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Documentation Index

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The SDK package (openhands.sdk) is the heart of the OpenHands Software Agent SDK. It provides the core framework for building agents locally or embedding them in applications. Source: sdk/

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Purpose

The SDK package handles:
  • Agent reasoning loop: How agents process messages and make decisions
  • State management: Conversation lifecycle and persistence
  • LLM integration: Provider-agnostic language model access
  • Tool system: Typed actions and observations
  • Workspace abstraction: Where code executes
  • Extensibility: Skills, condensers, MCP, security

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Core Components

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1. Conversation - State & Lifecycle

What it does: Manages the entire conversation lifecycle and state. Key responsibilities:
  • Maintains conversation state (immutable)
  • Handles message flow between user and agent
  • Manages turn-taking and async execution
  • Persists and restores conversation state
  • Emits events for monitoring
Design decisions:
  • Immutable state: Each operation returns a new Conversation instance
  • Serializable: Can be saved to disk or database and restored
  • Async-first: Built for streaming and concurrent execution
When to use directly: When you need fine-grained control over conversation state, want to implement custom persistence, or need to pause/resume conversations. Example use cases:
  • Saving conversation to database after each turn
  • Implementing undo/redo functionality
  • Building multi-session chatbots
  • Time-travel debugging
Learn more:

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2. Agent - The Reasoning Loop

What it does: The core reasoning engine that processes messages and decides what to do. Key responsibilities:
  • Receives messages and current state
  • Consults LLM to reason about next action
  • Validates and executes tool calls
  • Processes observations and loops until completion
  • Integrates with skills for specialized behavior
Design decisions:
  • Stateless: Agent doesn’t hold state, operates on Conversation
  • Extensible: Behavior can be modified via skills
  • Provider-agnostic: Works with any LLM through unified interface
The reasoning loop:
  1. Receive message from Conversation
  2. Add message to context
  3. Consult LLM with full conversation history
  4. If LLM returns tool call → validate and execute tool
  5. If tool returns observation → add to context, go to step 3
  6. If LLM returns response → done, return to user
When to customize: When you need specialized reasoning strategies, want to implement custom agent behaviors, or need to control the execution flow. Example use cases:
  • Planning agents that break tasks into steps
  • Code review agents with specific checks
  • Agents with domain-specific reasoning patterns
Learn more:

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3. LLM - Language Model Integration

What it does: Provides a provider-agnostic interface to language models. Key responsibilities:
  • Abstracts different LLM providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
  • Handles message formatting and conversion
  • Manages streaming responses
  • Supports tool calling and reasoning modes
  • Handles retries and error recovery
Design decisions:
  • Provider-agnostic: Same API works with any provider
  • Streaming-first: Built for real-time responses
  • Type-safe: Pydantic models for all messages
  • Extensible: Easy to add new providers
Why provider-agnostic? You can switch between OpenAI, Anthropic, local models, etc. without changing your agent code. This is crucial for:
  • Cost optimization (switch to cheaper models)
  • Testing with different models
  • Avoiding vendor lock-in
  • Supporting customer choice
When to customize: When you need to add a new LLM provider, implement custom retries, or modify message formatting. Example use cases:
  • Routing requests to different models based on complexity
  • Implementing custom caching strategies
  • Adding observability hooks
Learn more:

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4. Tool System - Typed Capabilities

What it does: Defines what agents can do through a typed action/observation pattern. Key responsibilities:
  • Defines tool schemas (inputs and outputs)
  • Validates actions before execution
  • Executes tools and returns typed observations
  • Generates JSON schemas for LLM tool calling
  • Registers tools with the agent
Design decisions:
  • Action/Observation pattern: Tools are defined as type-safe input/output pairs
  • Schema generation: Pydantic models auto-generate JSON schemas
  • Executor pattern: Separation of tool definition and execution
  • Composable: Tools can call other tools
The three components:
  1. Action: Input schema (what the tool accepts)
  2. Observation: Output schema (what the tool returns)
  3. ToolExecutor: Logic that transforms Action → Observation
Why this pattern?
  • Type safety catches errors early
  • LLMs get accurate schemas for tool calling
  • Tools are testable in isolation
  • Easy to compose tools
When to customize: When you need domain-specific capabilities not covered by built-in tools. Example use cases:
  • Database query tools
  • API integration tools
  • Custom file format parsers
  • Domain-specific calculators
Learn more:

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5. Workspace - Execution Abstraction

What it does: Abstracts where code executes (local, Docker, remote). Key responsibilities:
  • Provides unified interface for code execution
  • Handles file operations across environments
  • Manages working directories
  • Supports different isolation levels
Design decisions:
  • Abstract interface: LocalWorkspace in SDK, advanced types in workspace package
  • Environment-agnostic: Code works the same locally or remotely
  • Lazy initialization: Workspace setup happens on first use
Why abstract? You can develop locally with LocalWorkspace, then deploy with DockerWorkspace or RemoteAPIWorkspace without changing agent code. When to use directly: Rarely - usually configured when creating an agent. Use advanced workspaces for production. Learn more:

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6. Events - Component Communication

What it does: Enables observability and debugging through event emissions. Key responsibilities:
  • Defines event types (messages, actions, observations, errors)
  • Emitted by Conversation, Agent, Tools
  • Enables logging, debugging, and monitoring
  • Supports custom event handlers
Design decisions:
  • Immutable: Events are snapshots, not mutable objects
  • Serializable: Can be logged, stored, replayed
  • Type-safe: Pydantic models for all events
Why events? They provide a timeline of what happened during agent execution. Essential for:
  • Debugging agent behavior
  • Understanding decision-making
  • Building observability dashboards
  • Implementing custom logging
When to use: When building monitoring systems, debugging tools, or need to track agent behavior. Learn more:

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7. Condenser - Memory Management

What it does: Compresses conversation history when it gets too long. Key responsibilities:
  • Monitors conversation length
  • Summarizes older messages
  • Preserves important context
  • Keeps conversation within token limits
Design decisions:
  • Pluggable: Different condensing strategies
  • Automatic: Triggered when context gets large
  • Preserves semantics: Important information retained
Why needed? LLMs have token limits. Long conversations would eventually exceed context windows. Condensers keep conversations running indefinitely while staying within limits. When to customize: When you need domain-specific summarization strategies or want to control what gets preserved. Example strategies:
  • Summarize old messages
  • Keep only last N turns
  • Preserve task-related messages
Learn more:

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8. MCP - Model Context Protocol

What it does: Integrates external tool servers via Model Context Protocol. Key responsibilities:
  • Connects to MCP-compatible tool servers
  • Translates MCP tools to SDK tool format
  • Manages server lifecycle
  • Handles server communication
Design decisions:
  • Standard protocol: Uses MCP specification
  • Transparent integration: MCP tools look like regular tools to agents
  • Process management: Handles server startup/shutdown
Why MCP? It lets you use external tools without writing custom SDK integrations. Many tools (databases, APIs, services) provide MCP servers. When to use: When you need tools that:
  • Already have MCP servers (fetch, filesystem, etc.)
  • Are too complex to rewrite as SDK tools
  • Need to run in separate processes
  • Are provided by third parties
Learn more:

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9. Skills (formerly Microagents) - Behavior Modules

What it does: Specialized modules that modify agent behavior for specific tasks. Key responsibilities:
  • Provide domain-specific instructions
  • Modify system prompts
  • Guide agent decision-making
  • Compose to create specialized agents
Design decisions:
  • Composable: Multiple skills can work together
  • Declarative: Defined as configuration, not code
  • Reusable: Share skills across agents
Why skills? Instead of hard-coding behaviors, skills let you compose agent personalities and capabilities. Like “plugins” for agent behavior. Example skills:
  • GitHub operations (issue creation, PRs)
  • Code review guidelines
  • Documentation style enforcement
  • Project-specific conventions
When to use: When you need agents with specialized knowledge or behavior patterns that apply to specific domains or tasks. Learn more:

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10. Security - Validation & Sandboxing

What it does: Validates inputs and enforces security constraints. Key responsibilities:
  • Input validation
  • Command sanitization
  • Path traversal prevention
  • Resource limits
Design decisions:
  • Defense in depth: Multiple validation layers
  • Fail-safe: Rejects suspicious inputs by default
  • Configurable: Adjust security levels as needed
Why needed? Agents execute arbitrary code and file operations. Security prevents:
  • Malicious prompts escaping sandboxes
  • Path traversal attacks
  • Resource exhaustion
  • Unintended system access
When to customize: When you need domain-specific validation rules or want to adjust security policies. Learn more:

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How Components Work Together

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Example: User asks agent to create a file

1. User → Conversation: "Create a file called hello.txt with 'Hello World'"

2. Conversation → Agent: New message event

3. Agent → LLM: Full conversation history + available tools

4. LLM → Agent: Tool call for FileEditorTool.create()

5. Agent → Tool System: Validate FileEditorAction

6. Tool System → Tool Executor: Execute action

7. Tool Executor → Workspace: Create file (local/docker/remote)

8. Workspace → Tool Executor: Success

9. Tool Executor → Tool System: FileEditorObservation (success=true)

10. Tool System → Agent: Observation

11. Agent → LLM: Updated history with observation

12. LLM → Agent: "File created successfully"

13. Agent → Conversation: Done, final response

14. Conversation → User: "File created successfully"
Throughout this flow:
  • Events are emitted for observability
  • Condenser may trigger if history gets long
  • Skills influence LLM’s decision-making
  • Security validates file paths and operations
  • MCP could provide additional tools if configured

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Design Patterns

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Immutability

All core objects are immutable. Operations return new instances: 
conversation = Conversation(...)
new_conversation = conversation.add_message(message)
# conversation is unchanged, new_conversation has the message
Why? Makes debugging easier, enables time-travel, ensures serializability.

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Composition Over Inheritance

Agents are composed from:
  • LLM provider
  • Tool list
  • Skill list
  • Condenser strategy
  • Security policy
You don’t subclass Agent - you configure it. Why? More flexible, easier to test, enables runtime configuration.

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Type Safety

Everything uses Pydantic models:
  • Messages, actions, observations are typed
  • Validation happens automatically
  • Schemas generate from types
Why? Catches errors early, provides IDE support, self-documenting.

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Next Steps

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For Usage Examples

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For Implementation Details