Smolagents

Smolagents is Hugging Face's minimalist framework for building AI agents in Python. It focuses on simplicity — agents write and execute Python code directly rather than using complex tool-calling schemas, making them more flexible and debuggable.

• Code-writing agents — agents generate and execute Python code to solve tasks
• Minimal abstraction — lightweight design with few dependencies
• MCP support — connect to Model Context Protocol tool servers
• Multi-model — works with any LLM via Hugging Face Inference API or local models

Developers who prefer simplicity over heavy frameworks use Smolagents as an alternative to LangChain or CrewAI for agent workflows.

1. Install:

   pip install smolagents

2. Create a basic agent:

   from smolagents import CodeAgent, HfApiModel
   agent = CodeAgent(model=HfApiModel())
   agent.run('What is the weather in Paris?')

Free and open-source. Uses Hugging Face Inference API by default (free tier available) or any local model.