is Every agent has a private state. Is the agent of height 1 or height 2? Is the agent's name "foo" or is its name = "bar"? These fields are expressed and saved on the agent's state.

Your agents can have any fields you want. Here's an agent that uses the Monte-Carlo method to approximate the value of pi via randomness:

// LeaderAgent
{
    spawned_datapoints: 0,
    neighbor_points: 0,
    pi_estimate: 0,
    behaviors: ["spawn_samples", "estimate_pi"],
    position: [0, 0, 0],
    agent_name: "leader",
    search_radius: 1,
}

Notice how we use multiple custom fields to store data in the agent.

Getting and Setting State

The state object has accessor methods for getting and setting state.

• state.get(field_name) : returns the value of the field

• state.set(field_name, value) : sets the field as the value

Example:

This behavior takes in the current state and context of the agent, adds 1 to the age property stored on the state, and then returns the state.

function behavior(state, context){
    let age = state.get("age");
    age += 1;
    state.set("age", age);
}

def behavior(state, context):
    age = state.get("age")
    age += 1
    state.set("age", age)

or, using modify

Important: Only the agent can modify its own state. If an agent wants to prompt another agent to perform a state change, it can send a message to trigger an update.

function behavior(state, context) {
    state.modify("age", age => age + 1)
}

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