Tyler

A development kit for manifesting AI agents with a complete lack of conventional limitations

Tyler makes it easy to start building effective AI agents in just a few lines of code. Tyler provides all the essential components needed to build production-ready AI agents that can understand context, manage conversations, and effectively use tools.

Key Features

• Multimodal support: Process and understand images, audio, PDFs, and more out of the box
• Ready-to-use tools: Comprehensive set of built-in tools with easy integration of custom built tools
• MCP compatibility: Seamless integration with Model Context Protocol (MCP) compatible servers and tools
• Real-time streaming: Build interactive applications with streaming responses from both the assistant and tools
• Structured data model: Built-in support for threads, messages, and attachments to maintain conversation context
• Persistent storage: Choose between in-memory, SQLite, or PostgreSQL to store conversation history and files
• Advanced debugging: Integration with W&B Weave for powerful tracing and debugging capabilities
• Flexible model support: Use any LLM provider supported by LiteLLM (100+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)

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For detailed documentation and guides, visit our Docs.

While Tyler can be used as a library, it comes with two interactive interfaces:

1. A web-based chat interface available as a separate repository at tyler-chat
2. A built-in command-line interface (CLI) accessible via the tyler-chat command after installation. See the Chat with Tyler documentation for details on both interfaces.

 

Overview

Core Components

Agent

The central component that:

• Manages conversations through threads
• Processes messages using LLMs (GPT-4.1 by default)
• Executes tools when needed
• Maintains conversation state
• Supports streaming responses
• Handles file attachments and processing
• Integrates with Weave for monitoring

Thread

Manages conversations and maintains:

• Message history with proper sequencing
• System prompts
• Conversation metadata and analytics
• Source tracking (e.g., Slack, web)
• Token usage statistics
• Performance metrics

Message

Basic units of conversation containing:

• Content (text or multimodal)
• Role (user, assistant, system, tool)
• Sequence number for ordering
• Attachments (files with automatic processing)
• Metrics (token usage, timing, model info)
• Source information
• Custom attributes

Attachment

Handles files in conversations:

• Support for binary and base64 encoded content
• Automatic storage management
• Content processing and extraction
• Status tracking (pending, stored, failed)
• URL generation for stored files
• Secure backend storage integration

Tools

Extend agent capabilities with:

• Web browsing and downloads (WEB_TOOLS)
• Slack integration (SLACK_TOOLS)
• Notion integration (NOTION_TOOLS)
• Image processing (IMAGE_TOOLS)
• Audio processing (AUDIO_TOOLS)
• File operations (FILES_TOOLS)
• Document processing (DOCUMENTS_TOOLS)
• Shell commands (COMMAND_LINE_TOOLS)

MCP

Integrates with the Model Context Protocol for:

• Seamless connection to MCP-compatible servers
• Automatic tool discovery from MCP servers
• Support for multiple transport protocols (WebSocket, SSE, STDIO)
• Server lifecycle management
• Dynamic tool invocation
• Integration with any MCP-compatible tool ecosystem

Storage

Multiple storage backends for:

• Thread Storage:
  • Memory Store: Fast, in-memory storage for development
  • Database Store: PostgreSQL/SQLite for production
• File Storage:
  • Local filesystem
  • Cloud storage (S3, GCS)
  • Configurable via environment variables

User Guide

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12.8
• pip (Python package manager)

Installation

# Install required libraries for PDF and image processing
brew install libmagic poppler

# Install Tyler (includes all core dependencies)
pip install tyler-agent

For development installation:

pip install tyler-agent[dev]

When you install Tyler using pip, all required runtime dependencies will be installed automatically, including:

• LLM support (LiteLLM, OpenAI)
• Database support (PostgreSQL, SQLite)
• Monitoring and metrics (Weave, Wandb)
• File processing (PDF, images)
• All core utilities and tools

Basic Setup

Create a .env file in your project directory with the following configuration:

# Database Configuration
TYLER_DB_TYPE=postgresql
TYLER_DB_HOST=localhost
TYLER_DB_PORT=5432
TYLER_DB_NAME=tyler
TYLER_DB_USER=tyler
TYLER_DB_PASSWORD=tyler_dev

# Optional Database Settings
TYLER_DB_ECHO=false
TYLER_DB_POOL_SIZE=5
TYLER_DB_MAX_OVERFLOW=10
TYLER_DB_POOL_TIMEOUT=30
TYLER_DB_POOL_RECYCLE=1800

# OpenAI Configuration
OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key

# Logging Configuration
WANDB_API_KEY=your-wandb-api-key

# Optional Integrations
NOTION_TOKEN=your-notion-token
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN=your-slack-bot-token
SLACK_SIGNING_SECRET=your-slack-signing-secret

# File storage configuration
TYLER_FILE_STORAGE_TYPE=local
TYLER_FILE_STORAGE_PATH=/path/to/files  # Optional, defaults to ~/.tyler/files

# Other settings
LOG_LEVEL=INFO  # DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL

Only the OPENAI_API_KEY (or whatever LLM provider you're using) is required for core functionality. Other environment variables are required only when using specific features:

• For Weave monitoring: WANDB_API_KEY is required (You will want to use this for monitoring and debugging) [https://weave-docs.wandb.ai/](Weave Docs)
• For Slack integration: SLACK_BOT_TOKEN is required
• For Notion integration: NOTION_TOKEN is required
• For database storage:
  • By default uses in-memory storage (perfect for scripts and testing)
  • For PostgreSQL: Database configuration variables are required
  • For SQLite: Will be used as fallback if PostgreSQL settings are incomplete
• For file storage: Defaults will be used if not specified

For more details about each setting, see the Environment Variables section.

LLM Provider Support

Tyler uses LiteLLM under the hood, which means you can use any of the 100+ supported LLM providers by simply configuring the appropriate environment variables. Some popular options include:

# OpenAI
OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-api-key

# Anthropic
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-anthropic-api-key

# Azure OpenAI
AZURE_API_KEY=your-azure-api-key
AZURE_API_BASE=your-azure-endpoint
AZURE_API_VERSION=2023-07-01-preview

# Google VertexAI
VERTEX_PROJECT=your-project-id
VERTEX_LOCATION=your-location

# AWS Bedrock
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-access-key
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret-key
AWS_REGION_NAME=your-region

When initializing an Agent, you can specify any supported model using the standard model identifier:

# OpenAI
agent = Agent(model_name="gpt-4")

# Anthropic
agent = Agent(model_name="claude-2")

# Azure OpenAI
agent = Agent(model_name="azure/your-deployment-name")

# Google VertexAI
agent = Agent(model_name="chat-bison")

# AWS Bedrock
agent = Agent(model_name="anthropic.claude-v2")

For a complete list of supported providers and models, see the LiteLLM documentation.

Quick Start

This example uses in-memory storage which is perfect for scripts and testing.

from dotenv import load_dotenv 
from tyler import Agent, Thread, Message
import asyncio
import os

# Load environment variables from .env file
load_dotenv()

# Initialize the agent (uses in-memory storage by default)
agent = Agent(
    model_name="gpt-4.1",
    purpose="To help with general questions"
)

async def main():
    # Create a new thread
    thread = Thread()

    # Add a user message
    message = Message(
        role="user",
        content="What can you help me with?"
    )
    thread.add_message(message)

    # Process the thread
    processed_thread, new_messages = await agent.go(thread)

    # Print the assistant's response
    for message in new_messages:
        if message.role == "assistant":
            print(f"Assistant: {message.content}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

See the complete examples in the documentation.

Running Examples and Tests

Tyler comes with a variety of examples in the examples/ directory that demonstrate different features and capabilities. These examples can also be run as integration tests to ensure everything is working correctly.

Running Examples as Tests

The examples are integrated into the test suite with special markers to allow running them separately from unit tests:

# Run only the example tests
pytest -m examples

# Run only unit tests (excluding examples)
pytest -k "not examples"

# Run all tests (unit tests and examples)
pytest

This separation is particularly useful during development, allowing you to run the faster unit tests while making changes, and run the full test suite including examples before committing.

Example Categories

The examples directory includes demonstrations of:

• Basic agent conversations
• Using built-in and custom tools
• Working with file attachments
• Image and audio processing
• Streaming responses
• MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration

Each example is a standalone Python script that can be run directly or as part of the test suite.

License

This project is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) - see the LICENSE file for details.

This means you are free to:

• Share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes
• Use the software for personal projects
• Modify and distribute the code

But you cannot:

• Use the software for commercial purposes without permission
• Sublicense the code
• Hold the author liable

For commercial use, please contact the author.