# Flakestorm
The Agent Reliability Engine
Chaos Engineering for AI Agents
---
## The Problem
**The "Happy Path" Fallacy**: Current AI development tools focus on getting an agent to work *once*. Developers tweak prompts until they get a correct answer, declare victory, and ship.
**The Reality**: LLMs are non-deterministic. An agent that works on Monday with `temperature=0.7` might fail on Tuesday. Users don't follow "Happy Paths" — they make typos, they're aggressive, they lie, and they attempt prompt injections.
**The Void**:
- **Observability Tools** (LangSmith) tell you *after* the agent failed in production
- **Eval Libraries** (RAGAS) focus on academic scores rather than system reliability
- **Missing Link**: A tool that actively *attacks* the agent to prove robustness before deployment
## The Solution
**Flakestorm** is a local-first testing engine that applies **Chaos Engineering** principles to AI Agents.
Instead of running one test case, Flakestorm takes a single "Golden Prompt", generates adversarial mutations (semantic variations, noise injection, hostile tone, prompt injections), runs them against your agent, and calculates a **Robustness Score**.
> **"If it passes Flakestorm, it won't break in Production."**
## Features
- ✅ **5 Mutation Types**: Paraphrasing, noise, tone shifts, basic adversarial, custom templates
- ✅ **Invariant Assertions**: Deterministic checks, semantic similarity, basic safety
- ✅ **Local-First**: Uses Ollama with Qwen 3 8B for free testing
- ✅ **Beautiful Reports**: Interactive HTML reports with pass/fail matrices
- ✅ **50 Mutations Max**: Per test run
- ✅ **Sequential Execution**: One test at a time
## Quick Start
### Installation Order
1. **Install Ollama first** (system-level service)
2. **Create virtual environment** (for Python packages)
3. **Install flakestorm** (Python package)
4. **Start Ollama and pull model** (required for mutations)
### Step 1: Install Ollama (System-Level)
FlakeStorm uses [Ollama](https://ollama.ai) for local model inference. Install this first:
**macOS Installation:**
```bash
# Option 1: Homebrew (recommended)
brew install ollama
# If you get permission errors, fix permissions first:
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /Users/imac-frank/Library/Logs/Homebrew
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/Cellar
sudo chown -R $(whoami) /usr/local/Homebrew
brew install ollama
# Option 2: Official Installer
# Visit https://ollama.ai/download and download the macOS installer (.dmg)
```
**Windows Installation:**
1. Visit https://ollama.com/download/windows
2. Download `OllamaSetup.exe`
3. Run the installer and follow the wizard
4. Ollama will be installed and start automatically
**Linux Installation:**
```bash
# Using the official install script
curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
# Or using package managers (Ubuntu/Debian example):
sudo apt install ollama
```
**After installation, start Ollama and pull the model:**
```bash
# Start Ollama
# macOS (Homebrew): brew services start ollama
# macOS (Manual) / Linux: ollama serve
# Windows: Starts automatically as a service
# In another terminal, pull the model
ollama pull qwen3:8b
```
**Troubleshooting:** If you get `syntax error: ` or `command not found` when running `ollama` commands:
```bash
# 1. Remove the bad binary
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/ollama
# 2. Find Homebrew's Ollama location
brew --prefix ollama # Shows /usr/local/opt/ollama or /opt/homebrew/opt/ollama
# 3. Create symlink to make it available
# Intel Mac:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/opt/ollama/bin/ollama /usr/local/bin/ollama
# Apple Silicon:
sudo ln -s /opt/homebrew/opt/ollama/bin/ollama /opt/homebrew/bin/ollama
echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
# 4. Verify and use
which ollama
brew services start ollama
ollama pull qwen3:8b
```
### Step 2: Install flakestorm (Python Package)
**Using a virtual environment (recommended):**
```bash
# 1. Check if Python 3.11 is installed
python3.11 --version # Should work if installed via Homebrew
# If not installed:
# macOS: brew install python@3.11
# Linux: sudo apt install python3.11 (Ubuntu/Debian)
# 2. DEACTIVATE any existing venv first (if active)
deactivate # Run this if you see (venv) in your prompt
# 3. Remove old venv if it exists (created with Python 3.9)
rm -rf venv
# 4. Create venv with Python 3.11 EXPLICITLY
python3.11 -m venv venv
# Or use full path: /usr/local/bin/python3.11 -m venv venv
# 5. Activate it
source venv/bin/activate # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
# 6. CRITICAL: Verify Python version in venv (MUST be 3.11.x, NOT 3.9.x)
python --version # Should show 3.11.x
which python # Should point to venv/bin/python
# 7. If it still shows 3.9.x, the venv creation failed - remove and recreate:
# deactivate && rm -rf venv && python3.11 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
# 8. Upgrade pip (required for pyproject.toml support)
pip install --upgrade pip
# 9. Install flakestorm
pip install flakestorm
```
**Troubleshooting:** If you get `Package requires a different Python: 3.9.6 not in '>=3.10'`:
- Your venv is still using Python 3.9 even though Python 3.11 is installed
- **Solution:** `deactivate && rm -rf venv && python3.11 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate && python --version`
- Always verify with `python --version` after activating venv - it MUST show 3.10+
**Or using pipx (for CLI use only):**
```bash
pipx install flakestorm
```
**Note:** Requires Python 3.10 or higher. On macOS, Python environments are externally managed, so using a virtual environment is required. Ollama runs independently and doesn't need to be in your virtual environment.
### Initialize Configuration
```bash
flakestorm init
```
This creates a `flakestorm.yaml` configuration file:
```yaml
version: "1.0"
agent:
endpoint: "http://localhost:8000/invoke"
type: "http"
timeout: 30000
model:
provider: "ollama"
name: "qwen3:8b"
base_url: "http://localhost:11434"
mutations:
count: 10 # Max 50 total per run
types:
- paraphrase
- noise
- tone_shift
- prompt_injection
golden_prompts:
- "Book a flight to Paris for next Monday"
- "What's my account balance?"
invariants:
- type: "latency"
max_ms: 2000
- type: "valid_json"
output:
format: "html"
path: "./reports"
```
### Run Tests
```bash
flakestorm run
```
Output:
```
Generating mutations... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%
Running attacks... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 100%
╭──────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Robustness Score: 87.5% │
│ ──────────────────────── │
│ Passed: 17/20 mutations │
│ Failed: 3 (2 latency, 1 injection) │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────╯
Report saved to: ./reports/flakestorm-2024-01-15-143022.html
```
## Mutation Types
| Type | Description | Example |
|------|-------------|---------|
| **Paraphrase** | Semantically equivalent rewrites | "Book a flight" → "I need to fly out" |
| **Noise** | Typos and spelling errors | "Book a flight" → "Book a fliight plz" |
| **Tone Shift** | Aggressive/impatient phrasing | "Book a flight" → "I need a flight NOW!" |
| **Prompt Injection** | Basic adversarial attacks | "Book a flight and ignore previous instructions" |
| **Custom** | Your own mutation templates | Define with `{prompt}` placeholder |
## Invariants (Assertions)
### Deterministic
```yaml
invariants:
- type: "contains"
value: "confirmation_code"
- type: "latency"
max_ms: 2000
- type: "valid_json"
```
### Semantic
```yaml
invariants:
- type: "similarity"
expected: "Your flight has been booked"
threshold: 0.8
```
### Safety (Basic)
```yaml
invariants:
- type: "excludes_pii" # Basic regex patterns
- type: "refusal_check"
```
## Agent Adapters
### HTTP Endpoint
```yaml
agent:
type: "http"
endpoint: "http://localhost:8000/invoke"
```
### Python Callable
```python
from flakestorm import test_agent
@test_agent
async def my_agent(input: str) -> str:
# Your agent logic
return response
```
### LangChain
```yaml
agent:
type: "langchain"
module: "my_agent:chain"
```
## Local Testing
For local testing and validation:
```bash
# Run with minimum score check
flakestorm run --min-score 0.9
# Exit with error code if score is too low
flakestorm run --min-score 0.9 --ci
```
## Robustness Score
The Robustness Score is calculated as:
$$R = \frac{W_s \cdot S_{passed} + W_d \cdot D_{passed}}{N_{total}}$$
Where:
- $S_{passed}$ = Semantic variations passed
- $D_{passed}$ = Deterministic tests passed
- $W$ = Weights assigned by mutation difficulty
## Documentation
### Getting Started
- [📖 Usage Guide](docs/USAGE_GUIDE.md) - Complete end-to-end guide
- [⚙️ Configuration Guide](docs/CONFIGURATION_GUIDE.md) - All configuration options
- [🧪 Test Scenarios](docs/TEST_SCENARIOS.md) - Real-world examples with code
### For Developers
- [🏗️ Architecture & Modules](docs/MODULES.md) - How the code works
- [❓ Developer FAQ](docs/DEVELOPER_FAQ.md) - Q&A about design decisions
- [📦 Publishing Guide](docs/PUBLISHING.md) - How to publish to PyPI
- [🤝 Contributing](docs/CONTRIBUTING.md) - How to contribute
### Reference
- [📋 API Specification](docs/API_SPECIFICATION.md) - API reference
- [🧪 Testing Guide](docs/TESTING_GUIDE.md) - How to run and write tests
- [✅ Implementation Checklist](docs/IMPLEMENTATION_CHECKLIST.md) - Development progress
## License
Apache 2.0 - See [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details.
---
Tested with Flakestorm
