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Dspy React Agent Builder Agent Skill

Use for ReAct agents, tool-calling agents, dspy.ReAct, multi-step reasoning and acting, and GEPA agent optimization.

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
2
files
ships runnable scripts
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
119
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/OmidZamani/dspy-skills --skill dspy-react-agent-builder

What comes with it

311 bytes besides the instruction
example.py

The instruction itself

14 sections, as written by the author

DSPy ReAct Agent Builder

Goal

Build production-quality ReAct agents that use tools to solve complex multi-step tasks with reasoning, acting, and error handling.

When to Use

  • Multi-step tasks requiring tool use
  • Search + reasoning workflows
  • Complex question answering with external data
  • Tasks needing calculation, retrieval, or API calls
  • Optimize agents: dspy-gepa-reflective
  • Connect MCP tools: dspy-mcp-tool-integration
  • Configure native tool calling: dspy-adapters-multimodal
  • Define signatures: dspy-signature-designer
  • Evaluate performance: dspy-evaluation-suite

Inputs

| Input | Type | Description |

|-------|------|-------------|

| signature | str | Task signature (e.g., "question -> answer") |

| tools | list[callable] | Available tools/functions |

| max_iters | int | Max reasoning steps (default: 20) |

Outputs

| Output | Type | Description |

|--------|------|-------------|

| agent | dspy.ReAct | Configured ReAct agent |

Workflow

Phase 1: Define Tools

Tools are Python functions with clear docstrings. The agent uses docstrings to understand tool capabilities:

import dspy

def search(query: str) -> list[str]:
    """Search knowledge base for relevant information.

    Args:
        query: Search query string

    Returns:
        List of relevant text passages
    """
    retriever = dspy.ColBERTv2(url='http://20.102.90.50:2017/wiki17_abstracts')
    results = retriever(query, k=3)
    return [r['text'] for r in results]

def calculate(expression: str) -> float:
    """Safely evaluate mathematical expressions.

    Args:
        expression: Math expression (e.g., "2 + 2", "sqrt(16)")

    Returns:
        Numerical result
    """
    try:
        with dspy.PythonInterpreter() as interpreter:
            return interpreter.execute(expression)
    except Exception as e:
        return f"Error: {e}"

Phase 2: Create ReAct Agent

# Configure LM
dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini"))

# Create agent
agent = dspy.ReAct(
    signature="question -> answer",
    tools=[search, calculate],
    max_iters=5
)

# Use agent
result = agent(question="What is the population of Paris plus 1000?")
print(result.answer)

Phase 3: Production Agent with Error Handling

import dspy
import logging

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class ResearchAgent(dspy.Module):
    """Production agent with error handling and logging."""

    def __init__(self, max_iters: int = 5):
        self.max_iters = max_iters
        self.agent = dspy.ReAct(
            signature="question -> answer",
            tools=[self.search, self.calculate, self.summarize],
            max_iters=max_iters
        )

    def search(self, query: str) -> list[str]:
        """Search for relevant documents."""
        try:
            retriever = dspy.ColBERTv2(
                url='http://20.102.90.50:2017/wiki17_abstracts'
            )
            results = retriever(query, k=5)
            return [r['text'] for r in results]
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Search failed: {e}")
            return [f"Search unavailable: {e}"]

    def calculate(self, expression: str) -> str:
        """Evaluate mathematical expressions safely."""
        try:
            with dspy.PythonInterpreter() as interpreter:
                return str(interpreter.execute(expression))
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Calculation failed: {e}")
            return f"Error: {e}"

    def summarize(self, text: str) -> str:
        """Summarize long text into key points."""
        try:
            summarizer = dspy.Predict("text -> summary: str")
            return summarizer(text=text[:1000]).summary
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Summarization failed: {e}")
            return "Summarization unavailable"

    def forward(self, question: str) -> dspy.Prediction:
        """Execute agent with error handling."""
        try:
            return self.agent(question=question)
        except Exception as e:
            logger.error(f"Agent failed: {e}")
            return dspy.Prediction(answer=f"Error: {e}")

# Usage
agent = ResearchAgent(max_iters=6)
response = agent(question="What is the capital of France and its population?")
print(response.answer)

Phase 4: Optimize with GEPA

ReAct agents benefit from reflective optimization:

from dspy.evaluate import Evaluate

def feedback_metric(example, pred, trace=None, pred_name=None, pred_trace=None):
    """Provide textual feedback for GEPA."""
    is_correct = example.answer.lower() in pred.answer.lower()
    score = 1.0 if is_correct else 0.0
    feedback = "Correct." if is_correct else f"Expected '{example.answer}'. Check tool selection."
    return dspy.Prediction(score=score, feedback=feedback)

# Optimize agent
optimizer = dspy.GEPA(
    metric=feedback_metric,
    reflection_lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o"),
    auto="medium"
)

compiled = optimizer.compile(agent, trainset=trainset)
compiled.save("research_agent_optimized.json", save_program=False)

Best Practices

  • Clear tool docstrings - Agent relies on docstrings to understand tool capabilities
  • Error handling - All tools should handle failures gracefully and return error messages
  • Tool independence - Test each tool separately before adding to agent
  • Logging - Track tool calls and agent reasoning for debugging
  • Limit iterations - Set reasonable max_iters to prevent infinite loops (default is 20, but 5-10 often sufficient for simpler tasks)

Limitations

  • ReAct works best with 3-7 tools; too many tools confuse the agent
  • Not all LMs support tool calling equally well (GPT-4 > GPT-3.5)
  • Agent may call tools unnecessarily or miss necessary calls
  • GEPA can improve production quality when a representative trainset and feedback metric are available
  • Tool execution is sequential, not parallelized

Official Documentation

  • DSPy Documentation: https://dspy.ai/
  • DSPy GitHub: https://github.com/stanfordnlp/dspy
  • ReAct Module: https://dspy.ai/api/modules/ReAct/
  • Agents Tutorial: https://dspy.ai/tutorials/agents/

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How to use it

Copy the folder

Take omidzamani/dspy-react-agent-builder from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

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