agent that runs autonomously in the background. The agent can be triggered once and continues execution even across system restarts.
Key Characteristics:
When to use:
In Summary:
| Agent Type | Memory Type | Execution | Interaction Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
Agent |
In-memory or Persistent | Ephemeral | Synchronous / Conversational |
Durable Agent |
In-memory or Persistent | Durable (Workflow-backed) | Asynchronous / Headless |
Regular Agent: Interaction is synchronous—you send conversational prompts and receive responses immediately. The conversation can be stored in memory or persisted, but the execution is ephemeral and does not survive restarts.
DurableAgent (Workflow-backed): Interaction is asynchronous—you trigger the agent once, and it runs autonomously in the background until completion. The conversation state can also be in memory or persisted, but the execution is durable and can resume across failures or restarts.
An agentic system is a distributed system that requires a variety of behaviors and supporting infrastructure.
Dapr Agents provides a unified interface to connect with LLM inference APIs. This abstraction allows developers to seamlessly integrate their agents with cutting-edge language models for reasoning and decision-making. The framework includes multiple LLM clients for different providers and modalities:
OpenAIChatClient: Full spectrum support for OpenAI models including chat, embeddings, and audioHFHubChatClient: For Hugging Face models supporting both chat and embeddingsNVIDIAChatClient: For NVIDIA AI Foundation models supporting local inference and chatElevenLabs: Support for speech and voice capabilitiesDaprChatClient: Unified API for LLM interactions via Dapr’s Conversation API with built-in security (scopes, secrets, PII obfuscation), resiliency (timeouts, retries, circuit breakers), and observability via OpenTelemetry & PrometheusDapr Agents supports flexible prompt templates to shape agent behavior and reasoning. Users can define placeholders within prompts, enabling dynamic input of context for inference calls. By leveraging prompt formatting with Jinja templates, users can include loops, conditions, and variables, providing precise control over the structure and content of prompts. This flexibility ensures that LLM responses are tailored to the task at hand, offering modularity and adaptability for diverse use cases.
Agents in Dapr Agents leverage structured output capabilities, such as OpenAI’s Function Calling, to generate predictable and reliable results. These outputs follow JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 and OpenAPI Specification v3.1.0 standards, enabling easy interoperability and tool integration.
# Define our data model
class Dog(BaseModel):
name: str
breed: str
reason: str
# Initialize the chat client
llm = OpenAIChatClient()
# Get structured response
response = llm.generate(
messages=[UserMessage("One famous dog in history.")], response_format=Dog
)
print(json.dumps(response.model_dump(), indent=2))
This demonstrates how LLMs generate structured data according to a schema. The Pydantic model (Dog) specifies the exact structure and data types expected, while the response_format parameter instructs the LLM to return data matching the model, ensuring consistent and predictable outputs for downstream processing.
Tool Calling is an essential pattern in autonomous agent design, allowing AI agents to interact dynamically with external tools based on user input. Agents dynamically select the appropriate tool for a given task, using LLMs to analyze requirements and choose the best action.
@tool(args_model=GetWeatherSchema)
def get_weather(location: str) -> str:
"""Get weather information based on location."""
import random
temperature = random.randint(60, 80)
return f"{location}: {temperature}F."
Each tool has a descriptive docstring that helps the LLM understand when to use it. The @tool decorator marks a function as a tool, while the Pydantic model (GetWeatherSchema) defines input parameters for structured validation.
This is supported directly through LLM parametric knowledge and enhanced by Function Calling, ensuring tools are invoked efficiently and accurately.
Dapr Agents includes built-in support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling agents to dynamically discover and invoke external tools through a standardized interface. Using the provided MCPClient, agents can connect to MCP servers via two transport options: stdio for local development and sse for remote or distributed environments.
client = MCPClient()
await client.connect_sse("local", url="http://localhost:8000/sse")
# Convert MCP tools to AgentTool list
tools = client.get_all_tools()
Once connected, the MCP client fetches all available tools from the server and prepares them for immediate use within the agent’s toolset. This allows agents to incorporate capabilities exposed by external processes—such as local Python scripts or remote services without hardcoding or preloading them. Agents can invoke these tools at runtime, expanding their behavior based on what’s offered by the active MCP server.
Agents retain context across interactions, enhancing their ability to provide coherent and adaptive responses. Memory options range from simple in-memory lists for managing chat history to vector databases for semantic search, and also integrates with Dapr state stores, for scalable and persistent memory for advanced use cases from 28 different state store providers.
# ConversationListMemory (Simple In-Memory) - Default
memory_list = ConversationListMemory()
# ConversationVectorMemory (Vector Store)
memory_vector = ConversationVectorMemory(
vector_store=your_vector_store_instance,
distance_metric="cosine"
)
# 3. ConversationDaprStateMemory (Dapr State Store)
memory_dapr = ConversationDaprStateMemory(
store_name="historystore", # Maps to Dapr component name
session_id="some-id"
)
# Using with an agent
agent = Agent(
name="MyAgent",
role="Assistant",
memory=memory_dapr # Pass any memory implementation
)
ConversationListMemory is the default memory implementation when none is specified. It provides fast, temporary storage in Python lists for development and testing. The Dapr’s memory implementations are interchangeable, allowing you to switch between them without modifying your agent logic.
| Memory Implementation | Type | Persistence | Search | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ConversationListMemory (Default) |
In-Memory | ❌ | Linear | Development |
ConversationVectorMemory |
Vector Store | ✅ | Semantic | RAG/AI Apps |
ConversationDaprStateMemory |
Dapr State Store | ✅ | Query | Production |
DurableAgents are exposed as independent services using FastAPI and Dapr applications. This modular approach separates the agent’s logic from its service layer, enabling seamless reuse, deployment, and integration into multi-agent systems.
travel_planner.as_service(port=8001)
await travel_planner.start()
This exposes the agent as a REST service, allowing other systems to interact with it through standard HTTP requests such as this one:
curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8001/start-workflow \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"task": "I want to find flights to Paris"}'
Unlike conversational agents that provide immediate synchronous responses, durable agents operate as headless services that are triggered asynchronously. You trigger it, receive a workflow instance ID, and can track progress over time. This enables long-running, fault-tolerant operations that can span multiple systems and survive restarts, making them ideal for complex multi-step processes in production environments.
While it’s tempting to build a fully autonomous agent capable of handling many tasks, in practice, it’s more effective to break this down into specialized agents equipped with appropriate tools and instructions, then coordinate interactions between multiple agents.
Multi-agent systems (MAS) distribute workflow execution across multiple coordinated agents to efficiently achieve shared objectives. This approach, called agent orchestration, enables better specialization, scalability, and maintainability compared to monolithic agent designs.
Dapr Agents supports two primary orchestration approaches via Dapr Workflows and Dapr PubSub:
Both approaches utilize a central orchestrator that coordinates multiple specialized agents, each handling specific tasks or domains, ensuring efficient task distribution and seamless collaboration across the system.
Workflows are structured processes where LLM agents and tools collaborate in predefined sequences to accomplish complex tasks. Unlike fully autonomous agents that make all decisions independently, workflows provide a balance of structure and predictability from the workflow definition, intelligence and flexibility from LLM agents, and reliability and durability from Dapr’s workflow engine.
This approach is particularly suitable for business-critical applications where you need both the intelligence of LLMs and the reliability of traditional software systems.
# Define Workflow logic
@workflow(name="task_chain_workflow")
def task_chain_workflow(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext):
result1 = yield ctx.call_activity(get_character)
result2 = yield ctx.call_activity(get_line, input={"character": result1})
return result2
@task(description="Pick a random character from The Lord of the Rings and respond with the character's name only")
def get_character() -> str:
pass
@task(description="What is a famous line by {character}")
def get_line(character: str) -> str:
pass
This workflow demonstrates sequential task execution where the output of one task becomes the input for the next, enabling complex multi-step processes with clear dependencies and data flow.
Dapr Agents supports coordination of LLM interactions at different levels of granularity:
Tasks created from prompts that leverage LLM reasoning capabilities for specific, well-defined operations.
@task(description="Pick a random character from The Lord of the Rings and respond with the character's name only")
def get_character() -> str:
pass
While technically not full agents (as they lack tools and memory), prompt tasks serve as lightweight agentic building blocks that perform focused LLM interactions within the broader workflow context.
Tasks based on agents with tools, providing greater flexibility and capability for complex operations requiring external integrations.
@task(agent=custom_agent, description="Retrieve stock data for {ticker}")
def get_stock_data(ticker: str) -> dict:
pass
Agent tasks enable workflows to leverage specialized agents with their own tools, memory, and reasoning capabilities while maintaining the structured coordination benefits of workflow orchestration.
Note: Agent tasks must use regular
Agentinstances, notDurableAgentinstances, as workflows manage the execution context and durability through the Dapr workflow engine.
Workflows enable the implementation of various agentic patterns through structured orchestration, including Prompt Chaining, Routing, Parallelization, Orchestrator-Workers, Evaluator-Optimizer, Human-in-the-loop, and others. For detailed implementations and examples of these patterns, see the Patterns documentation.
Both DurableAgent and workflow-based agent orchestration use Dapr workflows behind the scenes for durability and reliability, but they differ in how control flow is determined.
| Aspect | Workflows | Durable Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Control | Developer-defined process flow | Agent determines next steps |
| Predictability | Higher | Lower |
| Flexibility | Fixed overall structure, flexible within steps | Completely flexible |
| Reliability | Very high (workflow engine guarantees) | Depends on agent implementation |
| Complexity | Simpler to reason about | Harder to debug and understand |
| Use Cases | Business processes, regulated domains | Open-ended research, creative tasks |
The key difference lies in control flow determination: with DurableAgent, the workflow is created dynamically by the LLM’s planning decisions, executing entirely within a single agent context. In contrast, with deterministic workflows, the developer explicitly defines the coordination between one or more LLM interactions, providing structured orchestration across multiple tasks or agents.
Event-driven agent orchestration enables multiple specialized agents to collaborate through asynchronous Pub/Sub messaging. This approach provides powerful collaborative problem-solving, parallel processing, and division of responsibilities among specialized agents through independent scaling, resilience via service isolation, and clear separation of responsibilities.
The core participants in this multi-agent coordination systems are the following.
Each agent runs as an independent service with its own lifecycle, configured as a standard DurableAgent with pub/sub enabled:
hobbit_service = DurableAgent(
name="Frodo",
instructions=["Speak like Frodo, with humility and determination."],
message_bus_name="messagepubsub",
state_store_name="workflowstatestore",
state_key="workflow_state",
agents_registry_store_name="agentstatestore",
agents_registry_key="agents_registry",
)
The orchestrator coordinates interactions between agents and manages conversation flow by selecting appropriate agents, managing interaction sequences, and tracking progress. Dapr Agents offers three orchestration strategies: Random, RoundRobin, and LLM-based orchestration.
llm_orchestrator = LLMOrchestrator(
name="LLMOrchestrator",
message_bus_name="messagepubsub",
state_store_name="agenticworkflowstate",
state_key="workflow_state",
agents_registry_store_name="agentstatestore",
agents_registry_key="agents_registry",
max_iterations=3
)
The LLM-based orchestrator uses intelligent agent selection for context-aware decision making, while Random and RoundRobin provide alternative coordination strategies for simpler use cases.
Agents communicate through an event-driven pub/sub system that enables asynchronous communication, decoupled architecture, scalable interactions, and reliable message delivery. The typical collaboration flow involves client query submission, orchestrator-driven agent selection, agent response processing, and iterative coordination until task completion.
This approach is particularly effective for complex problem solving requiring multiple expertise areas, creative collaboration from diverse perspectives, role-playing scenarios, and distributed processing of large tasks.
Messaging connects agents in workflows, enabling real-time communication and coordination. It acts as the backbone of event-driven interactions, ensuring that agents work together effectively without requiring direct connections.
Through messaging, agents can:
By using messaging, workflows remain modular and scalable, with agents focusing on their specific roles while seamlessly participating in the broader system.
The message bus serves as the central system that manages topics and message delivery. Agents interact with the message bus to send and receive messages:
Pub/Sub messaging is essential for event-driven agentic workflows because it:
This messaging framework ensures that agents operate efficiently, workflows remain flexible, and systems can scale dynamically.
Dapr Agents simplify the implementation of agentic systems, from simple augmented LLMs to fully autonomous agents in enterprise environments. The following sections describe several application patterns that can benefit from Dapr Agents.
Agentic systems use design patterns such as reflection, tool use, planning, and multi-agent collaboration to achieve better results than simple single-prompt interactions. Rather than thinking of “agent” as a binary classification, it’s more useful to think of systems as being agentic to different degrees.
This ranges from simple workflows that prompt a model once, to sophisticated systems that can carry out multiple iterative steps with greater autonomy. There are two fundamental architectural approaches:
On one end, we have predictable workflows with well-defined decision paths and deterministic outcomes. On the other end, we have AI agents that can dynamically direct their own strategies. While fully autonomous agents might seem appealing, workflows often provide better predictability and consistency for well-defined tasks. This aligns with enterprise requirements where reliability and maintainability are crucial.
The patterns in this documentation start with the Augmented LLM, then progress through workflow-based approaches that offer predictability and control, before moving toward more autonomous patterns. Each addresses specific use cases and offers different trade-offs between deterministic outcomes and autonomy.
The Augmented LLM pattern is the foundational building block for any kind of agentic system. It enhances a language model with external capabilities like memory and tools, providing a basic but powerful foundation for AI-driven applications.
This pattern is ideal for scenarios where you need an LLM with enhanced capabilities but don’t require complex orchestration or autonomous decision-making. The augmented LLM can access external tools, maintain conversation history, and provide consistent responses across interactions.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
from dapr_agents import Agent, tool
@tool
def search_flights(destination: str) -> List[FlightOption]:
"""Search for flights to the specified destination."""
# Mock flight data (would be an external API call in a real app)
return [
FlightOption(airline="SkyHighAir", price=450.00),
FlightOption(airline="GlobalWings", price=375.50)
]
# Create agent with memory and tools
travel_planner = Agent(
name="TravelBuddy",
role="Travel Planner Assistant",
instructions=["Remember destinations and help find flights"],
tools=[search_flights],
)
Dapr Agents automatically handles:
@tool decorator handles input validation, type conversion, and output formattingThe foundational building block of any agentic system is the Augmented LLM - a language model enhanced with external capabilities like memory, tools, and retrieval. In Dapr Agents, this is represented by the Agent class. However, while this provides essential capabilities, it alone is often not sufficient for complex enterprise scenarios. This is why it’s typically combined with workflow orchestration that provides structure, reliability, and coordination for multi-step processes.
The Prompt Chaining pattern addresses complex requirements by decomposing tasks into a sequence of steps, where each LLM call processes the output of the previous one. This pattern allows for better control of the overall process, validation between steps, and specialization of each step.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
from dapr_agents import DaprWorkflowContext, workflow
@workflow(name='travel_planning_workflow')
def travel_planning_workflow(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext, user_input: str):
# Step 1: Extract destination using a simple prompt (no agent)
destination_text = yield ctx.call_activity(extract_destination, input=user_input)
# Gate: Check if destination is valid
if "paris" not in destination_text.lower():
return "Unable to create itinerary: Destination not recognized or supported."
# Step 2: Generate outline with planning agent (has tools)
travel_outline = yield ctx.call_activity(create_travel_outline, input=destination_text)
# Step 3: Expand into detailed plan with itinerary agent (no tools)
detailed_itinerary = yield ctx.call_activity(expand_itinerary, input=travel_outline)
return detailed_itinerary
The implementation showcases three different approaches:
Dapr Agents’ workflow orchestration provides:
The Routing pattern addresses diverse request types by classifying inputs and directing them to specialized follow-up tasks. This allows for separation of concerns and creates specialized experts for different types of queries.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
@workflow(name="travel_assistant_workflow")
def travel_assistant_workflow(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext, input_params: dict):
user_query = input_params.get("query")
# Classify the query type using an LLM
query_type = yield ctx.call_activity(classify_query, input={"query": user_query})
# Route to the appropriate specialized handler
if query_type == QueryType.ATTRACTIONS:
response = yield ctx.call_activity(
handle_attractions_query,
input={"query": user_query}
)
elif query_type == QueryType.ACCOMMODATIONS:
response = yield ctx.call_activity(
handle_accommodations_query,
input={"query": user_query}
)
elif query_type == QueryType.TRANSPORTATION:
response = yield ctx.call_activity(
handle_transportation_query,
input={"query": user_query}
)
else:
response = "I'm not sure how to help with that specific travel question."
return response
The advantages of Dapr’s approach include:
The Parallelization pattern enables processing multiple dimensions of a problem simultaneously, with outputs aggregated programmatically. This pattern improves efficiency for complex tasks with independent subtasks that can be processed concurrently.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
@workflow(name="travel_planning_workflow")
def travel_planning_workflow(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext, input_params: dict):
destination = input_params.get("destination")
preferences = input_params.get("preferences")
days = input_params.get("days")
# Process three aspects of the travel plan in parallel
parallel_tasks = [
ctx.call_activity(research_attractions, input={
"destination": destination,
"preferences": preferences,
"days": days
}),
ctx.call_activity(recommend_accommodations, input={
"destination": destination,
"preferences": preferences,
"days": days
}),
ctx.call_activity(suggest_transportation, input={
"destination": destination,
"preferences": preferences,
"days": days
})
]
# Wait for all parallel tasks to complete
results = yield wfapp.when_all(parallel_tasks)
# Aggregate results into final plan
final_plan = yield ctx.call_activity(create_final_plan, input={"results": results})
return final_plan
The benefits of using Dapr for parallelization include:
For highly complex tasks where the number and nature of subtasks can’t be known in advance, the Orchestrator-Workers pattern offers a powerful solution. This pattern features a central orchestrator LLM that dynamically breaks down tasks, delegates them to worker LLMs, and synthesizes their results.
Unlike previous patterns where workflows are predefined, the orchestrator determines the workflow dynamically based on the specific input.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
@workflow(name="orchestrator_travel_planner")
def orchestrator_travel_planner(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext, input_params: dict):
travel_request = input_params.get("request")
# Step 1: Orchestrator analyzes request and determines required tasks
plan_result = yield ctx.call_activity(
create_travel_plan,
input={"request": travel_request}
)
tasks = plan_result.get("tasks", [])
# Step 2: Execute each task with a worker LLM
worker_results = []
for task in tasks:
task_result = yield ctx.call_activity(
execute_travel_task,
input={"task": task}
)
worker_results.append({
"task_id": task["task_id"],
"result": task_result
})
# Step 3: Synthesize the results into a cohesive travel plan
final_plan = yield ctx.call_activity(
synthesize_travel_plan,
input={
"request": travel_request,
"results": worker_results
}
)
return final_plan
The advantages of Dapr for the Orchestrator-Workers pattern include:
Quality is often achieved through iteration and refinement. The Evaluator-Optimizer pattern implements a dual-LLM process where one model generates responses while another provides evaluation and feedback in an iterative loop.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
@workflow(name="evaluator_optimizer_travel_planner")
def evaluator_optimizer_travel_planner(ctx: DaprWorkflowContext, input_params: dict):
travel_request = input_params.get("request")
max_iterations = input_params.get("max_iterations", 3)
# Generate initial travel plan
current_plan = yield ctx.call_activity(
generate_travel_plan,
input={"request": travel_request, "feedback": None}
)
# Evaluation loop
iteration = 1
meets_criteria = False
while iteration <= max_iterations and not meets_criteria:
# Evaluate the current plan
evaluation = yield ctx.call_activity(
evaluate_travel_plan,
input={"request": travel_request, "plan": current_plan}
)
score = evaluation.get("score", 0)
feedback = evaluation.get("feedback", [])
meets_criteria = evaluation.get("meets_criteria", False)
# Stop if we meet criteria or reached max iterations
if meets_criteria or iteration >= max_iterations:
break
# Optimize the plan based on feedback
current_plan = yield ctx.call_activity(
generate_travel_plan,
input={"request": travel_request, "feedback": feedback}
)
iteration += 1
return {
"final_plan": current_plan,
"iterations": iteration,
"final_score": score
}
The benefits of using Dapr for this pattern include:
Moving to the far end of the agentic spectrum, the Durable Agent pattern represents a shift from workflow-based approaches. Instead of predefined steps, we have an autonomous agent that can plan its own steps and execute them based on its understanding of the goal.
Enterprise applications often need durable execution and reliability that go beyond in-memory capabilities. Dapr’s DurableAgent class helps you implement autonomous agents with the reliability of workflows, as these agents are backed by Dapr workflows behind the scenes. The DurableAgent extends the basic Agent class by adding durability to agent execution.
This pattern doesn’t just persist message history – it dynamically creates workflows with durable activities for each interaction, where LLM calls and tool executions are stored reliably in Dapr’s state stores. This makes it ideal for production environments where reliability is critical.
The Durable Agent also enables the “headless agents” approach where autonomous systems that operate without direct user interaction. Dapr’s Durable Agent exposes REST and Pub/Sub APIs, making it ideal for long-running operations that are triggered by other applications or external events.
Use Cases:
Implementation with Dapr Agents:
from dapr_agents import DurableAgent
travel_planner = DurableAgent(
name="TravelBuddy",
role="Travel Planner",
goal="Help users find flights and remember preferences",
instructions=[
"Find flights to destinations",
"Remember user preferences",
"Provide clear flight info"
],
tools=[search_flights],
message_bus_name="messagepubsub",
state_store_name="workflowstatestore",
state_key="workflow_state",
agents_registry_store_name="workflowstatestore",
agents_registry_key="agents_registry",
)
The implementation follows Dapr’s sidecar architecture model, where all infrastructure concerns are handled by the Dapr runtime:
The Durable Agent enables the concept of “headless agents” - autonomous systems that operate without direct user interaction. Dapr’s Durable Agent exposes both REST and Pub/Sub APIs, making it ideal for long-running operations that are triggered by other applications or external events. This allows agents to run in the background, processing requests asynchronously and integrating seamlessly into larger distributed systems.
The journey from simple agentic workflows to fully autonomous agents represents a spectrum of approaches for integrating LLMs into your applications. Different use cases call for different levels of agency and control:
The Text Splitter module is a foundational integration in Dapr Agents designed to preprocess documents for use in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) workflows and other in-context learning applications. Its primary purpose is to break large documents into smaller, meaningful chunks that can be embedded, indexed, and efficiently retrieved based on user queries.
By focusing on manageable chunk sizes and preserving contextual integrity through overlaps, the Text Splitter ensures documents are processed in a way that supports downstream tasks like question answering, summarization, and document retrieval.
When building RAG pipelines, splitting text into smaller chunks serves these key purposes:
This step is crucial for preparing knowledge to be embedded into a searchable format, forming the backbone of retrieval-based workflows.
The Text Splitter supports multiple strategies to handle different types of documents effectively. These strategies balance the size of each chunk with the need to maintain context.
Example:
from dapr_agents.document.splitter.text import TextSplitter
# Character-based splitter (default)
splitter = TextSplitter(chunk_size=1024, chunk_overlap=200)
Example:
import tiktoken
from dapr_agents.document.splitter.text import TextSplitter
enc = tiktoken.get_encoding("cl100k_base")
def length_function(text: str) -> int:
return len(enc.encode(text))
splitter = TextSplitter(
chunk_size=1024,
chunk_overlap=200,
chunk_size_function=length_function
)
The flexibility to define the chunk size function makes the Text Splitter adaptable to various scenarios.
To preserve context, the Text Splitter includes a chunk overlap feature. This ensures that parts of one chunk carry over into the next, helping maintain continuity when chunks are processed sequentially.
Example:
chunk_size=1024 and chunk_overlap=200, the last 200 tokens or characters of one chunk appear at the start of the next.Here’s a practical example of using the Text Splitter to process a PDF document:
import requests
from pathlib import Path
# Download PDF
pdf_url = "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.05265.pdf"
local_pdf_path = Path("arxiv_paper.pdf")
if not local_pdf_path.exists():
response = requests.get(pdf_url)
response.raise_for_status()
with open(local_pdf_path, "wb") as pdf_file:
pdf_file.write(response.content)
For this example, we use Dapr Agents’ PyPDFReader.
pip install pypdf
Then, initialize the reader to load the PDF file.
from dapr_agents.document.reader.pdf.pypdf import PyPDFReader
reader = PyPDFReader()
documents = reader.load(local_pdf_path)
splitter = TextSplitter(
chunk_size=1024,
chunk_overlap=200,
chunk_size_function=length_function
)
chunked_documents = splitter.split_documents(documents)
print(f"Original document pages: {len(documents)}")
print(f"Total chunks: {len(chunked_documents)}")
print(f"First chunk: {chunked_documents[0]}")
By understanding and leveraging the Text Splitter, you can preprocess large documents effectively, ensuring they are ready for embedding, indexing, and retrieval in advanced workflows like RAG pipelines.
The Arxiv Fetcher module in Dapr Agents provides a powerful interface to interact with the arXiv API. It is designed to help users programmatically search for, retrieve, and download scientific papers from arXiv. With advanced querying capabilities, metadata extraction, and support for downloading PDF files, the Arxiv Fetcher is ideal for researchers, developers, and teams working with academic literature.
The Arxiv Fetcher simplifies the process of accessing research papers, offering features like:
pip install arxiv
Set up the ArxivFetcher to begin interacting with the arXiv API.
from dapr_agents.document import ArxivFetcher
# Initialize the fetcher
fetcher = ArxivFetcher()
Basic Search by Query String
Search for papers using simple keywords. The results are returned as Document objects, each containing:
text: The abstract of the paper.metadata: Structured metadata such as title, authors, categories, and submission dates.# Search for papers related to "machine learning"
results = fetcher.search(query="machine learning", max_results=5)
# Display metadata and summaries
for doc in results:
print(f"Title: {doc.metadata['title']}")
print(f"Authors: {', '.join(doc.metadata['authors'])}")
print(f"Summary: {doc.text}\n")
Advanced Querying
Refine searches using logical operators like AND, OR, and NOT or perform field-specific searches, such as by author.
Examples:
Search for papers on “agents” and “cybersecurity”:
results = fetcher.search(query="all:(agents AND cybersecurity)", max_results=10)
Exclude specific terms (e.g., “quantum” but not “computing”):
results = fetcher.search(query="all:(quantum NOT computing)", max_results=10)
Search for papers by a specific author:
results = fetcher.search(query='au:"John Doe"', max_results=10)
Filter Papers by Date
Limit search results to a specific time range, such as papers submitted in the last 24 hours.
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
# Calculate the date range
last_24_hours = (datetime.now() - timedelta(days=1)).strftime("%Y%m%d")
today = datetime.now().strftime("%Y%m%d")
# Search for recent papers
recent_results = fetcher.search(
query="all:(agents AND cybersecurity)",
from_date=last_24_hours,
to_date=today,
max_results=5
)
# Display metadata
for doc in recent_results:
print(f"Title: {doc.metadata['title']}")
print(f"Authors: {', '.join(doc.metadata['authors'])}")
print(f"Published: {doc.metadata['published']}")
print(f"Summary: {doc.text}\n")
Fetch the full-text PDFs of papers for offline use. Metadata is preserved alongside the downloaded files.
import os
from pathlib import Path
# Create a directory for downloads
os.makedirs("arxiv_papers", exist_ok=True)
# Download PDFs
download_results = fetcher.search(
query="all:(agents AND cybersecurity)",
max_results=5,
download=True,
dirpath=Path("arxiv_papers")
)
for paper in download_results:
print(f"Downloaded Paper: {paper['title']}")
print(f"File Path: {paper['file_path']}\n")
Use PyPDFReader from Dapr Agents to extract content from downloaded PDFs. Each page is treated as a separate Document object with metadata.
from pathlib import Path
from dapr_agents.document import PyPDFReader
reader = PyPDFReader()
docs_read = []
for paper in download_results:
local_pdf_path = Path(paper["file_path"])
documents = reader.load(local_pdf_path, additional_metadata=paper)
docs_read.extend(documents)
# Verify results
print(f"Extracted {len(docs_read)} documents.")
print(f"First document text: {docs_read[0].text}")
print(f"Metadata: {docs_read[0].metadata}")
The Arxiv Fetcher enables various use cases for researchers and developers:
While the Arxiv Fetcher provides robust functionality for retrieving and processing research papers, its output can be integrated into advanced workflows:
Dapr Agents Quickstarts demonstrate how to use Dapr Agents to build applications with LLM-powered autonomous agents and event-driven workflows. Each quickstart builds upon the previous one, introducing new concepts incrementally.
| Scenario | What You’ll Learn |
|---|---|
| Hello World A rapid introduction that demonstrates core Dapr Agents concepts through simple, practical examples. |
- Basic LLM Usage: Simple text generation with OpenAI models - Creating Agents: Building agents with custom tools in under 20 lines of code - Simple Workflows: Setting up multi-step LLM processes |
| LLM Call with Dapr Chat Client Explore interaction with Language Models through Dapr Agents’ DaprChatClient, featuring basic text generation with plain text prompts and templates. |
- Text Completion: Generating responses to prompts - Swapping LLM providers: Switching LLM backends without application code change - Resilience: Setting timeout, retry and circuit-breaking - PII Obfuscation: Automatically detect and mask sensitive user information |
| LLM Call with OpenAI Client Leverage native LLM client libraries with Dapr Agents using the OpenAI Client for chat completion, audio processing, and embeddings. |
- Text Completion: Generating responses to prompts - Structured Outputs: Converting LLM responses to Pydantic objects Note: Other quickstarts for specific clients are available for Elevenlabs, Hugging Face, and Nvidia. |
| Agent Tool Call Build your first AI agent with custom tools by creating a practical weather assistant that fetches information and performs actions. |
- Tool Definition: Creating reusable tools with the @tool decorator - Agent Configuration: Setting up agents with roles, goals, and tools - Function Calling: Enabling LLMs to execute Python functions |
| Agentic Workflow Dive into stateful workflows with Dapr Agents by orchestrating sequential and parallel tasks through powerful workflow capabilities. |
- LLM-powered Tasks: Using language models in workflows - Task Chaining: Creating resilient multi-step processes executing in sequence - Fan-out/Fan-in: Executing activities in parallel; then synchronizing these activities until all preceding activities have completed |
| Multi-Agent Workflows Explore advanced event-driven workflows featuring a Lord of the Rings themed multi-agent system where autonomous agents collaborate to solve problems. |
- Multi-agent Systems: Creating a network of specialized agents - Event-driven Architecture: Implementing pub/sub messaging between agents - Workflow Orchestration: Coordinating agents through different selection strategies |
| Multi-Agent Workflow on Kubernetes Run multi-agent workflows in Kubernetes, demonstrating deployment and orchestration of event-driven agent systems in a containerized environment. |
- Kubernetes Deployment: Running agents on Kubernetes - Container Orchestration: Managing agent lifecycles with K8s - Service Communication: Inter-agent communication in K8s |
| Document Agent with Chainlit Create a conversational agent with an operational UI that can upload, and learn unstructured documents while retaining long-term memory. |
- Conversational Document Agent: Upload and converse over unstructured documents - Cloud Agnostic Storage: Upload files to multiple storage providers - Conversation Memory Storage: Persists conversation history using external storage. |
| Data Agent with MCP and Chainlit Build a conversational agent over a Postgres database using Model Composition Protocol (MCP) with a ChatGPT-like interface. |
- Database Querying: Natural language queries to relational databases - MCP Integration: Connecting to databases without DB-specific code - Data Analysis: Complex data analysis through conversation |