npm package: @recombine-ai/engine
Description: Recombine AI engine for creating conversational AI agents
Author: Recombine AI limited
Latest version: 0.10.4

<!-- cspell:words agentic -->

# Recombine AI Engine

A TypeScript library for building agentic workflows for conversational AI.

## Features

- 🔄 Multi-step agentic workflows
- 🎯 Conditional execution and reviewers
- 📝 Structured responses using Zod schemas
- 🗂️ File-based prompts
- ⚡ Message history management
- 🌍 Context injection using Nunjucks templates
- 👩‍💻 Ready to be integrated with Recombine Bosun prompt-engineering IDE.

## Installation

```sh
npm install @recombine-ai/engine
```

## Basic Usage

```ts
import { createAIEngine } from '@recombine-ai/engine'

const engine = createAIEngine({
    basePath: './path/to/prompts',
})
```

### Creating a Workflow

```ts
// Create message list
const messages = engine.makeMessagesList()
messages.addMessage('User', 'Hello!')

// Define steps
const mainStep = engine.createStep({
    name: 'mainStep',
    prompt: engine.loadFile('conversation/main.txt'),
    context: { userName: 'John Doe' },
    execute: async (response) => {
        messages.setProposedReply(response)
    },
    onError: async (error) => {
        console.error('Error:', error)
    },
})

const myReviewer = engine.createStep({
    /* ... */
})

const myCoordinator = engine.createStep({
    /* ... */
})

// Create and run workflow
const workflow = await engine.createWorkflow(mainStep, myReviewer, myCoordinator)
const { reply, trace } = await workflow.run(messages)
```

## Main concepts

### Workflow & Steps

AI agentic workflow is a chain of prompts where one prompt handles results of another and either
does some side-effects or changes those results.

In Recombine Engine we define these prompts as _steps_. Each step consists of a prompt and a bunch
of related configurations and supporting functions, that e.g. determine whether a side-effect should
happen and what should happen int those side-effects.

#### Step Configuration

```ts
const myStep = engine.createStep({
    name: 'myStep', // Step identifier used for observability
    prompt: 'Here goes your prompt', // Prompt text or file, loaded with engine.loadFile('path')
    schema: zod.object({/* ... */}), // Structured response schema
    context: {userName: 'John Doe'}, // Variables to be used in prompts
    ignoreDirectives: false, // Do not add directives into messages log
    runIf: (messages: Messages) => true, // Run this step or skip it completely
    shouldExecute: (reply: string) => true, // Execute side-effects, if needed
    execute: async (reply: string) => {/* ... */}, // Side effect definition
    onError: (error: string) => {/* ... */}, // Handle error during step execution
    maxAttempts: 3 // Max rewind attempts (for reviewers)
}
```

#### Workflow methods

```ts
const workflow = await engine.createWorkflow(/* workflow steps */)

const reply = await workflow.run(messages) // run the workflow to get the proposed reply at the end
workflow.terminate() // usually used in kill-switch or error handlers: terminates workflow, so no further steps will be executed
workflow.rewind(step) // restart workflow from a particular step
workflow.beforeEach(callback) // a callback to run before each step, e.g. to terminate workflow due to some external reasons
```

## Development

### Setting Up the Development Environment

To contribute to this project, you'll need to set up your local development environment:

1. **Install dependencies:**

    ```sh
    npm install
    ```

    This project uses `npm` as its package manager. If you don't have it installed, you can install
    it with:

    ```sh
    npm install -g npm
    ```

2. **Set up Git hooks with Husky:**

    Git hooks are automatically installed when you run `npm install` (via the `prepare` script). The
    project uses Husky to manage the following Git hooks:
    - **`pre-commit`**: Runs `lint-staged` to format and lint only staged files using Prettier and
      ESLint
    - **`pre-push`**: Runs TypeScript type checking to ensure no type errors before pushing
    - **`post-merge`**: Automatically runs `npm install` if `package.json` or `npm.yaml` changed
      after a merge

### Available Scripts

- **`npm run dev`** - Start TypeScript compiler in watch mode
- **`npm run build`** - Build the project
- **`npm run typecheck`** - Run TypeScript type checking without emitting files
- **`npm run test`** - Run tests with Vitest
- **`npm run lint`** - Lint code with ESLint
- **`npm run lint:fix`** - Lint and automatically fix issues
- **`npm run format`** - Format code with Prettier
- **`npm run format:check`** - Check code formatting without making changes

### Code Quality

The project maintains code quality through:

- **TypeScript** for type safety
- **ESLint** for code linting
- **Prettier** for consistent code formatting
- **Vitest** for testing
- **Husky + lint-staged** for automated pre-commit checks

### Publishing

To publish the package, on your machine in **main** branch run following sequence of commands:

```sh
npm version patch   # or minor, or major – this updates package.json and package-lock.json with new version
git push            # push commit with new version
git push --tags     # push tags, this will trigger publishing workflow
```

> **NOTE:** To publish the package, you must be in [Recombine AI](https://github.com/recombine-ai)
> GitHub organization.