Sub Agents Configuration

Overview

A Digital Employee can be composed of a coordinator agent plus one or more sub-agents. Sub-agents are attached as nested agents on the underlying glaip_sdk.Agent instance.

In this repository, see examples/configuration_propagation_example.py for a working example (including config propagation).

Key Concepts

What is a "sub-agent"?

A sub-agent is a glaip_sdk.Agent instance attached under the coordinator agent. When building a Digital Employee, sub-agents are passed to the coordinator agent via the agents=[...] field.

How sub-agents are attached

You attach sub-agents using the builder pattern:

• DigitalEmployeeAgentBuilder().add_sub_agents([...])

Configuration propagation (tools + MCPs)

When the Digital Employee is built, it will process sub_agents and automatically propagate tool/MCP configs from the parent to sub-agents when:

• The sub-agent uses a tool/MCP.

• The sub-agent does not already define a config for that tool/MCP.

Notes:

• Existing sub-agent configs take precedence over propagated configs.

• Propagation is recursive: nested sub-agents (sub-agents of sub-agents) are processed as well.

• Currently only glaip_sdk.Agent is supported as a sub-agent type; unsupported types are skipped with a warning.

Minimal Example

1) Define one or more sub-agents

from glaip_sdk import Agent

reminder_agent = Agent(
    name="ReminderAgent",
    instruction="You are a reminder specialist.",
)

2) Attach sub-agents using the builder

from digital_employee_core import (
    DigitalEmployeeAgentBuilder,
    DigitalEmployeePipelineBuilder,
    DigitalEmployeeBuilder,
)

# Build the Digital Employee with sub-agents
digital_employee = (
    DigitalEmployeeBuilder()
    .set_name("Coordinator")
    .set_email("[e-mail]")
    .set_job(
        title="Coordinator",
        description="Delegates tasks to specialists",
        instruction="You are the coordinator. Delegate tasks to your sub-agents.",
    )
    .set_pipeline(
        DigitalEmployeePipelineBuilder().add_step(
            DigitalEmployeeAgentBuilder()
            .add_sub_agents([reminder_agent])
        )
    )
    .build()
)

Notes / Best Practices

• Add sub-agents before calling .build(); changes after building require rebuilding the employee.

• Prefer stable, unique Agent.name values (removal uses name matching).

• If sub-agents use MCPs/tools that require configs, prefer putting shared configs on the parent via .add_configs() and rely on propagation; override only when a sub-agent needs different settings.

• The DigitalEmployeeAgentBuilder.add_sub_agents() method is the recommended way to attach sub-agents, as it returns the builder for method chaining.