basic-agents

Basic agents

A basic agent uses a predefined strategy with a simple execution flow that works for most common use cases. It accepts a string input (a question, request, or task description) and sends this input to the configured LLM. The LLM may decide to call provided tools. The agent will execute the tools and send the results back to the LLM. This repeats until the LLM does not request any more tool calls and returns a string response. The agent then outputs this response.

In Graph-based agents, you can see how to re-create the predefined strategy graph used by basic agents.

??? note "Prerequisites"

--8<-- "quickstart-snippets.md:prerequisites"

--8<-- "quickstart-snippets.md:dependencies"

--8<-- "quickstart-snippets.md:api-key"

Examples on this page assume that you have set the `OPENAI_API_KEY` environment variable.

Create a minimal agent

To create the most basic agent, instantiate AIAgent and provide a prompt executor with a language model:

=== "Kotlin"

<!--- INCLUDE
import ai.koog.agents.core.agent.AIAgent
import ai.koog.prompt.executor.clients.openai.OpenAIModels
import ai.koog.prompt.executor.llms.all.simpleOpenAIExecutor
import kotlinx.coroutines.runBlocking
-->
```kotlin
val agent = AIAgent(
    promptExecutor = simpleOpenAIExecutor(System.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")),
    llmModel = OpenAIModels.Chat.GPT4o
)
```

This agent will expect a string as input and return a string as output.
To run the agent, use the `run()` function with some user input:

```kotlin
fun main() = runBlocking {
    val result = agent.run("Hello! How can you help me?")
    println(result)
}
```
<!--- KNIT example-basic-01.kt -->

=== "Java"

<!--- INCLUDE
import ai.koog.agents.core.agent.AIAgent;
import ai.koog.prompt.executor.clients.openai.OpenAIModels;
import static ai.koog.prompt.executor.llms.all.SimplePromptExecutors.simpleOpenAIExecutor;
class exampleBasicJava01 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
-->
<!--- SUFFIX
    }
}
-->
```java
AIAgent<String, String> agent = AIAgent.builder()
    .promptExecutor(simpleOpenAIExecutor(System.getenv("OPENAI_API_KEY")))
    .llmModel(OpenAIModels.Chat.GPT4o)
    .build();
```