agentlex

A symbolic agent-to-agent language — so AI agents say things to each other precisely (speech acts + unifiable symbolic terms), instead of trading ambiguous natural-language strings.

flowchart LR
    A[Agent A] -- "inform :: risk(vessel-1, high)" --> B[Agent B]
    B -- "query :: risk(?v, high)" --> A
    B -. "unify ?v = vessel-1" .-> B

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Most "multi-agent" systems pass free-text prompts between agents and hope for the best. agentlex gives them a tiny, typed communication language: a message is a speech act (the intent — inform / request / query / propose / agree / refuse) carrying a symbolic term (the content). Terms unify — so one agent's query pattern risk(?v, high) matches another's fact risk(vessel-1, high) and binds the variable. This is the lesson of the classic agent communication languages (KQML, FIPA-ACL) and symbolic AI, kept small and modern.

Pure standard library. Drops onto any transport — an edgemesh /v1 stream, MCP, a queue, a socket.

Domains

Primary domain: AI & ML · JTF MERIDIAN division: ATHENA-PRIME · SAGE

Topics: cognis ai llm machine-learning agent-security python

Part of the Cognis Neural Suite — 300+ source-available tools organized across 12 domains under the JTF MERIDIAN command structure. See the suite on GitHub and jtf-meridian for how the pieces fit together.

Install & try

pip install "git+https://github.com/cognis-digital/agentlex.git"
agentlex demo
agentlex parse "sighted(?vessel, location(36.42, 22.96))"
agentlex unify "risk(?v, high)" "risk(vessel-1, high)"     # -> ?v = vessel-1
agentlex msg   "inform from:scout to:command conv:c1 :: risk(vessel-9, high)"

Library

from agentlex import Message, parse_term, unify, substitute, from_wire

m = Message("inform", "scout", "command", parse_term("risk(vessel-9, high)"), conversation="c1")
wire = m.to_wire()                       # send over any transport
fact = from_wire(wire)                   # the receiver parses it

pattern = parse_term("risk(?v, high)")   # "which vessel is high-risk?"
s = unify(pattern, fact.content)
print(substitute(parse_term("?v"), s))   # Symbol('vessel-9')

Reason over what you're told

Speaking is half of it — agents also need to reason over what they hear. The KnowledgeBase stores the content of inform messages and answers queries by unification, including conjunctive (joined) queries and forward-chaining rules:

from agentlex import KnowledgeBase, parse_term

kb = KnowledgeBase()
for f in ["risk(vessel-1, high)", "location(vessel-1, hormuz)", "chokepoint(hormuz)"]:
    kb.assert_fact(parse_term(f))

# join on a shared variable: a high-risk vessel AND where it is
kb.query([parse_term("risk(?v, high)"), parse_term("location(?v, ?where)")])
# -> [{v: vessel-1, where: hormuz}]

# a rule: high-risk + sitting in a chokepoint => watchlist it
kb.add_rule(parse_term("watchlist(?v)"),
            [parse_term("risk(?v, high)"), parse_term("location(?v, ?c)"), parse_term("chokepoint(?c)")])
kb.infer()                       # -> [watchlist(vessel-1)]

agentlex reason runs this end-to-end.

What's in the box

• terms.py — Symbol / Var / Literal / Compound, with first-order unification (occurs-check) and substitution — the symbolic-AI substrate.
• parse.py — recursive-descent parser for the compact term syntax.
• message.py — speech-act messages (FIPA-ACL-style performatives), a one-line human-readable wire form, and JSON.
• cli.py — parse / unify / msg / demo.

Designed to interop

• humind — its companion: a cognitive NL context engine that emits agentlex messages from extracted intent and ingests them into memory. Together: language ↔ understanding.
• agentmap — map agent-to-agent / MCP communications · agentsmith — orchestrate multi-agent workflows · engram — durable agent memory · edgemesh — transport.

Integrations

Forward agentlex's findings to STIX/MISP/Sigma/Splunk/Elastic/Slack/webhooks via cognis-connect. See INTEGRATIONS.md.

License

Cognis Open Collaboration License (COCL) 1.0 — see LICENSE.

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📡 Interop map — how this repo composes with the rest of the Cognis suite (private-AI backbone, agent language + cognition, domain intelligence).