Standard library and core types
The standard library of AEL, the Agent Engineering Language, will come with the language: the core types, the operations on them, and the clients a program needs to reach models and web APIs, with no package to add. This section describes what Beta 0.0.1 will provide, one subject per page.
Status
Planned for AEL Beta 0.0.1. AEL is not available yet.
The pages
-
Numbers
The integer types, their literals and operators, wrapping and saturating operations, and checked conversions.
-
Text and collections
Bounded text, bounded lists and fixed arrays, and the operations on each.
-
Results and errors
Option,Result, the built-in error types, and how library operations report failure. -
Console and logging
Printing, console input, the time and token summary, and structured logs.
-
Time
Monotonic and wall-clock time, deadlines, timers and schedules.
-
Files and processes
Reading and writing files, and running your own programs as typed tools.
-
HTTP client
Calling web APIs over HTTP and HTTPS without a server package.
-
Model client
The built-in client for OpenAI-compatible model APIs.
-
JSON
How typed values will be read from and written to JSON.
-
Testing
Tests, mock and recorded model responses, and prompt evaluations.
What the library will give you
- Predictable memory. Collections will have a fixed capacity, written in their type, a full collection will return an explicit result, and small devices will need no heap.
- Models without extra software. A built-in client for OpenAI-compatible APIs, including realtime sessions, will come with the language, with explicit or default parameters and no server or SDK to add.
- Many requests, few threads. A multi-core, nonblocking runtime will need no thread per user, and programs that don't need worker threads won't get them.
- Failures you can see. Operations that can fail will return a typed result that you handle, and each page states the limits of what it describes.
How this reference names operations
Each page describes an operation by what it does, what it takes and what it returns. The types are named as they will be, such as Str<N>, Vec<T, N> and Result<T, E>, and Types in the language guide introduces each of them. The names of the operations themselves will be added once the beta's library is final, so the examples in this section show types, declarations and the handling of results rather than calls to named library operations.
Every example is preview syntax. The library is planned, and its spelling may change before launch.
Described elsewhere
- Mailboxes, requests, timers and supervision: Concurrency in the language guide.
- What code may do, and the effects and capabilities the library's operations need: Effects and capabilities.
- The MCP client and tools: Tools and MCP; model policies: Models and providers.
- Servers, running other programs, science, robotics and quantum computing: the optional official packages in Packages.
- Hardware access on microcontroller boards: Platforms and deployment.