Frequently asked questions
Quick answers. Need more depth? The docs cover the same topics in detail.
- What is Stigmery?
- Stigmery is a free tool for building agent-based models in your browser. In a model, many simple agents follow simple rules. You run it and watch the patterns that emerge from what each agent does locally. There is nothing to install. The AI can build or change the same model with you, in plain English.
- Is it free?
- Yes, it is free. You need no account to open the ant-foraging example or to start building a model. You sign in only to save your work and open it on any device. Signing in also lets you share a model by its link.
- Do I need to know how to code?
- No. Describe what you want in plain English and the AI changes the model for you. If you want to write rules yourself, they use a tiny expression language. Anyone who has seen a spreadsheet formula can read it. For the rare case it is not enough, a rule can also hold a small piece of TypeScript.
- Is it like NetLogo?
- Stigmery takes NetLogo's agents and patches and rebuilds them for the web, with AI built in. They work very well in education. The idea is the same. Agents move on a 2D grid of patches, and simple rules run each tick. It is not a port, so it cannot open .nlogo files. A NetLogo user will still recognise the ideas at once.
- How does the AI work? Is it just ChatGPT?
- The AI uses OpenAI's models, but it does not write free-form code. It uses a fixed set of tools, the same ones the editor gives you. It can add an agent type, set a property, write a rule or set up a plot. The model's change log records each of its changes as made by "ai". So you always see what changed. You and the AI work on one and the same model.
- What about my privacy and my models?
- Models are private unless you switch one to public. Your questions to the AI go to OpenAI, and the sign-in email goes through Resend. The privacy page says what is stored, why, for how long, who receives it and how to delete your account.
- Where does the name come from?
- Stigmery plays on stigmergy, a word Pierre-Paul Grassé coined in 1959. It names how social insects work together through traces they leave in their shared surroundings. Ants don't tell each other where to go. They leave pheromone trails, and other ants follow them. That is what this tool is about: patterns that emerge from simple local rules.
- Can I share a model?
- Yes. Save a model, switch it to public in the library dialog, and copy the URL. Anyone with the link can open it, run it, and fork it into their own account.
- What runs in the browser vs on the server?
- The simulation, the drawing and the editor all run in your browser. The server does four things. It passes your questions to the AI, with the model and the conversation, on to OpenAI, keeping our key private. It signs you in. It stores the models you save. And it keeps usage events for 90 days. The privacy page says what each of these holds.
- Who is this for?
- Students first, then teachers and anyone curious. You can play with agent-based models without installing anything or learning a programming language first. Researchers who already know agent-based modelling use it to try out an idea quickly.