Understand property.json

This file contains the orchestration of extensions. It is the main runtime configuration file.

Graph at a glance

The property.json file contains the following orchestration info,

• Graphs

• Nodes

• Connections

Graphs

The predefined_graphs property contains a list of available graphs. Each graph defines how agent should behave in a specific scenario. Each graph has a name property which is used to identify a graph.

Each graph contains nodes and connections properties.

Nodes

The nodes section contains the list of extensions that are part of the graph. Each node has a name property which is used to identify a node, and a addon property which is used to specify the extension module it will use. You can have multiple nodes of the same extension type in a graph. e.g. you can have multiple chatgpt_openai_python extensions with same addon property, while each node will have a different name property. It's working like multiple instances of the same extension.

Node Property

The property section of a node contains the configuration of the extension. It is extension specific and available properties are defined in the manifest.json file under extension folder. You can use define runtime properties of an extension to customize its behavior. Below is an example of how to configure chatgpt_openai_python extension,

{
  "name": "chatgpt_openai_python",
  "addon": "chatgpt_openai_python",
  "property": {
    "api_key": "${env:OPENAI_API_KEY|}",
    "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
    "temperature": 0.5,
    "max_tokens": 100,
    "prompt": "You are a helpful assistant"
  }
}

Property JSON nodes

Read environment variables

It's quite common that an extension will require api_key to work. If you don't want to hardcode the api_key in the property.json file, you can use environment variables. You can use ${env:<env_var_name>|<default_value>} syntax to read environment variables. Below is an example of how to read OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable,

{
  "name": "chatgpt_openai_python",
  "addon": "chatgpt_openai_python",
  "property": {
    "api_key": "${env:OPENAI_API_KEY|}"
  }
}

Connections

The connections section contains the list of connections between nodes. Each connection specifies the source and destination nodes respectively. Every connection has an extension_group and extension property which is used to specify the source node, and it defines a set of multimodal data protocols(audio_frame, video_frame, data, cmd) supported by TEN Framwork. For each data protocols, it has a list of destination definitions, and each destination definition has a name property which is the key of the property data, and dest property which defines a list of destination nodes. Below is an example of how to connect two nodes,

{
  "extension_group": "default",
  "extension": "agora_rtc",
  "audio_frame": [
    {
      "name": "pcm_frame",
      "dest": [{
        "extension_group": "default",
        "extension": "deepgram_asr"
      }]
    }
  ]
}

Property JSON Connections

In the above example, we are connecting agora_rtc extension to deepgram_asr extension. The agora_rtc extension is sending pcm_frame data to deepgram_asr extension.