AEGIS: Automated Error Generation and Attribution for Multi-Agent Systems

August 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

License Python arXiv Dataset

🔥 News

  • [2026.01] Our paper has been accepted by ICLR 2026! 🎉

🎯 Overview

AEGIS System Overview
AEGIS Framework

AEGIS is a large-scale dataset and benchmark for detecting errors in Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). It provides systematically generated failure scenarios with verifiable ground-truth labels across multiple MAS frameworks, enabling development and evaluation of robust error detection methods.

🏆 Key Results

AEGIS System Overview
Main Results

🏗️ Architecture

AEGIS/
├── aegis_core/              # Core AEGIS framework
│   ├── malicious_factory/   # Error injection system (FMMaliciousFactory)
│   ├── agent_systems/       # MAS wrapper interfaces
│   └── utils/               # Utility functions
├── core/                    # Core task definitions
├── methods/                 # MAS method implementations
│   ├── dylan/               # DyLAN framework
│   ├── agentverse/          # AgentVerse framework
│   ├── llm_debate/          # LLM Debate framework
│   ├── macnet/              # MacNet framework
│   └── ...                  # Other MAS frameworks
├── magnetic_one/            # Magnetic-One specific integration
├── model_api_configs/       # API configuration files
├── experiments/             # Experiment configurations
├── configs/                 # MAS framework configs
├── examples/                # Usage examples
├── evaluation/              # Evaluation utilities
└── utils/                   # General utilities

🚀 Quick Start

1. Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd AEGIS

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Configuration

Copy and modify the configuration files:

# Copy model API configuration template
cp model_api_configs/model_api_config.json.template model_api_configs/model_api_config.json
# Edit with your API keys and endpoints

3. Basic Usage

from aegis_core.malicious_factory import (
    FMMaliciousFactory,
    FMErrorType,
    InjectionStrategy,
    AgentContext
)

# Initialize the FM Malicious Factory (LLM optional for instruction generation)
factory = FMMaliciousFactory(llm=None)

# Create agent context
agent_context = AgentContext(
    role_name="MathSolver",
    role_type="Specialist Agent",
    agent_id="agent_001",
    system_message="You are a math problem solver.",
    tools=["calculator"],
    description="A specialized agent for math problems"
)

# Generate injection instruction for a specific FM error type
task_context = "Solve: 2x + 5 = 17"
instruction = factory.get_injection_instruction(
    fm_type=FMErrorType.FM_2_3,  # Deviate from main goal
    agent_context=agent_context,
    injection_strategy=InjectionStrategy.PROMPT_INJECTION,
    task_context=task_context
)

🧪 Core Components

Error Injection Factory

The malicious factory provides sophisticated error injection capabilities:

  • Prompt Injection: Modifies agent inputs to trigger specific errors
  • Response Corruption: Directly manipulates agent outputs
  • Context-Aware Attacks: Adapts injection strategies based on task domain and agent role

Multi-Agent System Wrappers

Standardized interfaces for various MAS frameworks:

  • DyLAN: Dynamic graph-based agent interactions
  • AgentVerse: Hierarchical role-based collaboration
  • LLM Debate: Multi-agent debate mechanisms
  • MacNet: Configurable network topologies
  • Magnetic-One: Orchestrator-executor patterns

Error Taxonomy

AEGIS supports 14 failure modes based on the MAST taxonomy:

  1. Specification Issues (FM-1.x)

    • Task specification deviation
    • Role specification deviation
    • Add redundant steps
    • Remove conversation history
    • Remove termination conditions

  2. Inter-Agent Misalignment (FM-2.x)

    • Repeat handled tasks
    • Make request ambiguous
    • Deviate from main goal
    • Hide important information
    • Ignore other agents
    • Inconsistent reasoning

  3. Task Verification Failures (FM-3.x)

    • Premature termination
    • Remove verification steps
    • Incorrect verification

📊 Evaluation

Run evaluations using the provided scripts:

# Evaluate on AEGIS-Bench
python evaluation/evaluate.py --dataset aegis_bench --model your_model

# Evaluate on Who&When benchmark
python evaluation/evaluate.py --dataset whowhen --model your_model

🔧 Configuration

⚠️ Security Notice

IMPORTANT: This repository does NOT contain any API keys or credentials. You must configure your own API keys before use.

1. Environment Setup

First, copy the environment template and configure your credentials:

# Copy environment template
cp .env.template .env

# Edit .env file with your actual API keys
nano .env  # or use your preferred editor

Required environment variables (add to .env file):

# OpenAI Configuration
OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key_here
OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://api.openai.com/v1

# Google/Gemini Configuration  
GOOGLE_API_KEY=your_google_api_key_here

# Azure OpenAI (if using Azure)
AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=your_azure_api_key_here
AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT=your_azure_endpoint_here

# Anthropic/Claude (if using Claude)
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_anthropic_api_key_here

# Dataset Paths (optional, defaults provided)
GAIA_VALIDATION_DIR=./data/gaia/validation
GAIA_TEST_DIR=./data/gaia/test

2. Model API Configuration

Copy and configure the model API template:

# Copy model configuration template
cp configs/model_api_config.json.template model_api_configs/model_api_config.json

# Edit with your actual endpoints and keys
nano model_api_configs/model_api_config.json

Example configuration:

{
  "gpt-4o-mini": {
    "model_list": [
      {
        "model_name": "gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18", 
        "model_url": "https://api.openai.com/v1", 
        "api_key": "YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY"
      }
    ],
    "max_workers_per_model": 20
  },
  "gemini-2.0-flash": {
    "model_list": [
      {
        "model_name": "gemini-2.0-flash", 
        "model_url": "https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai/", 
        "api_key": "YOUR_GEMINI_API_KEY"
      }
    ],
    "max_workers_per_model": 1
  }
}

3. Obtaining API Keys

4. Security Best Practices

  • Never commit .env or model_api_configs/model_api_config.json files
  • Use environment variables instead of hardcoding keys
  • Rotate API keys regularly
  • Set usage limits on your API accounts
  • Monitor API usage to detect unauthorized access

MAS Framework Configuration

Each MAS framework has its own configuration file in configs/:

  • config_main.yaml: General configuration
  • config_humaneval.yaml: Code generation tasks
  • config_math.yaml: Mathematical reasoning tasks

🎯 Examples

See the examples/ directory for detailed usage examples:

  • basic_error_injection.py: FM error injection workflow with FMMaliciousFactory
  • multi_framework_evaluation.py: Comparing different MAS frameworks

📚 Citation

If you use AEGIS in your research, please cite:

@article{kong2025aegis,
  title={AEGIS: Automated Error Generation and Attribution for Multi-Agent Systems},
  author={Kong, Fanqi and Zhang, Ruijie and Yin, Huaxiao and Zhang, Guibin and Zhang, Xiaofei and Chen, Ziang and Zhang, Zhaowei and Zhang, Xiaoyuan and Zhu, Song-Chun and Feng, Xue},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.14295},
  year={2025}
}