crewAI AGENTS.md

Agent Instructions for CrewAI OSS

CrewAI is a Python based framework for building AI agents and agentic systems. Follow these guidelines when contributing:

Key Guidelines

1. Follow Python best practices and idiomatic patterns.
2. Maintain existing code structure and organization.
3. Write unit tests for new functionality focusing on behaivor and not implementation.
4. Document public APIs and complex logic.
5. Suggest changes to the docs/ folder when appropriate
6. Follow software principles such as DRY and YAGNI.
7. Keep diffs as minimal as possible.

Message Content

LLMMessage.content is str | list[dict[str, Any]] | None; the list form is multimodal content parts. Never str() it — that puts a Python repr ([{'type': 'text', 'text': 'hi'}]) in front of the model and into memory. Collapse a message to text with the helper instead:

from crewai.utilities.agent_utils import message_content_text

text = message_content_text(msg)  # "" for None; joined text for a parts list

Parts arrive from a model and are typed dict[str, Any], so a text key that is not a string is possible. _content_parts_text skips those blocks rather than raising, and names a list with no usable text [multimodal content].

Changing Docs

1. Edit MDX under docs/edge/en/* and reference it from docs/docs.json if needed.
2. Do not modify files under docs/v*/. Those are frozen release snapshots managed by devtools.
3. Do not delete or rename files under docs/images/ as frozen snapshots may reference them.
4. If you want to preview your changes locally, use cd docs && mintlify dev. To check for broken links, run cd docs && mintlify broken-links.
5. After editing English docs, sync translations to ar, ko, and pt-BR before finishing the task. Follow DOCS_TRANSLATIONS.md.