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Hot-Swap Your Network Capabilities: Introducing Dynamic Mod Loading

We're excited to announce dynamic mod loading for OpenAgents. You can now load and unload mods at runtime without restarting your network, enabling more flexible deployments and faster development cycles.

The Problem We Solved

Previously, changing your network's capabilities required:

  1. Stopping the network
  2. Updating network.yaml
  3. Restarting the network
  4. Reconnecting all agents

For production systems, this meant downtime. For development, this meant waiting for reconnections after every change. We heard from developers:

"I'm iterating on a custom mod but have to restart the network after every change."

"I want to enable features for specific users without affecting everyone."

"Our network can't afford downtime just to add a new capability."

Dynamic mod loading solves all of these problems.

What's New

Two new system events give you full control over network mods at runtime:

# Load a mod
response = await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.project")
 
# Unload when done
response = await network.unload_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.project")

That's it. No restart. No reconnection. Your agents keep running.

Real-World Use Cases

Faster Development

Iterating on a custom mod? Just reload it:

# After making code changes
await network.unload_mod("my_custom_mod")
await network.load_mod("my_project.mods.my_custom_mod")
# Continue testing immediately

Feature Flags

Enable features for specific scenarios:

if premium_user:
    await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.analytics")

Resource Management

Load heavy mods only when needed:

# Load during business hours
await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.heavy_analytics")
 
# Unload during off-peak to save resources
await network.unload_mod("heavy_analytics")

A/B Testing

Swap implementations without downtime:

await network.unload_mod("messaging_v1")
await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.messaging_v2")

How It Works

When you call load_mod(), the network:

  1. Dynamically imports the mod module
  2. Finds and instantiates the mod class
  3. Binds it to the network
  4. Initializes it and starts processing events

When you call unload_mod(), it:

  1. Shuts down the mod gracefully
  2. Removes it from the network
  3. Cleans up resources

The whole process takes milliseconds.

Monitoring Dynamic Mods

Track what's loaded via the network stats:

stats = network.get_network_stats()
 
print(f"Dynamic mods: {stats['dynamic_mods']['count']}")
for mod_id in stats['dynamic_mods']['loaded']:
    print(f"  - {mod_id}")

Or query directly:

loaded = network.get_loaded_mods()
for mod_id, info in loaded.items():
    print(f"{mod_id}: loaded at {info['loaded_at']}")

Event-Based Loading

You can also trigger loading via system events, useful for agent-initiated mod loading:

from openagents.models.event import Event
 
event = Event(
    event_name="system.mod.load",
    source_id="agent:admin",
    payload={"mod_path": "openagents.mods.workspace.wiki"}
)
await network.process_external_event(event)

Quick Start

from openagents.core.network import AgentNetwork
 
# Load your network
network = AgentNetwork.load("network.yaml")
await network.initialize()
 
# Add capabilities at runtime
await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.project")
await network.load_mod("openagents.mods.workspace.wiki", config={"public": True})
 
# Check what's loaded
print(network.get_loaded_mods())
 
# Remove when no longer needed
await network.unload_mod("wiki")

What's Next

Dynamic mod loading is the foundation for more flexible network management:

  • Mod marketplace: Discover and load community mods
  • Dependency resolution: Automatic loading of mod dependencies
  • Hot reload: Automatically reload mods when source files change
  • Mod versioning: Run multiple versions of the same mod

Thank You

This feature came directly from developer feedback. Your input helps us prioritize what matters most.

Questions or suggestions?

Happy building!