Eliza is a production-grade TypeScript framework architected for building, deploying, and orchestrating autonomous AI agents that think, remember, and act across multiple platforms.
At its heart lies a sophisticated monorepo with modular components: a Turbo-managed CLI for agent scaffolding, an Express 5 server with Socket.io real-time capabilities, a React dashboard with optimized query caching, and a plugin ecosystem spanning everything from Discord connectors to database adapters.
If you need agents that can maintain conversation context, execute multi-step workflows, and scale from prototype to production deployment, Eliza provides the architectural foundation.
elizaOS
Organization
The Problem and The Solution
Modern AI applications demand more than stateless LLM calls. They also need persistent memory, multi-turn reasoning, cross-platform presence, and the ability to execute actions in the real world.
Eliza solves this through a layered architecture that treats agents as full-stack applications. The AgentRuntime serves as the orchestration layer, managing memory stores, action execution, and plugin lifecycles.
The CLI handles agent bootstrapping and local development, while the server provides REST APIs, WebSocket streams, and rate-limited access for production deployments.
The React client offers real-time agent monitoring with optimized TanStack Query integration, and the plugin system enables seamless extension without core modifications (AGENTS.md, 2025).
Key Features
- Agent Runtime Engine: Full-featured AgentRuntime with memory management, plugin orchestration, and event-driven messaging supporting conversation length limits and working memory optimization (runtime.ts).
- Multi-Platform Connectors: Native plugins for Discord, Telegram, Farcaster, and web interfaces with standardized room/world mapping and UUID-based entity resolution (README, 2025).
- Persistent Memory System: Hierarchical memory architecture with typed memory metadata, BM25 semantic search, and automated document fragmentation for RAG workflows (types/memory.ts).
- Production Database Stack: Dual database support via @elizaos/plugin-sql with PostgreSQL for cloud deployments and PGLite for local/embedded scenarios, including automatic migrations and schema management (plugin-sql/src/index.ts).
- Component-Based Architecture: Extensible system with Actions, Providers, Evaluators, and Services enabling modular agent capabilities without core modifications (types/plugin.ts).
- Real-Time Dashboard: React-based admin interface with TanStack Query integration, WebSocket connectivity, and mobile-responsive design for agent monitoring and management (client/src/App.tsx).
Why I Like It
Two things stand out. First, the monorepo architecture makes it easy to trace a feature across CLI, server, and client without context switching. Second, Eliza leans into model-agnosticism and browser support. Recent work adds a browser-safe SQL plugin pathway via a PGLite WASM build so you can run agents client-side when needed (PR #5970). For developer ergonomics, the quick-start path from the README is refreshingly short compared to many agent frameworks.
Architecture Deep Dive
Eliza's architecture centers around the AgentRuntime class, a sophisticated orchestration engine that manages the complete agent lifecycle. At startup, the runtime initializes plugin dependency graphs, registers database adapters (PostgreSQL or PGLite via @elizaos/plugin-sql), and sets up event-driven message processing through the bootstrap plugin.
Memory management operates through a tiered system: conversation memories with BM25 semantic search, working memory with configurable size limits, and persistent state caching keyed by room and entity UUIDs. The runtime tracks execution context through run IDs, enabling prompt tracing and multi-step action coordination (runtime.ts, lines 150-300).
The server implementation in @elizaos/server provides a production-hardened Express 5 foundation with Helmet security middleware, CORS configuration, and rate limiting. Socket.io integration enables real-time bidirectional communication, with the SocketIORouter handling agent message routing and log streaming.
The API surface includes dedicated endpoints for agents, messaging, memory, media uploads, and system administration, all with comprehensive route validation and content-type checking. Database migrations run automatically through the DatabaseMigrationService, supporting both cloud PostgreSQL and local PGLite deployments with automatic schema discovery (server/src/index.ts; api/index.ts).
The React client at @elizaos/client demonstrates production-ready state management patterns, using TanStack Query with optimized stale times, exponential backoff retry logic, and intelligent prefetching strategies.
The UI supports real-time agent monitoring, conversation management, and administrative functions through a responsive sidebar layout with mobile sheet overlays. Background query invalidation ensures data consistency across components, while the connection context provides resilient WebSocket management with automatic reconnection (client/src/App.tsx, lines 1-100).
Try it in minutes
The CLI route demonstrates Eliza's developer-first approach. The @elizaos/cli package provides project scaffolding, character configuration, and local development servers. These commands bootstrap a complete agent environment with database initialization, plugin loading, and real-time monitoring.
bun install -g @elizaos/cli
elizaos create my-first-agent
cd my-first-agent
elizaos env edit-local # add OPENAI_API_KEY=...
elizaos start # launches web UI at http://localhost:3000
For direct integration without the CLI scaffolding, the standalone example shows how to programmatically create an AgentRuntime, configure database adapters, and process messages through the event system. This approach is ideal for embedding agents in existing applications or building custom orchestration layers.
Real-World Applications
Eliza's architecture enables sophisticated agent deployments across multiple domains. Community management scenarios leverage the Discord and Telegram connectors with persistent memory to create agents that remember user preferences, maintain conversation context across sessions, and execute complex workflows like automated moderation or FAQ responses.
The standalone runner demonstrates embedding agents in custom applications without the full server stack, enabling integration into existing product ecosystems.
Financial and trading applications benefit from the real-time WebSocket capabilities and multi-step action coordination, allowing agents to monitor markets, execute trades, and provide contextual analysis.
The plugin system supports specialized domains through custom actions and providers—for instance, browser automation plugins for web scraping, API integrations for CRM systems, or database plugins for complex query operations (examples/standalone.ts; plugin architecture).
Plugin Development Patterns
Eliza's plugin system demonstrates sophisticated component composition patterns. Each plugin can register multiple component types: Actions for agent capabilities, Providers for context injection, Evaluators for post-interaction processing, and Services for external integrations.
The bootstrap plugin illustrates best practices with its message handling pipeline, working memory management, and multi-step action coordination.
Plugin initialization supports dependency injection through the runtime's service registry, enabling complex workflows like database migrations, API client setup, and event handler registration.
The SQL plugin showcases advanced patterns including singleton connection management, automatic schema discovery, and dual database support through adapter abstraction (types/plugin.ts; plugin-bootstrap/src/index.ts; plugin-sql architecture).
Community and Contribution
The repo is very active, with open epics for browser support, SDK-first hooks, and documentation upgrades, plus frequent plugin work. Browse open issues and epics such as Browser Support and Rooms/Channels Refactor to see the roadmap. Contributions are welcomed via standard GitHub flows, and the project credits a broad contributor base in the README (README, 2025).
Usage and License Terms
Eliza is released under the MIT License, a permissive license allowing commercial and private use, modification, distribution, and sublicensing with attribution. There is no warranty; see the LICENSE for exact terms (MIT, 2025).
Impact and What's Next
Eliza represents a popular pattern of shifting toward treating AI agents as complete applications rather than isolated model calls. The framework's emphasis on persistent memory, event-driven architecture, and production-grade infrastructure positions it uniquely in the agent development landscape.
The runtime's plugin orchestration and memory management capabilities enable agents that can maintain context across sessions, coordinate multi-step workflows, and adapt to changing requirements through dynamic plugin loading.
Current development focuses on browser-native deployments with the PGLite WASM initiative, expanded TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) support for secure agent computation, and enhanced multi-agent coordination patterns.
The architectural decisions around UUID-based deterministic identification and event-driven messaging create a foundation for distributed agent networks where individual agents can collaborate while maintaining isolated state and security boundaries (runtime.ts; PR #5970).
About the Team
ElizaOS is an organization focused on practical agent systems: Accelerating toward a bright future for all humans and agents. The group maintains the core framework plus complementary projects like characterfile and elizaos.github.io. Learn more at elizaos.ai and the org page (ElizaOS, 2025).
Conclusion
If you need a coherent, end-to-end path for shipping multi-agent applications, Eliza is one of the most integrated open-source options today. Start with the README quick start, open the examples, and explore the packages directory to see how the pieces fit together. When you're ready to scale, the server and plugin architecture give you the durability and flexibility you'll want in production.
ElizaOS: A Full-Stack, Model-Agnostic Framework For Multi-Agent Applications