What is OpenHands?

OpenHands is an AI programming tool that supports multi-agent collaboration to enhance development efficiency and reduce the coding workload for developers. It interacts with the environment by writing code, interacting with the command line, and browsing the web. OpenHands provides a robust interaction mechanism, a secure sandbox environment, multi-agent collaboration capabilities, and a comprehensive evaluation framework. It supports the development of new agents, secure code execution, coordination among multiple agents, and evaluation across various tasks. OpenHands covers 15 benchmarks in fields such as software engineering and web browsing, providing strong support for academic and industrial research and applications.

Key Features of OpenHands

• Code Writing and Modification: Automatically generates code snippets that meet project requirements and allows for modifications.
• Command Line Operations: Supports various command line operations to help with project building, testing, and deployment.
• Web Resource Retrieval: Integrates web browsing functionality to automatically retrieve resources and information needed for development.
• API Call Integration: Simplifies interaction with external services and supports integration with various APIs.
• Code Snippet Copying and Application: Copies code snippets from developer communities like StackOverflow and applies and adjusts them as needed.

Technical Principles of OpenHands

• Event Stream Architecture: Manages agent-environment interactions based on event streams, including agent actions and environmental observations. The state structure encapsulates all relevant information needed for agent execution, such as event streams and LLM call costs.
• Runtime Environment:
• Docker Sandbox: Launches a secure, isolated Docker container sandbox for each task session, where all actions are executed.
• Action Execution API: An API server runs within the Docker sandbox, handling command execution, Python code execution, and web browsing actions.
• Arbitrary Docker Image Support: Supports agents running in any operating system and software environment, based on arbitrary Docker images.
• Agent Skills: The AgentSkills library provides practical functions that basic tools cannot achieve, such as file editing and document reading, facilitating community contributions and agent usage.
• Multi-Agent Delegation: Supports one agent delegating specific subtasks to another agent, enabling collaboration among multiple agents.

Project Links for OpenHands

• Project Website: all-hands.dev
• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/All-Hands-AI/OpenHands
• HuggingFace Model Library: https://huggingface.co/OpenHands
• arXiv Technical Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.16741

Application Scenarios of OpenHands

• Software Development: Automatically generates code frameworks to quickly create initial files and code structures for new projects, such as generating app.py and requirements.txt files for a Python Flask project, allowing developers to focus on core business logic.
• Web Browsing and Information Retrieval: Automatically collects news data from multiple websites, extracting headlines, timestamps, and content, and organizes them into tables for researchers to analyze.
• Decision Support: Analyzes market data to generate reports including market size, growth trends, and competitive landscape, assisting executives in making business decisions.
• Research and Innovation: Optimizes experimental designs by providing various design options for biological experiments, helping researchers determine experimental parameters and steps to improve success rates and innovation.