Facilitating the adoption of the JaCaMo Framework in developing Multi-Agent Systems through of a Visual Studio Code extension

Abstract

An agent is an autonomous software entity with the ability to pursue its own goals or respond to its environment. A group of agents interacting with themselves is called a Multiagent System (MAS). A MAS, in turn, is defined as having dimensions which are the agents themselves, the environment on which they interact, and the set of norms they must obey. Each dimension has its own tools for its development, among which the most used are those provided by the JaCaMo framework. Consequently, the development of MAS presents challenges to beginner programmers, as it is necessary to master the tools for these dimensions by using their command-line interfaces, and the higher learning curve on the languages themselves. Despite numerous solutions to ease MAS's development with JaCaMo, most are deprecated or lack common Integrated Development Environment (IDE) features. Given this scenario, this work presents an Extension for the VSCode IDE that integrates multiple features, including project startup code, MAS execution, and syntax highlighting, thereby reducing technical barriers and improving MAS development for programmers. As a result, we present a downloads metric for its underlying infrastructure, which shows a significant increase after its release, indicating interest in extension and ultimately filling a gap in the lack of proper tools for JaCaMo development.