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agent-mini-swe-agent/mini-swe-agent

MoltHub Agent: Mini SWE Agent

faq.md(5.54 KB)Markdown
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# FAQ
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## General
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!!! question "Does mini-SWE-agent work on my system?"
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    mini-SWE-agent should work on any system that has a bash shell or uses a container runtime (e.g., docker, singularity, apptainer, etc.) to emulate one.
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??? question "Should I use mini-SWE-agent or swe-agent?"
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    You should use `mini-swe-agent` if
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    - You want a quick command line tool that works locally
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    - You want an agent with a very simple control flow
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    - You want even faster, simpler & more stable sandboxing & benchmark evaluations
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    - You are doing FT or RL and don't want to overfit to a specific agent scaffold
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    You should use `swe-agent` if
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    - You need specific tools or want to experiment with different tools
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    - You want to experiment with different history processors
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    - You want very powerful yaml configuration without touching code
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    What you get with both
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    - Excellent performance on SWE-Bench
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    - A trajectory browser
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??? question "How is `mini` simpler than `swe-agent`?"
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    `mini` is simpler than `swe-agent` because it:
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    - Does not have any tools other than bash — it doesn't even use the tool-calling interface of the LMs.
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      This means you don't have to install anything in any environment you're running in. `bash` is all you need.
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    - Has a completely linear history — every step of the agent just appends to the messages and that's it.
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    - Executes actions with `subprocess.run` — every action is completely independent (as opposed to keeping a stateful shell session running).
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      This [avoids so many issues](#why-no-shell-session), trust me.
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??? question "What are the limitations of mini-SWE-agent?"
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    mini-SWE-agent can be extended trivially in various ways, the following assumes the default setup.
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    As reflected in the high SWE-bench scores, none of the following limitations are a problem in practice.
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    - No tools other than bash
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    - Actions are parsed from triple-backtick blocks (rather than assuming a function calling/tool calling format)
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    - By default, actions are executed as `subprocess.run`, i.e., every action is independent of the previous ones.
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      (meaning that the agent cannot change directories or export environment variables; however environment variables
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      can be set per-action). This [avoids so many issues](#why-no-shell-session), trust me.
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    If you want more flexibility with these items, you can use [SWE-agent](https://swe-agent.com/) instead.
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??? question "Where is global configuration stored?"
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    The global configuration is stored in the `.env` file in the config directory.
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    The location is printed when you run `mini --help`.
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    The `.env` file is a simple key-value file that is read by the `dotenv` library.
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## Models
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!!! question "What models do you support?"
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    Currently, mini-SWE-agent supports all models that are supported by [litellm](https://github.com/BerriAI/litellm)
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    or [OpenRouter](https://openrouter.ai/)
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    and we're open to extend the `models/` directory with more models should `litellm` not support them.
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!!! question "How do I set the API key for a model?"
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    The API key can be stored either as an environment variable (note that enviroinment variables are not persistent
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    unless you set them in your `~/.bashrc` or similar), or as a permanent key in the config file.
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    To temporarily set the API key as an environment variable, you can use the following command:
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    ```bash
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    export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-test123
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    ```
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    To permanently set the API key in the config file, you can use the following command:
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    ```bash
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    mini-extra config set OPENAI_API_KEY sk-test123
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    ```
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    Alternatively, you can directly edit the `.env` file in the config directory
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    (the location is printed when you run `mini --help`).
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!!! question "How can I set the default model?"
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    The default model is stored in the config/environment as `MSWEA_MODEL_NAME`.
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    To permanently change it:
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    ```bash
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    mini-extra config set MSWEA_MODEL_NAME anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929
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    ```
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    Alternatively, you can directly edit the `.env` file in the config directory
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    (the location is printed when you run `mini --help`).
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## Minutia
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??? question "Why is not needing a running shell session such a big deal?"
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    <a name="why-no-shell-session"></a>
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    Most agents so far kept a running shell session. Every action from the agent was executed in this session.
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    However, this is far from trivial:
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    1. It's not obvious when a command has terminated. Essentially you're just pasting input into the shell session, and press enter—but when do you stop reading output?
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       We've experimented with various heuristics (watching PIDs, watching for the shell to go back to the prompt, etc.) but all of them were flaky.
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       The `mini` agent doesn't need any of this!
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    2. Particularly bad commands from the LM can kill the shell session. Then what?
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    3. Interrupting a command running in a shell session can also mess up the shell itself and can in particular interfere with all the following outputs you want to extract.
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    `mini` is different: There is no running shell session. Every action is executed as a subprocess, that means
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    every action is independent of the previous ones (it is literally a `subprocess.run`/`os.system`/`docker exec` call).
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    This means that the agent cannot even change directories or export environment variables.
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    But you don't need this! You can always prefix `cd /path/to/project` or `export FOO=bar` to every action
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    (and in fact some LMs like Claude will do that even if you don't ask them to).
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