Web Extras

The print edition of Multi-Agent Systems: A Contemporary Treatment keeps itself to a readable length by a simple policy: nothing was deleted, but not everything was printed. What the book set aside lives here, in full, beside the web edition.

A Short History of Agents Pretending to Be Intelligent — the web-extended history chapter. The print edition compresses this story into Chapter 1’s closing lineage section; the full chapter — the roots in distributed AI, the classical synthesis, the agent decade and its disappointment, the quiet vindication, and the reversal — is preserved here, exercises included.

The Exercise Bank — each printed chapter keeps four to six exercises; the implementation work, the labs, and the advanced problems continue here, chapter by chapter, each bank numbered as a continuation of its printed chapter’s own set.

Setting Up the Companion Code — the setup appendix for the companion repository, masact-code. Setup instructions date faster than anything else in a book, so they live here, beside the code they describe.

A Field Guide to the Frameworks — Living Edition — the living mirror of the book’s Appendix B. The printed appendix is a dated snapshot by design; this copy is revised as the field moves, and keeps a log of when it moved.

Like the book’s own pages, everything here can be annotated and commented upon directly; readers are warmly invited to argue with the text.