ag2ai AG2 Beta — capability map
AG2 beta (autogen.beta) is an async, protocol-driven agent framework. The full reference docs live under website/docs/beta/. This skill is the index of sibling skills that cover the common build paths.
When to use
Read this file first when a request mentions "AG2 beta", "autogen.beta", or building agents in this repo and you don't yet know which feature is needed. Use the table below to pick the right specialised skill, then load that skill's SKILL.md for the recipe.
Before you start
Anything you build with AG2 needs three things in place. Get these right once and the rest of the skills run cleanly:
- Install the right provider extra —
pip install "ag2[openai]",ag2[anthropic],ag2[gemini], etc. The*Configclass will raiseImportError: ... requires optional dependencieswithout it. - Set the matching API key —
OPENAI_API_KEY,ANTHROPIC_API_KEY,GEMINI_API_KEY(orGOOGLE_API_KEY). Loading from a project-root.envviafrom dotenv import load_dotenv; load_dotenv()is the common pattern. - Sanity-check the install —
python -c "import sys, autogen; print(sys.executable, autogen.__version__)". If you have multiple Python environments, this confirms whichag2your script will actually import.
Full per-provider table (install + env var + config class) lives in ag2-quickstart → "Prerequisites".
Pick the right skill
| User intent | Skill | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
Build an Agent from scratch, pick a model |
ag2-quickstart |
Agent, ModelConfig, ask() / reply.ask() chaining, providers, env vars |
| Give the Agent a custom Python tool | ag2-add-custom-tool |
@tool, sync/async, ToolResult, Context, Inject, Variable, Depends |
| Use shipped tools (web search, code exec, MCP, etc.) | ag2-use-builtin-tools |
WebSearchTool, WebFetchTool, CodeExecutionTool, MCPServerTool, ImageGenerationTool, MemoryTool, FilesystemToolkit, DuckDuckSearchTool, ExaToolkit, TavilySearchTool |
| Run shell commands from an agent | ag2-shell-tool |
LocalShellTool (any provider), provider-side ShellTool, sandboxing (allowed/blocked/ignore/readonly) |
| Get typed Pydantic / dataclass output | ag2-structured-output |
response_schema=, ResponseSchema, @response_schema, PromptedSchema, reply.content(), retries |
| Multi-agent: parallel subtasks or named delegates | ag2-subagent-delegation |
tasks=TaskConfig(), run_subtasks(parallel=True), Agent.as_tool(), persistent_stream |
| Pause for human input or gate a tool with approval | ag2-hitl |
context.input(), hitl_hook, approval_required() middleware |
| Logging, retry, history-trim, custom interception | ag2-middleware |
BaseMiddleware, LoggingMiddleware, RetryMiddleware, HistoryLimiter, TokenLimiter, tool middleware |
| Test agents and tools | ag2-testing |
TestConfig, mocking LLM responses, simulating ToolCallEvent |
| Persistent memory across runs, history compaction, assembly | ag2-knowledge-and-memory |
KnowledgeStore, KnowledgeConfig, WorkingMemoryAggregate, AssemblyPolicy, SlidingWindowPolicy, TokenBudgetPolicy, TailWindowCompact, SummarizeCompact |
| Observability, alerts, halts | ag2-observers-and-alerts |
BaseObserver, TokenMonitor, LoopDetector, EventWatch, CadenceWatch, AlertPolicy, HaltEvent |
| Send images / audio / video / PDFs in | ag2-multimodal-input |
ImageInput, AudioInput, VideoInput, DocumentInput, FilesAPI |
| Web frontend via the AG-UI protocol | ag2-ag-ui |
AGUIStream, FastAPI mount, CopilotKit |
| OpenTelemetry traces / metrics | ag2-telemetry |
TelemetryMiddleware, GenAI semconv attributes, content capture |
Project conventions for any skill that writes code into the AG2 repo
These are repo-wide rules from CLAUDE.md. Apply them whenever generating code that lands in autogen/beta/:
- Do not use
from __future__ import annotations. - All top-level imports — no function-level imports unless explicitly allowed.
- No nested functions in runtime execution paths (decorator factories are fine).
- No side effects in
__init__— apply them at runtime. - Internal filesystem paths use
pathlib.Path; public signatures acceptstr | os.PathLike[str]. - Common reusable APIs come from the
autogen.betatop-level (e.g.from autogen.beta import Agent, tool, Context); advanced/specialised APIs come from sub-modules (autogen.beta.middleware,autogen.beta.config, etc.).
Beta-doc cross-reference
If a skill's recipe is incomplete for the case at hand, the source docs are at website/docs/beta/. Each sibling skill points to its primary .mdx files in its own "Going deeper" section.