Dharma Agent

An A2A agent rooted in the Five Mindfulness Trainings from the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Dharma Agent is a reflection-and-review layer for humans and AI systems. Its goal is not just to answer nicely, but to help turn reactive moments into wiser and more compassionate next actions.

What It Does

• helps a user reflect on a difficult situation and surface one clear next step
• helps draft a calmer, more honest reply before sending it
• reviews a proposed action, message, or piece of advice for likely harm or escalation
• learns in a lightweight way from follow-ups like "that helped" and "that didn't help"

Responses are rendered from a shared structured result shape, so every skill can return:

• a short acknowledgement
• the most relevant training or trainings
• risks to watch
• one concrete next step
• an optional draft response
• a small practice
• a follow-up question

Skills

Feedback Loop

This repo is aiming at a positive feedback loop:

1. a human or agent brings a tense, confusing, or morally difficult situation
2. Dharma Agent helps slow it down and improve the next action
3. the user reports whether it helped
4. the agent stores a small distilled pattern that can inform similar future help

The current implementation keeps this memory in-process and in-memory. It records:

• session turns
• distilled profile hints such as recurring themes and helpful practices
• reusable intervention patterns with simple helpful/unhelpful counts

Setup

1. Clone and enter the project:

   cd dharma-agent
   

2. Create a .env file with your Anthropic API key:

   cp .env.example .env
   # Edit .env and add your key
   

3. Install dependencies:

   pip install -e .
   

4. Run the agent:

   python3 -m dharma_agent.main
   

The agent will be available at http://localhost:9999.

Preferred agent card endpoint:

curl http://localhost:9999/.well-known/agent-card.json

Compatibility endpoint still used by tests:

curl http://localhost:9999/.well-known/agent.json

Interacting

Any A2A-compatible client can discover and interact with Dharma Agent. You can also test manually with JSON-RPC.

Reflect

curl -X POST http://localhost:9999/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "message/send",
    "id": "1",
    "params": {
      "message": {
        "role": "user",
        "parts": [{"kind": "text", "text": "I feel overwhelmed by conflict at work"}],
        "messageId": "msg-1"
      }
    }
  }'

Respond

curl -X POST http://localhost:9999/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "message/send",
    "id": "2",
    "params": {
      "message": {
        "role": "user",
        "parts": [{"kind": "text", "text": "Help me reply to this message without escalating"}],
        "messageId": "msg-2"
      }
    }
  }'

Review

curl -X POST http://localhost:9999/ \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "message/send",
    "id": "3",
    "params": {
      "message": {
        "role": "user",
        "parts": [{"kind": "text", "text": "Review this message before I send it"}],
        "messageId": "msg-3"
      }
    }
  }'

Report Outcome

If you continue in the same A2A conversation context, you can report whether the prior guidance helped:

• "That helped"
• "That didn't help"
• "I sent it and it went well"

Those updates feed the in-memory profile and pattern stores used by later responses.

Development

Run the test suite with:

python3 -m pytest -q

The Five Mindfulness Trainings

1. Reverence For Life: cultivate interbeing and compassion
2. True Happiness: practice generosity and right livelihood
3. True Love: cultivate loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness
4. Loving Speech and Deep Listening: speak truthfully and listen with compassion
5. Nourishment and Healing: consume mindfully for the well-being of self and Earth