Spring Java creator unveils AI agent framework for the JVM

Embabel, an open source framework for authoring AI agentic flows on the JVM, has been launched by Spring Framework founder Rod Johnson. Johnson aims for Embabel to become the natural way to integrate generative AI into Java applications, especially those built on the Spring Framework.

In a web post on May 22, Johnson described Embabel as a new programming model for authoring agentic flows on the JVM that seamlessly mix LLM-prompted interactions with code and domain models. Embabel is intended not just to play catch-up with Python agent frameworks, but surpass them. “Much of the critical business logic in the world is running on the JVM, and for good reason. Gen AI enabling it is of critical importance.” 

Embabel is written in Kotlin and offers a natural usage model from Java, Johnson said. But once Embabel is established, plans call for creating TypeScript and Python projects based on the Embabel model.

Along with close Spring integration, Johnson cited these distinguishing features of Embabel:

Embabel introduces a planning step. The framework discovers actions and goals from application code, and plans toward the most appropriate goal given user or other system input. Planning is accomplished via a non-LLM AI algorithm that provides a deterministic and explainable approach to planning.

Embabel encourages building a rich domain model in an application, typically Kotlin data classes or Java records. This ensures that prompts are type-safe, tool-able, and survive refactoring. It also allows behavior to be added to domain objects, which can be exposed as LLM tools as well as used in code.

Johnson said that while Embabel embraces the Model Context Protocol, a higher-level orchestration technology is needed. The reasons include the need for explainability, discoverability, the ability to mix models, the ability to inject guardrails at any point in a flow, the ability to manage flow execution, composability of flows at scale, and safer integration with existing systems such as databases, where it is dangerous to allow write access to LLMs, Johnson noted.

“It’s early, but we have big plans,” said Johnson. “We want not just to build the best agent platform on the JVM, but to build the best agent platform, period.”