AD4M

The Agent-Centric Distributed Application Meta-ontology or just: *Agent-Centric DApp Meta-ontology*

• A new meta-ontology for interoperable, decentralized application design
• A spanning-layer to enable seamless integration between Holochain DNAs, blockchains, linked-data structures/ontologies and centralized back-ends
• The basis for turning distinct, monolithic and siloed apps into a global, open and interoperable sense-making network

Core Docs

The main core documentation for AD4M exists here

Building AD4M

Build tools

npm & pnpm

We use pnpm as the root build tool. Since we also need node for some build steps and tests, start by installing [Node)(https://nodejs.org/en/download) version 18. Depending on your operating system and choice, either by downloading the installer or through nvm (which we recommend for POSIX systems).

Then install pnpm through

npm install -g pnpm

(alternatively by visiting here)

Deno

The legacy JS ad4m-executor code, as well as ADAM Languages are run in ADAM's Deno runtime and thus are be build and bundled using the Deno cmd tool, which needs to be installed on the host system. Just follow the installation instructions at https://deno.land/manual@v1.36.4/getting_started/installation.

Rust

Make sure you have rustup installed (follow instructions here). Use rustup to install the latest stable Rust version.

ADAM currently needs at least Rust version:

1.77.0

Rust WASM target for Holochain based Languages

For building Holochain DNAs, which are part of the ADAM bootstrap languages included here you need your Rust toolchain to be able to compile to WASM.

Run the following command to install the WASM target:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown

Other dependencies

Go

Holochain currently depends on Go being installed at version 1.21 or later. Follow the installation instructions on https://go.dev/doc/install.

Make sure go is in your $PATH before you continue. Output of go version should look like this:

go version go1.21.0 darwin/arm64

Platform specific dependencies

Run the following commands depending on your operating system to get all the system libraries installed that are needed by some of the Rust crates that Holochain and ADAM depend on.

macOS

Ensure you have Homebrew installed and then run:

brew install protobuf cmake

Linux (Ubuntu / Debian)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y libgtk-3-dev webkit2gtk-4.0 libappindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev patchelf protobuf-compiler cmake

Windows

Ensure you have Chocolatey installed and then run:

choco install strawberryperl protoc cmake curl cygwin gnuwin32-m4 msys2 make mingw

hc

Holochain commandline tool hc is needed for building Holochain Languages. Install the right version we're currently using in ADAM by running:

cargo install holochain_cli@=0.3.0-beta-dev.39

Build:

In order to build everyting that goes into the ad4m and ad4m-executor binaries, including all the boostrap Languages, run:

pnpm install && cd core && pnpm install && cd ../
pnpm run build

You can also exclude the bootstrap Languages (which will get downloaded through the Language-language on startup anyways, if those are unchanged) and run this instead:

pnpm install && cd core && pnpm install && cd ../
pnpm run build-libs

In order to build and package the ADAM Launcher, run:

pnpm install && cd core && pnpm install && cd ../
pnpm run package-ad4m

(Note that the last step of this might/will fail if you don't have the code signing keys. You can ignore that last error and find bundles in target/release.)

Development

Setup Git Hooks

After cloning the repository, run the following script to set up Git hooks:

./setup-hooks.sh

Testing

Full test run of all packages:

pnpm install && cd core && pnpm install && cd ../
pnpm test

Only integration tests:

pnpm install && cd core && pnpm install && cd ../
pnpm build
cd tests/js
pnpm install
pnpm run test-main

Repo Structure

This is a mono-repository with all components making up a whole ADAM Layer implementation.

• core: Holds the core ontology types, the Ad4mClient and the GraphQL schema build automatically from the core types. This package gets published as https://www.npmjs.com/package/@coasys/ad4m and is thus holding most of the app/UI facing coding.
• bootstrap-languages: Holds all the core Languages used to make the ADAM Layer operate. These languages can be thought of as the mainnet configuration for the ADAM Layer.
• executor: Holds the core JS code, which manages an Agents ADAM Layer state. Their Perspectives, Languages and Expressions.
• rust-executor: Rust binary & library which facilitates the running of a GraphQL server, spawning of Deno runtime to execute the executor JS code. Running and communication with in built holochain conductor. Running and communication with Scryer Prolog engine to facilitate Prolog queries over Perspective data.
• dapp: UI which provides a connection to MetaMask allowing AD4M Layer to create a connection to blockchain systems. UI server by the rust-executor on http://127.0.0.1:<configured_port>
• rust-client: Rust based Ad4mClient. Wraps GraphQL and provides the same high-level interface to AD4M as the TypeScript based version in core. Published to Crates.io as ad4m-client: https://crates.io/crates/ad4m-client.
• tests: JS testing suit integration testing a built rust-executor. Contains 50+ integration tests covering most function calls to an Adam Layer GraphQL server.
• cli: Rust based CLI for either init'ing ad4m init, running ad4m run or communciating with a running AD4M GraphQL server. See it's readme for more details. Published to Crates.io as ad4m: https://crates.io/crates/ad4m
• ui: Tauri based system-tray icon launcher UI which is the end-user deployment; includes the rust-executor & UI to interact with gien executor.

---

• connect: Convenience library to connect to a (local or via proxy) AD4M-executor, potentially requesting or reusing capability tokens and creating an Ad4mClient ready for the app/UI to use.
• docs-src / docs: Documentation hosted under https://docs.ad4m.dev

History

The project started in August 2020 in https://github.com/lucksus/perspectivism, then got broken down into the ad4m (core), ad4m-executor and perspect3ve repositories for simultaneuous use in Flux and Perspect3ve. Other components got added over the years 2021, 2022.

In October/November 2022, these componentes were collected into a mono-repo again to avoid PR-chains across multiple repositories and to have version numbers be in lock-step.