Gastown: A Minimalist Go Tool for Multi-Agent Workspaces
If you're working with multiple AI agents or microservices that need to coordinate, you've probably felt the pain of managing their communication, state, and boundaries. Enter Gastown — a minimal Go tool that helps you define and run multi-agent workspaces with zero friction.
Built by a solo developer who clearly values simplicity, this project cuts through the noise. No bloated frameworks, no steep learning curve. Just a clean approach to agent orchestration using Go's concurrency model.
What It Does
Gastown lets you define a workspace where multiple agents (Go functions, HTTP services, or even external processes) can communicate through channels. Think of it as a lightweight message bus for your agents, with built-in lifecycle management and error handling.
The core idea is simple: you declare your agents, wire them together, and Gastown handles the plumbing. Agents can send messages to each other, share state via a key-value store, or trigger actions when specific events happen.
It's essentially a supervisor for agent-based workflows, but without the cognitive overhead of traditional orchestration tools.
Why It's Cool
A few things stand out about Gastown:
Minimal API — The whole thing is under 500 lines of Go code. You're not fighting abstractions. You write regular Go functions, register them as agents, and go.
Built on channels — Since it's Go, Gastown leverages goroutines and channels natively. This means message passing is concurrent, safe, and fast. No external dependencies required.
Hot reload for agents — You can add or remove agents at runtime without restarting the workspace. That's huge for debugging or dynamic workflows.
Pluggable transports — By default, agents talk via in-process channels. But you can swap in Redis, NATS, or even simple HTTP as the transport layer. The interface is dead simple.
Debugging built-in — The tool includes a verbose logging mode and a web UI for visualizing agent connections. Perfect for when your multi-agent system starts acting like a dysfunctional coworker.
How to Try It
Getting started is dead simple. Go 1.21+ required.
# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/gastownhall/gastown.git
cd gastown # Run the example
go run examples/simple/main.go
The repo includes examples for:
- Hello World with two agents
- Agent with shared state (key-value store)
- Agent that calls an external API
- Error propagation between ag