OpenAI has announced the release of new tools and APIs aimed at simplifying the development of AI agents for developers and enterprises. These agents are designed to autonomously perform tasks on behalf of users, leveraging advanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities, and improved safety measures introduced over the past year. The release includes the Responses API, built-in tools like web search and file search, and an open-source Agents SDK.
The Responses API serves as a versatile foundation for agentic applications. It combines the simplicity of the Chat Completions API with tool-use capabilities from the Assistants API. Developers can utilize built-in tools such as web search, file search, and computer use to enable agents to interact with real-world data. The API supports streamlined functionalities like intuitive streaming events and SDK helpers for accessing model outputs. It is available to all developers starting today without separate charges; usage is billed at standard token rates.
🤖 Agents SDK—our new open-source SDK for orchestrating multi-agent workflows, improving upon Swarm. Configure agents with built-in tools, hand off tasks, add safety guardrails, and visualize execution traces for debugging and optimizing performance. https://t.co/Ex6lOknbF7 pic.twitter.com/Pyu60YqgFB
— OpenAI Developers (@OpenAIDevs) March 11, 2025
Built-in tools include:
- Web Search: Enables real-time information retrieval with inline citations, useful for applications like research agents or shopping assistants. It is powered by GPT-4o models and achieves high accuracy benchmarks (90% on SimpleQA).
- File Search: Facilitates querying large document datasets with metadata filtering and reranking capabilities, supporting use cases such as customer support or legal research.
- Computer Use: Allows automation of browser-based workflows by capturing mouse and keyboard actions. While still in research preview, it demonstrates promising results on benchmarks like OSWorld.
The Agents SDK simplifies multi-agent orchestration by providing features such as configurable LLMs, intelligent handoffs between agents, guardrails for safety checks, and tracing tools for debugging workflows. The SDK has been successfully deployed in real-world scenarios by companies like Coinbase and Box to enhance customer support automation and data insight generation.
This announcement marks OpenAI’s commitment to building a robust platform for agent development, addressing challenges like prompt iteration and orchestration complexity faced by developers. With these tools, OpenAI aims to empower industries to deploy high-performing autonomous systems efficiently.
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