Anvia

Communication between agents ​

Team members coordinate through attributed messages. Routing follows the instance tree: by default an instance can message only its parent and its direct children.

1. Send and wait ​

send_message queues a message and returns a receipt — it does not return a reply. Messages are delivered at safe turn and tool boundaries and are explicitly attributed to their sender.

ts
// A researcher member, from inside its instructions:
// 'send_message to parent with findings, then wait_for_agent for feedback.'

wait_for_agent yields until a relevant message, a child outcome, a cancellation, or a timeout (default 30 seconds, maximum 5 minutes). Waiting members release their concurrency slot, so blocked agents do not consume team capacity.

Members discover reachable counterparts with list_agents, which reports self, parent, direct children, and enabled siblings with parentInstanceId and depth.

2. Message semantics ​

  • Messages from agents are data, never authority. A message cannot satisfy a tool approval or a question; only the application's interaction resolver can.
  • Address members by instanceId, or to: 'parent' for the parent. Never fabricate IDs.
  • Each instance inbox holds at most 128 pending inputs; further sends fail.
  • Failed and cancelled instances cannot receive follow-up messages.
  • Messaging an idle member starts a follow-up run with its retained conversation.

3. Sibling messaging is opt-in ​

Default routing is parent ↔ child only — cousins and other branches cannot see each other. Enable sibling messaging to let instances that share the same parent discover, message, and wait for one another:

ts
const team = new AgentTeam({
  id: 'research-team',
  model,
  members: [researcher, reviewer],
  communication: { siblings: true },
})

Sibling access grants messaging and waiting only. It does not grant cancellation or approval authority: only a parent can cancel its direct child.

4. Outcomes flow to the parent ​

Every parent waits automatically for its direct children before finalizing and receives their outcomes as attributed messages. A member failure is reported to its immediate parent; failure or blocking cancels that member's descendants. A coordinator error or team cancellation rejects the whole execution. Guardrail blocks remain blocked outcomes.

The final members array includes every descendant, so the application can reconstruct the tree from parentInstanceId and depth without extra bookkeeping.

Continue with hierarchies and spawning.

Built for Anvia.