Coalescent - AI Collaboration Patterns

High-level AI coordination patterns enabling intelligent agent coalescence through voluntary collaboration mechanisms.

Overview

Coalescent is a Rust library that provides building blocks for multi-agent AI systems where agents can dynamically form coalitions, coordinate tasks, and emerge complex behaviors through voluntary participation rather than rigid hierarchical control.

Key Concepts

• Coalescence: The process by which independent AI agents naturally come together around shared objectives
• Voluntary Coordination: Agents choose to participate in coordination rather than being forced into it
• Emergent Patterns: Complex coordination behaviors that arise from simple interaction rules
• Trust-based Collaboration: Reputation and trust systems that enable reliable multi-agent workflows

Features

• 🤖 Agent Management: Register and manage AI agents with capabilities and metadata
• 🎯 Task Coordination: Create tasks that require multi-agent collaboration
• 🤝 Coalition Formation: Automatically form coalitions of capable agents
• 📊 Trust System: Built-in reputation and trust scoring for reliable coordination
• 🧩 Pattern Library: Reusable coordination patterns for common scenarios
• ⚡ Async-first: Built on Tokio for high-performance concurrent coordination
• 🔒 Type-safe: Rust's type system prevents common coordination bugs

Quick Start

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
coalescent = "0.1.0"
tokio = { version = "1.0", features = ["full"] }

Basic Usage

use coalescent::{CoordinationEngine, Agent, Task, Priority};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> coalescent::Result<()> {
    // Initialize logging
    coalescent::init()?;
    
    // Create a coordination engine
    let mut engine = CoordinationEngine::new();
    
    // Register an AI agent with specific capabilities
    let agent = Agent::with_capabilities(
        "gpt-4", 
        "Research Assistant", 
        vec!["analysis", "writing", "research"]
    )?;
    engine.register_agent(agent).await?;
    
    // Create a task that requires collaboration
    let task = Task::new("Analyze dataset and write comprehensive report")
        .description("Perform statistical analysis on user behavior data and create executive summary")
        .require_capabilities(vec!["analysis".to_string(), "writing".to_string()])
        .priority(Priority::High)
        .agent_constraints(1, Some(3)); // Minimum 1, maximum 3 agents
    
    // Let agents coalesce around the task
    let result = engine.coalesce_around_task(task).await?;
    
    if result.success {
        if let Some(coalition) = result.coalition {
            println!("✅ Coalition formed with {} agents", coalition.agents.len());
            
            // Execute the coordinated workflow
            let execution_result = coalition.execute().await?;
            println!("📋 Task result: {}", execution_result);
        }
    } else {
        println!("❌ Failed to form coalition: {:?}", result.messages);
    }
    
    Ok(())
}

Advanced Usage

use coalescent::{
    CoordinationEngine, Agent, Task, TrustManager, 
    PatternFactory, PatternType, AgentCapability
};

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> coalescent::Result<()> {
    // Create coordination engine with custom configuration
    let config = coalescent::CoordinationConfig {
        formation_timeout: 180, // 3 minutes
        min_trust_score: 0.7,   // Higher trust requirement
        auto_assign_leaders: true,
        max_coalition_size: 5,
    };
    let engine = CoordinationEngine::with_config(config);
    
    // Register multiple specialized agents
    let agents = vec![
        Agent::with_capabilities("claude-3", "Data Analyst", vec!["analysis", "statistics"])?,
        Agent::with_capabilities("gpt-4", "Writer", vec!["writing", "editing"])?,
        Agent::with_capabilities("gemini", "Researcher", vec!["research", "fact-checking"])?,
    ];
    
    for agent in agents {
        engine.register_agent(agent).await?;
    }
    
    // Create complex coordination patterns
    let pattern = PatternFactory::create_pattern(PatternType::Hierarchical);
    println!("Using pattern: {}", pattern.description());
    
    // Execute coordination
    let pattern_result = pattern.execute()?;
    println!("Pattern executed: {}", pattern_result);
    
    Ok(())
}

Architecture

Coalescent is designed as a high-level coordination layer that can work with various underlying communication protocols. The library focuses on coordination intelligence rather than network transport.

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│         Your Application            │
├─────────────────────────────────────┤
│      Coalescent Library             │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │    Coordination Engine          │ │
│  │  - Coalition formation          │ │
│  │  - Task management              │ │
│  │  - Trust scoring                │ │
│  └─────────────────────────────────┘ │
│  ┌─────────────────────────────────┐ │
│  │    Pattern Library              │ │
│  │  - Sequential execution         │ │
│  │  - Parallel coordination        │ │
│  │  - Hierarchical patterns        │ │
│  └─────────────────────────────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

Core Components

Agents

Represent AI entities with capabilities, metadata, and trust scores.

Tasks

Define work that requires coordination, including required capabilities and constraints.

Coordination Engine

Manages agent registration, coalition formation, and task execution.

Trust System

Tracks agent reliability and performance for informed coordination decisions.

Pattern Library

Provides reusable coordination strategies for common multi-agent scenarios.

Examples

See the examples/ directory for more comprehensive examples:

• basic_coordination.rs - Simple agent-task coordination
• trust_management.rs - Working with trust scores and reputation
• pattern_usage.rs - Using different coordination patterns
• advanced_scenarios.rs - Complex multi-agent workflows

Development Status

Coalescent is in early development. The API is not yet stable and breaking changes may occur in minor version updates until 1.0.0.

Current Features

• ✅ Agent registration and management
• ✅ Task creation and specification
• ✅ Basic coalition formation
• ✅ Trust scoring system
• ✅ Pattern framework

Planned Features

• 🚧 Advanced coordination algorithms
• 🚧 Performance optimizations
• 🚧 Integration examples
• 🚧 Web assembly support
• 🚧 Metrics and observability

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Related Projects

• ACN (AI Collaboration Network) - The underlying networking protocol that Coalescent will integrate with
• DynAniml - Dynamic AI/ML framework ecosystem

Note: Replace placeholder URLs with actual repository links before publishing.