Syren ABM Framework

Syren is a parallel Rust framework for agent-based models. It stores agents in an archetype entity-component-system (ECS), runs systems over them through a deterministic stage scheduler on top of Rayon, and adds agent, environment, messaging, and optional GPU layers behind Cargo features.

It is for researchers and engineers who write agent-based models in Rust and care about reproducibility and scale. A model is a Rust program that uses the library; there is no separate model-definition language.

Status#

Syren is pre-1.0; see the compatibility policy.

Capabilities#

• Archetype-ECS storage — components in chunked, columnar arrays for cache-friendly iteration over large populations.
• Deterministic scheduling — systems declare their data access; the scheduler packs non-conflicting systems into parallel stages and keeps a reproducible activation order.
• Query-derived access — a system's read/write set is derived from the queries it runs, so the declaration cannot drift from what it touches.
• Deterministic randomness — DetRng keys draws on the run context and a salt, so results do not depend on which worker thread visits which rows.
• Model layer (model) — ModelBuilder, agent templates, environments, sub-schedulers, and nested models.
• Messaging (messaging) — brute-force, bucketed, spatial, and targeted message specialisations.
• Optional GPU execution (gpu) — mirror component columns to the GPU and dispatch compute systems through wgpu.

Installation#

[dependencies]
syren = { version = "0.6.0", features = ["model"] }

Syren has no default features; enable the ones your model needs. See the feature matrix.

A first taste#

A component is a plain Copy struct; a model is assembled with ModelBuilder and advanced with tick:

#[derive(Clone, Copy, Default)]
struct Position {
    x: i64,
}
 
let mut model = ModelBuilder::new()
    .with_seed(42)
    .with_component_registry(Arc::clone(&registry))
    .with_shards(EntityShards::new(1)?)
    .with_agent_template(
        AgentTemplate::builder("walker")
            .with_component::<Position>(position_id)?
            .with_capacity(walkers.len())
            .build(),
    )?
    .with_agent_population("walker", position_id, walkers)?
    .with_system(system)
    .build()?;
 
model.run(50)?;

The full, compiled version is the first_model example, which the guide walks through step by step.

Examples#

• first_model — the smallest complete model (cargo run --example first_model --features model).
• Sugarscape — a large grid-based model with an optional GPU path.
• Macroeconomy — a fully documented, calibrated macroeconomic model.

Documentation#

• Guide — ashvinperera.github.io/Syren-ABM-Framework — installation, concepts, how-to recipes, the science of reproducibility, and contributor docs.
• API reference — docs.rs/syren.

Contributing and citation#

• Contributing guide and Code of Conduct.
• Security policy.
• If you use Syren in academic work, please cite it — see CITATION.cff.

License#

Licensed under the MIT License.