Design of agent-oriented pattern templates

Software patterns have potential to enhance the comprehension, application and communication of agent oriented software concepts. To realize this potential, agent oriented patterns should be appropriately described with the aid of good pattern templates. However, many of the existing descriptions of agent patterns lack certain features that are critical to the description of agent patterns. In this paper, we present a design for agent oriented pattern templates. We present two templates built according to our design that we believe improve on the description of agent patterns. The InteRRaP agent architectural pattern and Contract Net agent interaction pattern are presented using these templates.