crewAI README

The project's README from github.com/crewAIInc/crewAI. As one markdown file: README.md.

Open source Multi-AI Agent orchestration framework

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Fast and Flexible Multi-Agent Automation Framework

CrewAI is an open-source Python framework with high-level abstractions and low-level APIs for building production-ready multi-agent workflows. It gives developers autonomous agent collaboration through Crews and precise, event-driven control through Flows.

With over 100,000 developers certified through our community courses at learn.crewai.com, CrewAI is rapidly becoming the standard for production-ready agentic automation.

CrewAI AMP Suite

For organizations that need a commercial control plane around CrewAI, CrewAI AMP Suite adds managed deployment, observability, governance, security, and enterprise support.

You can try one part of the suite, the Crew Control Plane, for free.

Crew Control Plane Key Features:

CrewAI AMP is designed for enterprises seeking a powerful, reliable solution to transform complex business processes into efficient, intelligent automations.

Table of contents

Build with AI

Using an AI coding agent? Teach it CrewAI best practices in one command:

Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add crewAIInc/skills
/plugin install crewai-skills@crewai-plugins
/reload-plugins

Four skills that activate automatically when you ask relevant CrewAI questions:

Skill When it runs
getting-started Scaffolding new projects, choosing between LLM.call() / Agent / Crew / Flow, wiring crew.jsonc / main.py
design-agent Configuring agents — role, goal, backstory, tools, LLMs, memory, guardrails
design-task Writing task descriptions, dependencies, structured output (output_pydantic, output_json), human review
ask-docs Querying the live CrewAI docs MCP server for up-to-date API details

Cursor, Codex, Windsurf, and others (skills.sh):

npx skills add crewaiinc/skills

This installs the official CrewAI Skills — structured instructions that teach coding agents how to scaffold Flows, configure Crews, design agents and tasks, and follow CrewAI patterns.

Why CrewAI?

CrewAI Logo

CrewAI unlocks the true potential of multi-agent automation, delivering speed, flexibility, and control through Crews of AI agents and event-driven Flows:

CrewAI empowers developers and teams to build intelligent automations that balance simplicity, flexibility, and production-grade control.

Getting Started

Setup and run your first CrewAI agents by following this tutorial.

CrewAI Getting Started Tutorial

Learning Resources

Learn CrewAI through our comprehensive courses:

Understanding Flows and Crews

CrewAI offers two powerful, complementary approaches that work seamlessly together to build sophisticated AI applications:

  1. Crews: Teams of AI agents with true autonomy and agency, working together to accomplish complex tasks through role-based collaboration. Crews enable:

    • Natural, autonomous decision-making between agents
    • Dynamic task delegation and collaboration
    • Specialized roles with defined goals and expertise
    • Flexible problem-solving approaches
  2. Flows: Production-ready, event-driven workflows that deliver precise control over complex automations. Flows provide:

    • Fine-grained control over execution paths for real-world scenarios
    • Secure, consistent state management between tasks
    • Clean integration of AI agents with production Python code
    • Conditional branching for complex business logic

The true power of CrewAI emerges when combining Crews and Flows. This synergy allows you to:

Getting Started with Installation

To get started with CrewAI, follow these simple steps. The full walkthrough lives in the installation guide.

1. Installation

CrewAI requires Python >=3.10 and <3.14. Check your version with:

python3 --version

CrewAI uses UV for dependency management and package handling. If you haven't installed uv yet, install it first.

macOS/Linux:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

If your system doesn't have curl, you can use wget:

wget -qO- https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

Windows:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

If you run into any issues, refer to UV's installation guide.

Then install the CrewAI CLI:

uv tool install crewai

If you encounter a PATH warning, run:

uv tool update-shell

If you encounter the chroma-hnswlib==0.7.6 build error (fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'float.h') on Windows, install Visual Studio Build Tools with Desktop development with C++.

Verify the install:

uv tool list

You should see something like:

crewai v0.102.0
- crewai

To upgrade the global CLI later:

uv tool install crewai --upgrade

This upgrades the global crewai CLI tool only. To upgrade the crewai version inside a project's virtual environment, see Upgrading CrewAI in a project.

2. Setting Up Your Crew

crewai create crew creates a JSON-first crew project. Agents live in agents/*.jsonc, tasks and crew-level settings live in crew.jsonc, and crewai run loads that JSON definition directly.

crewai create crew <project_name>

This command creates a new project folder with the following structure:

my_project/
├── .gitignore
├── .env
├── agents/
│   └── researcher.jsonc
├── crew.jsonc
├── knowledge/
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
├── skills/
└── tools/

If you need the older Python/YAML scaffold with crew.py, config/agents.yaml, and config/tasks.yaml, run:

crewai create crew <project_name> --classic

See Using Annotations for the classic pattern.

To customize your project, you can:

Use {placeholder} values in agent and task text, then set defaults in crew.jsonc under inputs. When you run crewai run, the CLI prompts for any missing values.

Example of a simple crew with a sequential process:

crewai create crew latest-ai-development
cd latest_ai_development

Then edit the generated files:

agents/researcher.jsonc

{
  "role": "{topic} Senior Data Researcher",
  "goal": "Uncover cutting-edge developments in {topic}",
  "backstory": "You're a seasoned researcher who finds relevant information and presents it clearly.",
  "llm": "openai/gpt-4o",
  "tools": ["SerperDevTool"],
  "settings": {
    "verbose": true
  }
}

agents/reporting_analyst.jsonc

{
  "role": "{topic} Reporting Analyst",
  "goal": "Create detailed reports based on {topic} data analysis and research findings",
  "backstory": "You're a meticulous analyst who turns complex data into clear, concise reports.",
  "llm": "openai/gpt-4o",
  "settings": {
    "verbose": true
  }
}

crew.jsonc

{
  "name": "Latest AI Development",
  "agents": ["researcher", "reporting_analyst"],
  "tasks": [
    {
      "name": "research_task",
      "description": "Conduct thorough research about {topic}. Find recent, relevant information.",
      "expected_output": "A list with 10 bullet points of the most relevant information about {topic}.",
      "agent": "researcher"
    },
    {
      "name": "reporting_task",
      "description": "Review the research and expand each topic into a full section for a report.",
      "expected_output": "A markdown report with the main topics, each with a full section of information. No fenced code blocks around the whole document.",
      "agent": "reporting_analyst",
      "context": ["research_task"],
      "output_file": "output/report.md",
      "markdown": true
    }
  ],
  "process": "sequential",
  "verbose": true,
  "inputs": {
    "topic": "AI Agents"
  }
}

3. Running Your Crew

Before running your crew, set the required keys in your .env file:

Then install dependencies and run from the project directory:

crewai install
crewai run

If you need additional packages, use uv add <package-name>.

You should see the output in the console, and output/report.md should be created in the project root.

In addition to the sequential process, you can use the hierarchical process, which automatically assigns a manager to the defined crew to properly coordinate the planning and execution of tasks through delegation and validation of results. See more about the processes here.

For a Flow-first walkthrough, see the Quickstart.

Key Features

CrewAI gives developers a practical foundation for building agentic systems that move from prototype to production: autonomous collaboration where it helps, explicit workflow control where it matters, and Python-native customization throughout.

Choose CrewAI to build powerful, adaptable, and production-ready AI automations.

Examples

You can test different real life examples of AI crews in the CrewAI-examples repo:

Quick Tutorial

CrewAI Tutorial

Write Job Descriptions

Check out code for this example or watch a video below:

Jobs postings

Trip Planner

Check out code for this example or watch a video below:

Trip Planner

Stock Analysis

Check out code for this example or watch a video below:

Stock Analysis

Using Crews and Flows Together

CrewAI's power truly shines when combining Crews with Flows to create sophisticated automation pipelines. CrewAI flows support logical operators like or_ and and_ to combine multiple conditions. This can be used with @start, @listen, or @router decorators to create complex triggering conditions.

Here's how you can orchestrate multiple Crews within a Flow:

from crewai.flow.flow import Flow, listen, start, router, or_
from crewai import Crew, Agent, Task, Process
from pydantic import BaseModel

# Define structured state for precise control
class MarketState(BaseModel):
    sentiment: str = "neutral"
    confidence: float = 0.0
    recommendations: list = []

class AdvancedAnalysisFlow(Flow[MarketState]):
    @start()
    def fetch_market_data(self):
        # Demonstrate low-level control with structured state
        self.state.sentiment = "analyzing"
        return {"sector": "tech", "timeframe": "1W"}  # These parameters match the task description template

    @listen(fetch_market_data)
    def analyze_with_crew(self, market_data):
        # Show crew agency through specialized roles
        analyst = Agent(
            role="Senior Market Analyst",
            goal="Conduct deep market analysis with expert insight",
            backstory="You're a veteran analyst known for identifying subtle market patterns"
        )
        researcher = Agent(
            role="Data Researcher",
            goal="Gather and validate supporting market data",
            backstory="You excel at finding and correlating multiple data sources"
        )

        analysis_task = Task(
            description="Analyze {sector} sector data for the past {timeframe}",
            

crewAI (crewAIInc/crewAI)

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59.8K ·GitHub
What is this?CrewAI is an open-source Python framework for orchestrating role-playing, autonomous AI agents that collaborate as 'Crews' or run as event-driven 'Flows' to automate complex tasks.
Is it a framework or a library, and how does Crews differ from Flows?It's a framework with two complementary building blocks: Crews give teams of AI agents autonomy to collaborate through role-based decision-making, while Flows are event-driven workflows offering precise, deterministic control with state and branching.
How do I get a crew running?Install Python 3.10+, create a project, configure agents and tasks in files like crew.jsonc and main.py, set your API keys in .env, then run `crewai run` from the project directory.
Do I need a specific LLM provider or extra API keys?You need an API key for whichever model provider you connect (OpenAI-compatible or others via LLM setup), and a Serper.dev API key if you use web search tools.
What's the main difference between the free framework and CrewAI AMP?The core framework is free and open-source, but observability, governance, security, enterprise support and managed deployment live in the paid CrewAI AMP Suite; only the Crew Control Plane piece has a free tier.
Who is this for and when should I use CrewAI instead of something simpler?It's aimed at Python developers building anything from simple automations to production-grade multi-agent systems, letting you choose autonomous collaboration (Crews), strict control (Flows), or both together.
Can CrewAI agents use MCP tools or talk to other agent frameworks?Yes, CrewAI supports MCP and A2A (agent-to-agent) protocols so agents can use external tool servers and interoperate with other agent systems.
What coding agents does CrewAI provide skills for?CrewAI ships official skills for Claude Code (auto-activating skills like getting-started, design-agent, design-task, ask-docs) and installable skills via skills.sh for Cursor, Codex, Windsurf and others.
Can I mix hierarchical and sequential execution in a crew?Yes, besides the default sequential process you can use a hierarchical process where CrewAI automatically assigns a manager agent to delegate and validate tasks among the crew.
Is there a community or learning path for CrewAI?Yes, CrewAI offers courses at learn.crewai.com, with over 100,000 developers certified through courses covering multi-agent fundamentals and advanced use cases.
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