How It Works

Learn how RL Swarm functions under the hood, from GenRL’s modular architecture to multi-agent learning, coordination, and reward cycles.

Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement Learning (RL) enables agents to learn optimal actions through feedback. RL Swarm extends this paradigm into a collaborative, distributed setting, where many agents train and critique together instead of working alone.

RL in Action

Reinforcement Learning (RL) continues to prove its power in solving complex problems, from optimizing systems to training intelligent agents.

As we push the boundaries, especially in scenarios involving multiple interacting agents, the need for robust and flexible environments becomes even more critical.

Our core philosophy is to provide a highly customisable and scalable platform that addresses the limitations often encountered when building multi-agent RL systems.

Many existing frameworks tend to be either centralized in their approach or simply don't offer native support for multi-agent settings, which can lead to significant development hurdles.

RL Swarm, powered by GenRL (short for “General Reinforcement Learning”), is a framework built to simplify and accelerate the development of advanced, multi-agent reinforcement learning environments.

GenRL

A key highlight of GenRL is its native support for horizontally scalable, multi-agent, multi-stage RL with decentralised coordination and communication.

Unlike frameworks that might force a centralised control scheme, GenRL is built for environments where agents can learn and interact in a distributed, open, and permissionless manner.

Four Components

At its heart, GenRL puts the user in control of defining the entire 'game' agents play. We've built an intuitive, modular architecture that orchestrates the complete RL cycle, allowing you to tailor every aspect of your environment.

This is achieved through four well-defined components: [1] DataManager, [2] RewardManager, [3] Trainer, and [4] GameManager.

1. DataManager

Manages data and initializes each training round.

The DataManager defines and organizes the dataset your RL environment uses, whether it’s a large quantity of text, a labeled image collection, or a specialized format like a chessboard configuration.

It makes sure the system has the right inputs to learn and perform tasks effectively by 'managing' the given data.

By choosing and structuring data precisely, you directly shape the RL environment’s scope, performance, and applicability, since the nature and quality of the dataset determine the agent’s learning efficiency and potential outcomes. For example, richer datasets can improve robustness and generalization, while narrow datasets may constrain learning to specific scenarios.

2. RewardManager

Defines custom reward logic.

The RewardManager defines and implements custom reward functions that guide how agents learn.

By translating outcomes into feedback signals, it directly shapes the objective of your RL environment, influencing what behaviors are encouraged and how policies evolve over time.

3. Trainer

Performs learning and policy updates.

The Trainer component handles both learning and rollout generation: it manages the core training loop, i.e., applying your chosen RL paradigm (e.g. policy gradient optimization, value-function approximation, etc.) to update the policy.

It also produces the rollouts that drive agent–environment interactions to make sure the experiences needed for each subsequent training step are generated and ingested without a hitch.

4. GameManager

Coordinates data flow and communication between multiple agents.

The GameManager coordinates the data flow efficiently and effectively among the key modules you define, so there is smooth interaction between these modules and the other agents within the multi-agent swarm. It acts as a central hub that manages communications, synchronizes processes, and facilitates the exchange of information.

GenRL allows customization of modules, enabling you to tailor the learning goals, agent interactions, and environment logic, helping researchers and developers to create scalable multi-agent RL solutions with ease. GenRL supports any environment you define and includes the Reasoning Gym library, offering access to 100+ ready-to-use environments.

Framework Defined Progression

The game progresses on a per-round basis.

1. Each round, the DataManager initializes the round data, triggering the game’s stages.

2. For every stage, rollouts are generated, added to the game state, and shared with the swarm.

3. Once the agent completes all predefined stages, rewards are evaluated and policies are updated.

The user retains full control over this process within the Trainer.train method, allowing policy updates on either a per-stage or per-round basis.