AI Engineering/Phase 14/Lesson 14

AutoGen v0.4: Actor Model and Agent Framework

AutoGen v0.4 (Microsoft Research, Jan 2025) redesigned agent orchestration around the actor model. Async message exchange, event-driven agents, fault isolation, natural concurrency. The framework is now in maintenance mode while Microsoft Agent Framework (public preview Oct 2025) becomes the successor.

Learn + Build 1.3 hr Python (stdlib)

Prerequisites: Phase 14 · 01 (Agent Loop), Phase 14 · 12 (Workflow Patterns)

#Learning Objectives

Describe the actor model: agents as actors, messages as the only IPC, failure isolation per actor.
Name AutoGen v0.4's three API layers — Core, AgentChat, Extensions — and what each is for.
Explain why decoupling message delivery from handling gives fault isolation and natural concurrency.
Implement a stdlib actor runtime in Python and port a two-agent code-review flow onto it.

Full Access lesson

Keep going. The rest of this lesson is one step away.

Unlock all 503 lessons, video, code, quizzes and every future update. Pay in your own currency with Paystack.

See plans Sign in

The text and code of this lesson are based on AI Engineering from Scratch by Rohit Ghumare, MIT licensed.