A EvolveSAFE
Comprehensive open-source library of AI research and engineering skills for any AI model. Package the skills and your claude code/codex/gemini agent will be an AI research agent with full horsepower. Maintained by Orchestra Research.
Overview
From the repository's own README, as read at the audited commit. Badges and raw HTML are left out.
This document consolidates key information from the official A-Evolve documentation at github.com/A-EVO-Lab/a-evolve.
Table of Contents
- Project Overview
- Installation Guide
- Quick Start Guide
- Architecture Overview
- Agent Protocol
- Benchmark Adapters
- Evolution Engines
- Workspace Contract
- Configuration Reference
- Built-in Agents
- Built-in Benchmarks
- Evolution Algorithms
- Skill System
- Memory System
- Version Control
- Observation Pipeline
- FAQ
Project Overview
A-Evolve is the universal infrastructure for evolving AI agents through self-improvement. It enables automatic, data-driven optimization of agents across any domain using any evolution algorithm.
Design Principles
- File-system as contract: All evolvable agent state lives as plain files in a workspace directory. No databases, no learned weights, no opaque parameters. Every mutation is an explicit edit to a text file.
- Pluggable everything: Three interfaces —
BaseAgent,BenchmarkAdapter,EvolutionEngine— enable any combination of agent, benchmark, and algorithm.
- Git for versioning: Every evolution cycle creates git snapshots. Changes are diffable, rollbackable, and human-readable.
- LLM-in-the-loop: The default evolution engine uses an LLM with bash tools to analyze observations and directly mutate workspace files. The evolver is itself an AI agent improving other AI agents.
- Zero manual engineering: Once configured, evolution runs autonomously. The loop handles solving, evaluation, mutat
6c04b84d00a4OBSERVED · 2026-10-07Install
Commands as the repository documents them. They are shown, not run.
pip install a-evolve # Core
pip install a-evolve[anthropic] # With Claude support
pip install a-evolve[all] # All providers
pip install a-evolve
pip install a-evolve[anthropic] # Anthropic Claude API
pip install a-evolve[openai] # OpenAI API
What it tells the agent
The instruction file, verbatim from the audited commit — this is the text the model reads, and the surface the audit's instruction layer examines. Quoted here so you can judge it without cloning anything.
---
name: evolving-ai-agents
description: Provides guidance for automatically evolving and optimizing AI agents across any domain using LLM-driven evolution algorithms. Use when building self-improving agents, optimizing agent prompts and skills against benchmarks, or implementing automated agent evaluation loops.
version: 1.0.0
author: A-EVO Lab
license: MIT
tags: [Agent Evolution, Self-Improving Agents, Prompt Optimization, LLM, Benchmark Evaluation, Skill Discovery, Agentic AI]
dependencies: [a-evolve>=0.1.0, pyyaml>=6.0]
---
# Evolving AI Agents with A-Evolve
## Overview
A-Evolve is universal infrastructure for evolving any AI agent across any domain using any evolution algorithm with zero manual engineering. It represents all evolvable agent state as files (prompts, skills, memory, tools), runs iterative solve-observe-evolve cycles against benchmarks, and uses LLM-driven mutation to improve agent performance automatically.
**Benchmark results** (Claude Opus 4.6):
- MCP-Atlas: 79.4% (#1)
- SWE-bench Verified: 76.8% (~#5)
- Terminal-Bench 2.0: 76.5% (~#7)
- SkillsBench: 34.9% (#2)
## When to Use A-Evolve
**Use A-Evolve when:**
- Optimizing agent prompts, skills, or memory against a measurable benchmark
- Building self-improving agents with automated gating and rollback
- Evolving domain-specific tool usage and procedures through LLM-driven mutation
- Running iterative solve-observe-evolve loops to maximize agent performance
- Needing reproducible, git-versioned evolution history for every change
**Key differentiator**: Other frameworks _build_ agents; A-Evolve _optimizes_ them. It sits on top of any agent framework and makes it better through automated evolution.
**Do NOT use A-Evolve for:**
- Building multi-agent orchestration from scratch (use CrewAI, LangGraph)
- One-shot agent tasks with no iteration needed (use LangChain, LlamaIndex)
- RAG pipeline optimization (use LlamaIndex, Chroma)
- Prompt-only optimization without skill/memory evolution (use DSPy)
## Quick Start
### Installation
```bash
pip install a-evolve # Core
pip install a-evolve[anthropic] # With Claude support
pip install a-evolve[all] # All providers
```
### Three-Line Evolution
```python
import agent_evolve as ae
evolver = ae.Evolver(agent="swe", benchmark="swe-verified")
results = evolver.run(cycles=10)
print(f"Final score: {results.final_score}")
```
This copies the built-in SWE seed workspace, runs 10 evolution cycles against SWE-bench Verified, and returns the optimized agent.
## Core Concepts
### The Agent Workspace
All evolvable state lives as files in a workspace directory:
```
my-agent/
├── manifest.yaml # Metadata + entrypoint
├── prompts/
│ ├── system.md # Main system prompt (evolved)
│ └── fragments/ # Modular prompt pieces
├── skills/
│ └── skill-name/
│ └── SKILL.md # Reusable procedure with frontmatter
├── memory/
│ ├── episodic.jsonl # Lessons from failures
│ └── semantic.jsonl # General knowledge
├── tools/
│ ├── registry.yaml # Tool manifest
│ └── tool_name.py # Tool implementations
└── evolution/ # Managed by engine (metrics, history)
```
### The Evolution Loop
Each cycle follows five phases:
1. **Solve** — Agent processes a batch of tasks from the benchmark
2. **Observe** — Benchmark evaluates trajectories, producing (task, trajectory, feedback) triples
3. **Evolve** — Evolution engine mutates workspace files based on observations
4. **Gate** — Validate mutations (git snapshot before/after for rollback)
5. **Reload** — Agent reinitializes from evolved filesystem state
### Three Pluggable Interfaces
```python
# 1. Agent — implements solve()
class MyAgent(ae.BaseAgent):
def solve(self, task: ae.Task) -> ae.Trajectory:
# Domain-specific solving logic
return ae.Trajectory(task_id=task.id, output=result, steps=steps)
# 2. Benchmark — implements get_tasks() and evaluate()
class MyBenchmark(ae.BenchmarkAdapter):
def get_tasks(self, split="train", limit=None) -> list[ae.Task]:
return [ae.Task(id="1", input="...")]
def evaluate(self, task: ae.Task, trajectory: ae.Trajectory) -> ae.Feedback:
return ae.Feedback(success=True, score=0.95, detail="Passed")
# 3. Engine — implements step()
class MyEngine(ae.EvolutionEngine):
def step(self, workspace, observations, history, trial):
# Mutate workspace based on observations
return ae.StepResult(mutated=True, summary="Updated prompts")
```
## Workflow 1: Evolve an Existing Agent
**Use when**: You have a working agent and want to optimize it against a benchmark.
**Critical Requirements:**
- [ ] Agent implements `BaseAgent.solve()` returning `Trajectory`
- [ ] Benchmark implements `BenchmarkAdapter` with `get_tasks()` and `evaluate()`
- [ ] Seed workspace has `manifest.yaml` with entrypoint and evolvable layers
- [ ] System prompt exists at `prompts/system.md`
- [ ] Workspace is a git repo (run `git init && git add -A && git commit -m "init"`)
### Steps
```python
import agent_evolve as ae
# Configure evolution parameters
config = ae.EvolveConfig(
batch_size=10, # Tasks per solve round
max_cycles=20, # Maximum evolution iterations
evolve_prompts=True, # Mutate system prompt
evolve_skills=True, # Discover and refine skills
evolve_memory=True, # Build episodic memory
evolver_model="us.anthropic.claude-opus-4-6-v1",
)
# Point to your agent workspace and benchmark
evolver = ae.Evolver(
agent="./my-agent-workspace",
benchmark="swe-verified", # Or custom BenchmarkAdapter instance
config=config,
)
# Run evolution
results = evolver.run(cycles=10)
# Inspect results
print(f"Cycles completed: {results.cycles_completed}")
print(f"Final score: {results.final_score}")
print(f"Converged: {results.converged}")
for cycle_num, score in enumerate(results.score_history):
print(f" Cycle {cyclTrust audit
SAFEgrade B · trust 89/100 Nothing in the source contradicts what it says it does. Grade A is reserved for packages that have also passed the behavioural sandbox.
| Layer | What it checks | Result |
|---|---|---|
| L0 | Provenance & inventory | PASS |
| L1 | Static analysis of the code | NA |
| L2 | Instruction surface (what it tells the agent) | PASS |
| L3 | Class-specific surface | PASS |
| L4 | Behavioural (sandbox) | SKIPPED |
What the source does
- Filesystem
- none-observed
- Network
- none-observed
- Shell
- none-observed
- Dependencies
- pinned
- Secrets in source
- none-found
Findings (1)
# Read the evolved system prompt
Gates applied: no_behavioural_pass.
6c04b84d00a4full audit observations/trust-audit/skill/orchestra-research__a-evolve.json · Report an issue / request a re-scanAudit history
Every audit this skill has had.
| Date | Source | Verdict | Grade | Score | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-07 | 6c04b84d00a4 | SAFE | B | 89 | first audit |
Questions
What does the A Evolve skill do?
Comprehensive open-source library of AI research and engineering skills for any AI model. Package the skills and your claude code/codex/gemini agent will be an AI research agent with full horsepower. Maintained by Orchestra Research.
Is A Evolve safe to install?
The audit found nothing in the source that contradicts what it says it does, and graded it B (89/100). Grade A is held back for packages that have also passed a sandboxed behavioural run, which is why a clean skill reads B.
What can A Evolve access on my machine?
The audit observed no filesystem, network or shell use at all in its source.
How current is this page?
The grade is for one exact copy of the source (6c04b84d00a4), read on 2026-10-07. The repository is watched, and a new audit runs when it changes — this is the first audit.