agents-relay

agents-relay

Stdlib HTTP and Telegram relay in front of agents-harness runner.loop.
One subprocess per turn. Trailer parsing for session metadata. No identity store, no traces, no writes under ~/.agents. Approval decisions and downloaded files live in the relay state dir (AGENTS_RELAY_STATE, default ~/.agents-relay).

---

Quickstart

pip install agents-relay

Needs runner.loop on PATH (LOOP_CMD, default python -m runner.loop). That comes from agents-harness 0.1.0 or newer (approvals, --detached-session, and the {user} approval substitution need it).

[!TIP] 🤖 Agent-Driven Setup: Give your coding agent this repo (clone or URL), then tell it to "install agents-relay and configure it to relay between your chat interface and agents-harness."

---

Architecture

• Subprocess Isolation: One runner.loop process per request. No in-process LLM logic.
• No harness state: No identity storage, no traces, no writes under ~/.agents. Relay files (approvals, inbox) stay in AGENTS_RELAY_STATE.
• Streaming Status: Throttled progress streaming and real-time status edits during long-running tool rounds.
• Zero Bloat: Pure Python standard library (http.server, urllib.request, subprocess).

---

Capabilities & Roadmap

Core Capabilities (Implemented)

• HTTP Turn Endpoints (/v1/turn, /v1/inject): Buffered turn execution with secret header validation.
• Telegram Long-Poll Gateway: Bot API updates with real-time thinking status message editing.
• Direct Outbound CLI (send, inject, approve): Host-initiated push messages, simulated turns, and Telegram Approve/Deny for mutating tools.
• Parallel Telegram jobs: Updates are dispatched off the poll thread. Per-chat cap (default 3) with a queue. /jobs, /stop, /stop <id> kill the loop process group.
• Long replies: Split into several Telegram messages at paragraph boundaries with balanced HTML. No silent 4096 cut.
• Attachments: Telegram photos and documents, and /v1/turn attachments, are passed to the loop as --attach.
• Mobile Formatting: Automatic Markdown table conversion to Telegram-readable bullet lists.
• Trailer Parsing: Extracts session, user ID, alias, and return code from harness stdout trailers.
• Subprocess Isolation: One runner.loop process per request. No in-process LLM state.
• Zero Bloat Runtime: Pure Python standard library only.

Planned (Roadmap)

• SSE Token Streaming (/v1/stream): Direct server-sent events for client web UIs.
• A2A Board Mailbox Proxy (/v1/a2a/mail, /v1/a2a/peers): Peer-to-peer agent relay for board instances.
• Inbound Webhook Hub (/v1/webhook/{source}): Direct ingress for CI/CD and deployment alerts.
• Multi-Channel Adapters: Signal / Discord gateway adapters alongside Telegram.

---

Commands

Machine-readable catalog: python -m agents_relay --help-json (do not scrape --help).

Telegram chats can send /jobs, /stop, and /stop <id> while serve is polling. /stop kills that chat's runner.loop process group (the loop and child tools that stayed in the group).

---

Environment

POST /v1/turn accepts attachments: a list of {"path": "/abs/file", "mime": "image/png"} or {"url": "https://...", "mime": "..."}. A local path must already exist and must resolve inside AGENTS_RELAY_ATTACH_DIR (default: the relay state dir). Paths outside that directory are rejected with HTTP 400. url must be http or https and is downloaded into the relay inbox (20 MB cap). When mime is set, the saved file extension matches it (image/jpeg → .jpg) so the harness can infer the type. Each file is passed to the loop as --attach. Photos and documents from Telegram take the same --attach path. The loop --user for a Telegram turn is the numeric chat id so AGENTS_APPROVAL_CMD can substitute {user}.

approve --user may be a non-numeric turn id (HTTP defaults to anonymous). Then the prompt goes to AGENTS_RELAY_APPROVER, or to the only entry in TELEGRAM_ALLOWED_CHAT_IDS when that list has exactly one chat. Otherwise approve exits 2 and prints {"note":"..."}. A numeric --user is used as given.

approve and serve must share AGENTS_RELAY_STATE on the same host. The poll loop answers callback_query and writes the decision. Only allowlisted user ids can press Approve or Deny. In a private chat that id is the chat id. In a group, list both the group chat id and the approving user id.

HTTP secret headers supported: X-Relay-Secret, Relay-Secret, X-Gateway-Secret, Gateway-Secret.

---

Constraints

• Python 3.10+, standard library only.
• Does not import harness internals. Strictly spawns LOOP_CMD per turn.
• Klanker / host agents own identity and traces. This process is strictly I/O.

---

Tests

pytest

or via standard library:

python -m unittest discover -s tests -p "test_*.py"

---

License

MIT. See LICENSE.