Novice in embabel that I am, I am failing to understand the exact mistake I am making

[nirmalya-s]

I have a very simple Agent, which has two placeholder methods: one annotated with @Action and the other with @AchievesGoal. The code is as shown below:

import com.embabel.agent.api.annotation.AchievesGoal;
import com.embabel.agent.api.annotation.Action;
import com.embabel.agent.api.annotation.Agent;
import com.embabel.agent.api.common.OperationContext;
import com.embabel.agent.domain.io.UserInput;
import com.embabel.common.ai.model.LlmOptions;
import com.example.recommender.catalog.JsonCatalogProvider;
import com.example.recommender.model.ServiceCatalog;
import com.example.recommender.model.ServiceDescriptor;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.ObjectCodec;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.type.TypeReference;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

@Component
@Agent(
        name = "serviceRecommender",
        description = "Identify the most relevant microservices by analyzing user requirements against available metadata viz. name, domain, tags etc."
)
public class ServiceRecommenderAgent {

    private final JsonCatalogProvider catalogProvider;
    private final ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();

    public ServiceRecommenderAgent(JsonCatalogProvider catalogProvider) {
        this.catalogProvider = catalogProvider;
    }

    // ------------------------
    /**
     * Action that produces the catalog of available services.
     */
    @Action(description = "Fetch all available microservice metadata")
    public ServiceCatalog fetchServiceMetadata() throws IOException {
        return new ServiceCatalog(this.catalogProvider.loadCatalog());
    }

    @AchievesGoal(description = "Dummy recommendation goal")
    public String recommend(UserInput input) {
        return "Hello " + input.getContent();
    }
}

The `pom.xml` uses this along with usual Spring-Boot Starter:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.embabel.agent</groupId>
        <artifactId>embabel-agent-starter</artifactId>
        <version>0.1.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </dependency>

I have used _0.1.0-SNAPSHOT_ too.

Every time, _embabel_ refuses to recognize the agent, saying that it doesn't see any `@Goal`. Here's the log output:

17:15:00.377 [main] ERROR DefaultAgentValidationManager - - MISSING_GOALS: Agent 'serviceRecommender' must have at least one goal defined
17:15:00.377 [main] WARN AgentMetadataReader - Agent validation failed:
ValidationError(code=MISSING_GOALS, message=Agent 'serviceRecommender' must have at least one goal defined, severity=ERROR, location=ValidationLocation(type=Agent, name=serviceRecommender, agentName=serviceRecommender, component=serviceRecommender))
17:15:00.377 [main] INFO Embabel - Deployed agent serviceRecommender
description: Identify the most relevant microservices by analyzing user requirements against available metadata viz. name, domain, tags etc.

What am I missing? Please educate me.
 

[johnsonr]

The recommend method needs an @Action annotation as well as AchievesGoal. Also it should ideally return a structure rather than String.

[nirmalya-s]

Thank you 🙌 , @johnsonr for a quick reply and resolution. The abovementioned pom.xml and code-changes suggested by you, work. I understand that @Action is required to help the engine reach the goal.

However, this time the shell doesn't appear by default. The doc says it has been deprecated. To work around it, I have included the following in pom.xml:

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework.shell/spring-shell-starter -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.shell</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-shell-starter</artifactId>
            <version>3.4.1</version>
        </dependency>

The application-openai.yml file (the pom.xml has corresponding profiles included to use specific yml configuration; not shown here) contains following properties:

embabel:
  llm:
    providers:
      - name: openai
        type: openai
        api-key: ${OPENAI_API_KEY}
        models:
          - gpt-4.1-mini
          - gpt-4o
          - gpt-3.5-turbo
    default-model: gpt-4.1-mini

spring:
  shell:
    interactive:
      enabled: true
  ai:
    openai:
      api-key: ${OPENAI_API_KEY}
      chat:
        options:
          model: gpt-4.1-mini   # 👈 your default model

The shell appears alright, but it doesn't recognize any embabel command (including agents):

10:06:07.445 [main] INFO  Embabel - Deployed agent serviceRecommender
	description: Identify the most relevant microservices by analyzing user requirements against available metadata viz. name, domain, tags etc.
10:06:07.447 [main] INFO  DelegatingAgentScanningBeanPostProcessor - All deferred beans were post-processed.
10:06:07.449 [main] INFO  Application - Started Application in 3.295 seconds (process running for 3.492)
shell:> agents
No command found for 'agents'
shell:>agent
No command found for 'agent'
shell:>execute "I need authentication and profile management"
No command found for 'execute I need authentication and profile management'
shell:>

What is the way out? Do I have to consider that my embabel application is a server and therefore, I have to write controllers/APIs for interacting with it? Is that the suggested and only way out?

[nirmalya-s]

An update.
After

• Pulling the latest from embabel-agent github repository
• including the following in my pom.xml

 <!-- Embabel Agent Starter -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.embabel.agent</groupId>
            <artifactId>embabel-agent-starter</artifactId>
            <version>0.1.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.embabel.agent</groupId>
            <artifactId>embabel-agent-starter-shell</artifactId>
            <version>0.1.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        </dependency>

• cleaning my .m2/repository/com/embabel/* and
• rebuilding the application (of course, following @johnsonr 's advice on the code structure, as above)

The Embabel shell appears alright and it recognizes commands like execute I need authentication and profile management.

So, it works fine at the moment. Thanks again, @johnsonr . I am closing this QnA thread.