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Create a service with an existing agent

The typical use case that this guide intends to illustrate is where a service owner wants to use existing agents to run its own service with a custom configuration. For example, an oracle service customized to serve data of their interest.

Part of the development process covered in this guide

What you will learn

In this guide, you will learn how to:

  • Create a service configuration using an already available agent on the IPFS.
  • Test the service using a local deployment.
  • Publish the service on the IPFS.
  • Register the service in the on-chain protocol. We will be using the Görli testnet.
  • Deploy the registered service.

If you recall the overview of the development process, this roughly consists in steps 4, 5, and 6. For illustration purposes, we will also be using the agents from the Hello World agent service and we will create a new (but functionally equivalent) "Hello World 2 agent service".

Before starting this guide, ensure that your machine satisfies the framework requirements and that you have followed the set up guide. As a result you should have a Pipenv workspace folder.

Step-by-step instructions

To create a service with an existing agent published on a local or remote repository you need to identify the public ID and the package hash of the agent. It can be some agent that you have developed, or you can reuse an existing agent from a repository. You can browse the list of default packages of the Open Autonomy framework available on the default remote IPFS registry. For this example, we consider the hello_world agent, whose public ID and hash are

valory/hello_world:0.1.0:bafybeicealdcbxjdejskntddizntwqmlpyxa2ujaxnw2cgy73x3swldwcq

You can view the agent contents stored in the IPFS here.

Note

Future releases of the Open Autonomy framework will provide convenient commands to browse and discover existing registered components. For now, we assume that we already know the IPFS hash of the agent.

  1. Define the service. Create an empty folder with the service name. Inside that folder, create:

    • a README.md file, where you can write a description of the service, and
    • a service configuration file service.yaml, where you will indicate the IPFS hash of the agent.
    mkdir <service_name>
cd <service_name>
touch README.md
touch service.yaml
    Example of a service configuration file service.yaml

    The service configuration file service.yaml is where the parameters of the agent service are defined, including the particular agent that composes the service. Below you can find an exampe for the Hello World agent service. You can read the service configuration file section to understand its structure. 

    name: hello_world
author: valory
version: 0.1.0
description: A simple demonstration of a simple ABCI application
aea_version: '>=1.0.0, <2.0.0'
license: Apache-2.0
fingerprint:
  README.md: bafybeiapubcoersqnsnh3acia5hd7otzt7kjxekr6gkbrlumv6tkajl6jm
fingerprint_ignore_patterns: []
agent: valory/hello_world:0.1.0:bafybeihqzkncz7r563lfkots4fphb7abdymdna4ir7in7fsbzjtx6yyndq
number_of_agents: 4
---
extra:
  benchmark_persistence_params:
    args: &id001
      log_dir: /benchmarks
overide_type: multiple
public_id: valory/hello_world_abci:0.1.0
type: skill
0:
  models:
    params:
      args:
        hello_world_message: ${SERVICE_HELLO_WORLD_HELLO_WORLD_STRING:str:HELLO_WORLD!}
    benchmark_tool:
      args: *id001
1:
  models:
    params:
      args:
        hello_world_message: ${SERVICE_HELLO_WORLD_HELLO_WORLD_STRING:str:HELLO_WORLD!}
    benchmark_tool:
      args: *id001
2:
  models:
    params:
      args:
        hello_world_message: ${SERVICE_HELLO_WORLD_HELLO_WORLD_STRING:str:HELLO_WORLD!}
    benchmark_tool:
      args: *id001
3:
  models:
    params:
      args:
        hello_world_message: ${SERVICE_HELLO_WORLD_HELLO_WORLD_STRING:str:HELLO_WORLD!}
    benchmark_tool:
      args: *id001
---
public_id: valory/ledger:0.19.0
type: connection
config:
  ledger_apis:
    ethereum:
      address: http://host.docker.internal:8545
      chain_id: 31337
      poa_chain: false
      default_gas_price_strategy: eip1559

  2. Use a local deployment to test the service. This is the recommended approach in order to test your agent service before you publish it to a remote registry. Follow the instructions in the local deployment guide to run the local deployment. Note that this process should be somewhat familiar to you if you have followed the quick start guide.

  3. Publish the service on a remote registry. This will make the service available for other developers to fetch and use it. This step is also recommended if you want to register the service in the on-chain registry. Read the guide to publish an agent on a registry to learn more.

  4. Register the service in the on-chain registry. By registering the service in the on-chain registry you ensure that it is crypto-economically secured through the on-chain protocol. Follow the instructions in the on-chain service registration guide.

  5. Deploy the registered service. Finally, you can try to run a deployment for the on-chain service that you just have registered. Follow the on-chain deployment guide to have your service up and running.