Communication Patterns

Communication Patterns

OpenMesh supports a multi-pattern communication model that allows agents to interact in ways suited to their task, environment, and trust context. Rather than forcing a single interaction style, OpenMesh provides a unified substrate where multiple patterns coexist and interoperate over the same communication fabric.

• Publish–Subscribe (Pub/Sub)

• Purpose:

  • Decouple producers and consumers of information, enabling one-to-many and many-to-many distribution without prior coordination.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Topic Model: Hierarchical URIs with wildcards and intent tags.
  • QoS Levels: At-most-once, at-least-once, with optional ordering guarantees per topic partition.
  • Topic Types:
  • Pinned Topics: Log-backed for replay and historical catch-up.
  • Ephemeral Topics: No persistence; optimized for transient events.
  • Sealed Topics: Encrypted for restricted audiences.
  • Routing: : Federated relays exchange subscription maps via gossip.

• Example Use Cases:

  • Market data streams
  • Sensor telemetry
  • Collective perception in MAS

• Request–Reply

• Purpose:

  • Enable synchronous or semi-synchronous conversations for information retrieval, task delegation, or contract negotiation.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Built on top of pub/sub with correlation IDs linking request and response.
  • Timeouts and retry policies negotiated in session metadata.
  • Responses may be single or multi-part.
  • Optional (At application level) sealed replies for private exchanges within a public request channel.

• Example Use Cases:

  • Resource discovery (“Which node has dataset X?”)
  • Capability queries (“Can you execute Protocol P@v2?”)
  • Agreement signing and contract finalization

• Streaming Channels

• Purpose:

  • Provide continuous, ordered, and flow-controlled delivery of data between agents.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Session-oriented streams with backpressure tokens to prevent overload.
  • Transport abstraction allows streaming over QUIC, WebRTC, or gRPC.
  • Frames carry trace IDs for observability.
  • Streams can be one-way (broadcast) or bi-directional (interactive).

• Example Use Cases:

  • Real-time video or audio feeds
  • Continuous model inference results
  • Distributed simulation updates

• Inbox / Mailbox

• Purpose:

  • Provide per-agent message queues for direct, reliable delivery - critical for offline or intermittently connected agents.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Addressed via mbx://did#channel identifiers.
  • Channels may be priority-scoped (system, control, interactive, bulk).
  • Store-and-forward persistence at relays with visibility timeouts and dead-letter topics.
  • End-to-end encryption with sender allowlists to prevent spam.

• Example Use Cases:

  • Task assignments to mobile agents
  • Private alerts or commands
  • Store-and-forward coordination for agents behind NAT/firewalls

• Gossip and Epidemic Dissemination

• Purpose:

  • Distribute small but important state updates in a fault-tolerant, partition-tolerant manner.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Push–pull gossip with configurable fan-out for membership, topic discovery, and lightweight state sync.
  • Adaptive frequency based on network stability and churn rates.
  • Used for both control-plane (membership) and small data-plane payloads (e.g., rumors, votes).

• Example Use Cases:

  • Membership tables
  • Reputation signals
  • Rapid incident alerts

• Shared State Boards

• Purpose:

  • Maintain collaborative, eventually consistent state across a group of agents.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Backed by Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) for mergeable state without central coordination.
  • Changes propagated via pub/sub or gossip.
  • Boards can be public, circle-restricted, or sealed for privacy.

• Example Use Cases:

  • Shared maps in multi-robot exploration
  • Distributed ledger-style ledgers for MAS economies
  • Group decision state in governance protocols

• Social-Graph–Aware Routing

• Purpose:

  • Overlay trust, role, and reputational context on top of message routing for selective attention and noise reduction.

• Mechanics in OpenMesh:

  • Agent Graph edges encode relations (trusts, endorses, delegates).
  • Circles define communication scopes with shared policies.
  • Routing prioritizes messages from trusted, relevant, or high-reputation sources.
  • Supports attention boosting for urgent, contextually important topics.

• Example Use Cases:

  • Collaborative filtering of knowledge streams
  • Prioritized delivery in crisis coordination
  • Role-scoped governance communication

• Pattern Interoperability

• A single OpenMesh deployment can combine patterns in composite workflows:

  • Negotiation can start as pub/sub (proposal broadcast) → switch to request-reply (counteroffers) → finalize via mailbox (signed contract).
  • Swarm coordination can use gossip (status updates) → pub/sub (task assignments) → shared boards (state tracking).

• Because patterns share the same semantic and policy layers, agents can mix and transition between them without breaking interoperability.