composeai — 𝑓(𝑔(𝑥))

A radically simple, functional framework for multi-agent AI workflows.

• Agents are typed functions. The docstring is the system prompt, the body returns the user prompt, the return annotation is the structured output type. Calling one returns that type — or raises.
• Composition is checked before it runs. pipe(researcher, copywriter) verifies every stage boundary at build time; a wiring bug raises CompositionTypeError before a single API call is made.
• Tracing is always on, and local. Every run persists spans, token usage, and cost to a SQLite store on your disk (./.compose). No SaaS, no instrumentation, no opt-in — the trace is just there.
• Flows are durable. A @flow journals every step; if it crashes — or pauses on a named interrupt (approve("publish")) waiting for a human — resume(run_id) continues it in the same process or a brand-new one, days later, replaying finished steps without re-paying for them.
• Every run can carry a spend cap. Budget(usd=..., tokens=...) is enforced after every LLM call in a run's subtree, and stays cumulative across resume() — a run can't dodge its budget by crashing and getting resumed.
• Streaming and tracing are the same event bus. .stream() yields text_delta/thinking_delta/tool_call_started/tool_args_delta interleaved with the very span_started/span_finished/run_finished events the trace is built from — on agents, pipelines, and flows alike, so a live UI and the trace can never disagree.
• MCP servers plug straight into tools=. compose.mcp_tools(command=..., ...) connects to a Model Context Protocol server (stdio or streamable HTTP) and turns its tools into ordinary composeai Tool objects — indistinguishable from @compose.tool ones, including the same requires_approval= pause/resume.

Runtime dependencies: pydantic + the standard library. Provider SDKs are optional extras. Python ≥ 3.10.

Install

pip install composeai                  # core: pydantic + stdlib only
pip install "composeai[anthropic]"     # + the Anthropic SDK
pip install "composeai[openai]"        # + the OpenAI SDK
pip install "composeai[all]"           # both

The 90-second tour

Define an agent as a typed function. The docstring is its system prompt, the return annotation is its structured output type:

import composeai as compose
from pydantic import BaseModel, Field


class FactSheet(BaseModel):
    topic: str
    key_facts: list[str] = Field(description="Three crisp, verifiable facts")


@compose.tool
def count_words(text: str) -> int:
    """Count the words in a piece of text.

    Args:
        text: The text whose words should be counted.
    """
    return len(text.split())


@compose.agent(model="anthropic/claude-sonnet-5", tools=[count_words])
def researcher(topic: str) -> FactSheet:
    """You are a meticulous researcher. Extract crisp, verifiable facts."""
    return compose.prompt(f"Build a fact sheet about: {topic}")


facts = researcher("quantum computing")   # -> FactSheet (or raises)

Calling researcher(...) runs the whole loop and returns the validated FactSheet. Every call like this is automatically persisted, so you can inspect it from the command line right afterward:

$ compose trace --last
trace 01KXC6RDB8E29NZHEAC2F54M11 — ok — [$0.0150 · 2.9k tok · 3ms]
└─ ◆ researcher [$0.0150 · 2.9k tok · 3ms]
   ├─ ▸ anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 [$0.0075 · 1.5k tok · 0ms]
   ├─ ⚙ count_words [0ms]
   └─ ▸ anthropic/claude-sonnet-5 [$0.0075 · 1.5k tok · 0ms]

No accounts, no exporters, no instrumentation to wire up — the trace (and its cost) is just there, in ./.compose, the moment the agent finishes. See agents for .run()/.stream(), repairs, and resilience knobs; composition and flows for wiring agents into pipelines and durable, resumable workflows; budgets for the Budget(usd=..., tokens=...) cap shown above.

Documentation

Page	What's there
docs/index.md	Project overview, the 90-second tour, and where to go next
docs/agents.md	The @agent idiom, structured output and repairs, tools, resilience knobs, naming/replacing agents, .run()/.stream()
docs/composition.md	pipe, aggregate, map, build-time type checking, nesting combinators
docs/flows.md	@task/@flow, the journal, determinism, resume(), human-in-the-loop
docs/providers.md	Model strings vs Model instances, API keys, openai_compatible, pricing, reasoning-model gotchas
docs/observability.md	The local tracing model, every compose CLI command, --import, COMPOSE_TRACE_CONTENT
docs/budgets.md	Budget(usd=, tokens=), what counts, cumulative spend across resume(), BudgetExceededError
docs/testing.md	FakeModel, cassettes, @agent(cache=True), reset_registries()
docs/mcp.md	Connect MCP servers' tools to your agents

Rules of the road

The contracts composeai holds you to — and the ones it holds itself to:

• Flow bodies must be deterministic. Replay works by re-running the body and substituting journaled step results in call order. Side effects, randomness, and clock reads belong inside @task/@agent steps, never in the flow body itself. Nothing detects a violation; it just won't replay correctly.
• A step journals only after it returns. If the process dies between a task's external side effect and its journal write, resume re-runs that task — make external side effects idempotent.
• Journals are for pause/approval and crash recovery, not cross-release storage. If a @flow's source changes between pause and resume, resume() fails loud with ResumeMismatchError (the journal may no longer match the new call sequence); allow_code_change=True overrides it deliberately.
• State lives at COMPOSE_DIR (default ./.compose). COMPOSE_TRACE_CONTENT=0 stops spans from capturing input/output payloads — usage, status, and timing are always recorded regardless. This does not extend to anything composeai needs as functional state to actually work, all of which are written in full unconditionally, regardless of COMPOSE_TRACE_CONTENT: a paused agent's agent_state snapshot (durable pause/resume — approve()/ask_human()/@tool(requires_approval=True) — requires the full in-progress conversation, including tool call arguments and results, so resume() can continue exactly where it left off); the @flow journal (step results must be real to replay correctly); and the test kit's own on-disk artifacts — record_cassette/the cassette fixture and @compose.agent(cache=True)'s filesystem response cache both need a call's real request/response to be replayable or servable as a cache hit later. If your tools handle secrets/PII in their arguments or results, treat {COMPOSE_DIR} (runs.db, cache/, and any cassette files you commit) as sensitive (filesystem permissions, encryption at rest, etc.) rather than relying on COMPOSE_TRACE_CONTENT to keep it out of the store.
• temperature is passthrough-only. composeai never sets one for you, and modern Claude models reject sampling parameters with a 400 — leave it unset for Claude.
• Cost is never fabricated. Priced models get exact USD from a dated, in-repo price table; calls with no known price report cost_usd=None, and any total that includes them renders as a ≥$X partial (or - when nothing was priceable) instead of a made-up number. USD budgets consequently can't see unpriced spend — set a token budget too if you need a hard cap.
• Retries can re-stream. With retries > 0, a provider error striking mid-stream re-runs the call from the start — consumers of .stream() may see the same deltas twice on one llm span. Render final outputs (or treat a fresh delta burst as a reset) if double-rendering matters.

vs. the alternatives

	LangChain / LangGraph	composeai
Core architecture	Configuration & state graphs (Runnable, StateGraph)	Plain typed functions, composed with pipe/aggregate/map
Learning curve	A proprietary class ecosystem	Decorators on regular functions and pydantic types
Wiring bugs surface	At runtime, mid-graph	At composition time, before any API call
Debugging	Deeply nested framework traces	A breakpoint between two functions; local trace trees with exact costs
Observability	External/SaaS platforms, opt-in callbacks	Always-on local SQLite tracing + a CLI, zero setup
Durability & HITL	Separate checkpointer/orchestrator machinery	Journaled @flow + named interrupts, one resume()
Dependencies	Heavy transitive footprint	pydantic + stdlib; provider SDKs as optional extras

Roadmap

• OpenTelemetry exporter (the span model already tracks gen_ai.* attribute conventions)
• Async API (await agent(...), async tools)
• TypeScript sibling package
• Extended-thinking / reasoning request configuration (Anthropic thinking budget, OpenAI reasoning.summary/encrypted_content) -- today ThinkingPart only round-trips whatever a provider returns unprompted by default; there's no ModelRequest field to actually ask for it

License

MIT