agentform

Agentform is a conceptual framework for constructing autonomous software agents in which behavior is described using forms—structured, declarative templates that encode goals, context, constraints, actions, and evaluation criteria. A form specifies what an agent should accomplish under particular conditions and can be instantiated from live sensor data and environment state. A form interpreter evaluates applicable forms, resolves conflicts among competing forms, and selects actions to execute. The form approach emphasizes modularity and reuse, allowing forms to be combined into higher-level strategies.

In practice, developers maintain a repository of forms, ranging from general-purpose capabilities (navigation, perception, decision-making) to task-specific templates (delivery, monitoring, assistance). At runtime, the agent assembles a working set of relevant forms based on context and uses constraint satisfaction, rule evaluation, or scoring to choose actions. The framework supports tracing decisions to the active forms, aiding debugging and explainability.

Relation to other methods: Agentform overlaps with planning, rule-based systems, and declarative programming. It differs by treating forms as primary design units rather than monolithic code or executable policies, promoting modularity and cross-domain reuse. Advantages include clearer structure, testability, and adaptability; limitations include potential expressiveness overhead, the complexity of form management, and challenges integrating learning components.

See also: planning formalisms, behavior trees, declarative programming, agent-based modeling.