Configuration

An agent takes two main arguments, an LLM and a list of tools.

The txtai agent framework is built with smolagents. Additional options can be passed in the Agent constructor.

from datetime import datetime

from txtai import Agent

wikipedia = {
    "name": "wikipedia",
    "description": "Searches a Wikipedia database",
    "provider": "huggingface-hub",
    "container": "neuml/txtai-wikipedia"
}

arxiv = {
    "name": "arxiv",
    "description": "Searches a database of scientific papers",
    "provider": "huggingface-hub",
    "container": "neuml/txtai-arxiv"
}

def today() -> str:
    """
    Gets the current date and time

    Returns:
        current date and time
    """

    return datetime.today().isoformat()

agent = Agent(
    model="Qwen/Qwen3-4B-Instruct-2507",
    tools=[today, wikipedia, arxiv, "websearch"],
)

model

model: string|llm instance

LLM model path or LLM pipeline instance. The llm parameter is also supported for backwards compatibility.

See the LLM pipeline for more information.

tools

tools: list

List of tools to supply to the agent. Supports the following configurations.

function

A function tool takes the following dictionary fields.

Field	Description
name	name of the tool
description	tool description
target	target method / callable

A function or callable method can also be directly supplied in the tools list. In this case, the fields are inferred from the method documentation.

embeddings

Embeddings indexes have built-in support. Provide the following dictionary configuration to add an embeddings index as a tool.

Field	Description
name	embeddings index name
description	embeddings index description
**kwargs	Parameters to pass to embeddings.load

tool

The following shortcut strings load tools directly. Passing a Tool instance is also supported.

Tool	Description
http.*	HTTP Path to a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server
python	Runs a Python action
*.md	Loads a `skill.md` file
websearch	Runs a websearch using the built-in websearch tool
webview	Extracts content from a web page

instructions

instructions: string|path

Supports loading an agents.md file. Can be provided directly as a string or as a path to a file.

template

template: string

Customize the prompt template used by this agent. Supports Jinja templates. Uses a default template when this parameter is not provided. Must include {{ text }} and {{ memory }} placeholders.

memory

memory: int

Keeps a rolling window of memory inputs and outputs. These are added to future prompts and serve as "agent memory".

Supports storing memory by session to enable multiple conversation threads. Defaults to shared memory when not set. See the method documentation for more information.

method

method: code|tool

Sets the agent method. Supports either a code or tool (default) calling agent. A code agent generates Python code and executes that. A tool calling agent generates JSON blocks and calls the agents within those blocks.

Additional options can be directly passed. See CodeAgent or ToolCallingAgent for a list of parameters.