Fire-and-Forget Agent Invocation (Scala)

Overview

A fire-and-forget call enqueues a method invocation on the target agent and returns immediately without waiting for the result. The target agent processes the invocation asynchronously.

Usage

Access the .trigger proxy on the client to call methods without awaiting:

val counter = CounterAgent.get("my-counter")
 
// Fire-and-forget — returns immediately
counter.trigger.increment()
 
// With arguments
val processor = DataProcessorAgent.get("pipeline-1")
processor.trigger.processBatch(batchData)

When to Use

• Breaking RPC cycles: If agent A calls agent B and B needs to call back to A, use .trigger for the callback to avoid deadlocks
• Background work: Enqueue work on another agent without blocking the current agent
• Fan-out: Trigger work on many agents in parallel without waiting for all results
• Event-driven patterns: Notify other agents about events without coupling to their processing time

Example: Breaking a Deadlock

// In AgentA — calls AgentB and waits
val b = AgentB.get("b1")
val result = b.doWork(data) // OK: awaited call
 
// In AgentB — notifies AgentA without waiting (would deadlock if awaited)
val a = AgentA.get("a1")
a.trigger.onWorkDone(result) // OK: fire-and-forget

CLI Equivalent

From the command line, use --enqueue:

golem agent invoke --enqueue 'counter-agent("my-counter")' \
  'my:comp/counter-agent.{increment}'