Iteration-human-in-the-loop

Author: Wonyoung Lee
Peer Review:
Proofread : Chaeyoon Kim
This is a part of LangChain Open Tutorial

Overview

This tutorial expands on methods for controlling agent execution, including how to manage repetitions of the agent's execution process and incorporate receiving user input to determine whether to proceed during intermediate steps.

A process, known as "human-in-the-loop", enables you to repeat agent steps or prompt the user for input whether to continue during the agent's execution process or not.

The iter() method creates an iterator that allows you this step-by-step control during the agent's execution process.

References

Environment Setup

Set up the environment. You may refer to Environment Setup for more details.

[Note]

langchain-opentutorial is a package that provides a set of easy-to-use environment setup, useful functions and utilities for tutorials.
You can checkout the langchain-opentutorial for more details.

Load sample text and output the content.

%%capture --no-stderr
%pip install langchain-opentutorial

    [notice] A new release of pip is available: 24.2 -> 24.3.1
    [notice] To update, run: python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip

# Install required packages
from langchain_opentutorial import package

package.install(
    [
        "langsmith",
        "langchain",
        "langchain_core",
        "langchain_community",
        "load_dotenv",
        "langchain_openai",
    ],
    verbose=False,
    upgrade=False,
)

# Set environment variables
from langchain_opentutorial import set_env

set_env(
    {
        "OPENAI_API_KEY": "",
        "LANGCHAIN_API_KEY": "",
        "LANGCHAIN_TRACING_V2": "true",
        "LANGCHAIN_ENDPOINT": "https://api.smith.langchain.com",
        "LANGCHAIN_PROJECT": "Iteration-human-in-the-loop",  # title
    }
)

Environment variables have been set successfully.

You can alternatively set OPENAI_API_KEY in .env file and load it.

[Note] This is not necessary if you've already set OPENAI_API_KEY in previous steps.

# Configuration File for Managing API Keys as Environment Variables
from dotenv import load_dotenv

# Load API Key Information
load_dotenv(override=True)

True

In the previous tutorial, we leveraged LangChain's agent components:

Agent: The core component responsible for decision-making.
Tools: The collection of functionalities that the agent can use.
AgentExecutor: The component that manages the execution of the agent.

This time, we will create an iterator that processes the execution steps by accepting user input during the intermediate stages.

First, define the tool.

from langchain.agents import tool


@tool
def add_function(a: float, b: float) -> float:
    """Adds two numbers together."""

    return a + b

Next, define an agent that uses add_function for additional calculations.

from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate, MessagesPlaceholder
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
from langchain.agents import create_tool_calling_agent, AgentExecutor

# Define tools
tools = [add_function]

# Create LLM
gpt = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o-mini")

# Create prompt
prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_messages(
    [
        (
            "system",
            "You are a helpful assistant."
            "Please avoid LaTeX-style formatting and use plain symbols.",
        ),
        ("human", "{input}"),
        MessagesPlaceholder(variable_name="agent_scratchpad"),
    ]
)

# Create Agent
gpt_agent = create_tool_calling_agent(gpt, tools, prompt)

# Create AgentExecutor
agent_executor = AgentExecutor(
    agent=gpt_agent,
    tools=tools,
    verbose=False,
    max_iterations=10,
    handle_parsing_errors=True,
)

AgentExecutor

The iter() method creates an iterator (AgentExecutorIterator) object.

Function Description

It allows you to step through the agent's execution process.
It provides sequential access to each execution step the agent takes until it reaches the final output.

Key Features

Step-by-step execution access : Enables you to examine the agent's execution process step-by-step.

Flow Overview

Let's consider the addition calculation \"114.5 + 121.2 + 34.2 + 110.1\" as an example. The steps in this calculation would be executed as follows:

114.5 + 121.2 = 235.7
235.7 + 34.2 = 269.9
269.9 + 110.1 = 380.0

Using the iter() method, you can observe each step in these calculation steps individually.

During this execution, the system can be configured to display intermediate calculation results to the user and prompt them to confirm whether they want to continue the process. (Human-in-the-loop)

If the user provides any input other than 'y', the iteration will halt.

In practice, some calculations might be performed in parallel. For example, while 114.5 + 121.2 = 235.7 is being calculated, 34.2 + 110.1 = 144.3 might also be computed.

Then, the final result (235.7 + 144.3 = 380.0) would then be calculated in a subsequent step.

This process can be observed by setting verbose=True when creating the AgentExecutor.

# Define the user input question
question = "What is the result of 114.5 + 121.2 + 34.2 + 110.1?"


# Flag to track if the calculation is stopped
calculation_stopped = False

# Use AgentExecutor's iter() method to run step-by-step execution
for step in agent_executor.iter({"input": question}):
    # Access each calculation step through intermediate_step
    if output := step.get("intermediate_step"):
        action, value = output[0]

        # Print the result of each calculation step
        if action.tool == "add_function":
            print(f"Tool Name: {action.tool}, Execution Result: {value}")

        # Ask the user whether to continue
        while True:
            _continue = input("Do you want to continue? (y/n):").strip().lower()
            if _continue in ["y", "n"]:
                if _continue == "n":
                    print(f"Calculation stopped. Last computed result: {value}")
                    calculation_stopped = True  # Set flag to indicate calculation stop
                    break  # Break from the loop to stop calculation
                break  # Break the inner while loop after valid input
            else:
                print("Invalid input! Please enter 'y' or 'n'.")

    # Exit the iteration if the calculation is stopped
    if calculation_stopped:
        break

# Print the final result
if "output" in step:
    print(f"Final result: {step['output']}")
else:
    print(f"Final result (from last computation): {value}")

Tool Name: add_function, Execution Result: 235.7
    Tool Name: add_function, Execution Result: 380.0
    Final result: The result of 114.5 + 121.2 + 34.2 + 110.1 is 380.0.

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Overview

Table of Contents

References

Environment Setup

AgentExecutor