OpenAI Agents SDK — Build Multi-Agent Systems in Python

What it is

The OpenAI Agents SDK is the official Python framework for building multi-agent systems. It provides primitives for creating agents that delegate tasks to specialist sub-agents (handoffs), enforce safety constraints (guardrails), and produce observable execution traces. Each agent has its own instructions, tools, and model configuration, and agents can hand off conversations to each other based on the task at hand.

Developers building complex AI applications that require task decomposition, specialist routing, or safety guardrails benefit from this SDK. It is designed for production use with OpenAI models.

How it saves time or tokens

The SDK handles the orchestration complexity of multi-agent systems: routing, context passing, safety checks, and trace collection. Without it, developers build these patterns from scratch with custom code. The handoff mechanism lets you use cheaper models for simple tasks and route complex tasks to more capable models, optimizing token costs across the system.

How to use

1. Install the SDK via pip
2. Define agents with instructions, tools, and handoff rules
3. Run the agent system with Runner and inspect traces

Example

from agents import Agent, Runner

triage = Agent(
    name='triage',
    instructions='Route user questions to the right specialist.',
    handoffs=['coder', 'writer']
)

coder = Agent(
    name='coder',
    instructions='You write Python code to solve problems.',
    model='gpt-4o'
)

writer = Agent(
    name='writer',
    instructions='You write clear, concise documentation.',
    model='gpt-4o-mini'
)

result = Runner.run_sync(
    triage,
    messages=[{'role': 'user', 'content': 'Write a Python function to parse CSV'}]
)
print(result.final_output)

Related on TokRepo

• Multi-agent frameworks — Compare multi-agent orchestration tools
• AI tools for agents — Browse agent frameworks and SDKs

Common pitfalls

• Handoff loops can occur if agents keep routing to each other; set clear handoff conditions and a maximum depth
• Guardrails add latency to each agent turn; test performance impact before adding many validators
• The SDK is tightly coupled to OpenAI models; using it with other providers requires an OpenAI-compatible API proxy