OpenAI Agents SDK
OpenAI's open-source SDK for building agents in Python (a JavaScript version exists separately). It rests on few concepts: agents (a model, instructions, tools), handoffs from one agent to another, and guardrails that validate what goes in and what comes out. A provider that exposes an OpenAI-compatible API plugs in directly, for all agents, for one run or for one agent; the LiteLLM and Any-LLM adapters, which open up the others, are labelled beta by the docs.
Strengths
- Few concepts to learn: agents, handoffs, guardrails
- A run pauses so a human can approve a sensitive tool call, then resumes where it left off
- Web search and file search hosted by OpenAI, nothing to set up
- Python and JavaScript, MIT licence
Limitations
- Outside OpenAI, the LiteLLM and Any-LLM adapters are provided best-effort, in beta, per the docs
- Some tool features only work with OpenAI's Responses models
Best for
- An agent that hands off to specialised agents, on OpenAI's models