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Lazy Imports & Fast Startup

PraisonAI Agents v0.5.0+ uses lazy imports to dramatically reduce startup time and memory usage. Heavy dependencies like litellm, requests, and chromadb are only loaded when actually needed.

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Performance Benefits

MetricBeforeAfterImprovement
Import Time820ms18ms97.8% faster
Memory Usage93.3MB33.0MB64.6% reduction

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How It Works

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Lazy Module Loading

Core modules are loaded on-demand using Python’s __getattr__ mechanism: 
# These imports are fast - modules loaded lazily
from praisonaiagents import Agent, Session, Memory, Knowledge

# Agent is only fully loaded when you use it
agent = Agent(name="MyAgent")  # litellm loaded here

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Heavy Dependencies

The following dependencies are NOT loaded at import time:
  • litellm - Only loaded when LLM calls are made
  • requests - Only loaded when HTTP calls are needed
  • chromadb - Only loaded when vector stores are used
  • mem0 - Only loaded when memory features are used

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Verifying Lazy Imports

You can verify lazy imports are working: 
import sys

# Import the package
import praisonaiagents

# Check that heavy deps are NOT loaded
assert 'litellm' not in sys.modules
assert 'requests' not in sys.modules
assert 'chromadb' not in sys.modules

print("✓ All heavy dependencies are lazy loaded")

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Configuration

Lazy imports are enabled by default. You can check the configuration: 
from praisonaiagents._config import LAZY_IMPORTS

print(f"Lazy imports enabled: {LAZY_IMPORTS}")

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Best Practices

  1. Import at module level - Imports are fast, so import at the top of your file
  2. Use specific imports - Import only what you need
  3. Avoid star imports - from praisonaiagents import * loads everything
# Good - specific imports
from praisonaiagents import Agent, Task

# Avoid - loads all modules
from praisonaiagents import *

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Measuring Performance

Use the built-in benchmarks to measure import time: 
import time

start = time.perf_counter()
import praisonaiagents
end = time.perf_counter()

print(f"Import time: {(end - start) * 1000:.1f}ms")