How to use external libraries in a controller?

[mindol]

I would like to know how to use external libraries within a controller.

Currently, I am working on constrained code generation using AICI. I am trying to generate code in Python using the PyCtrl library.

At the point where mid_process() returns a token bias, I want to query an SMT solver like Z3 or a custom parser and use the results to mask the next token. However, when I use import z3 in the script, I get a No module named 'z3' error. Upon investigation, I found that only modules located in Controllers/pyctrl/Lib can be used:
https://github.com/microsoft/aici/tree/main/controllers/pyctrl/Lib

Is there any way to use libraries like Z3 that are not implemented in Python internally?

I also tried running Z3 as a server and sending queries via HTTPS from the controller's mid_process(), but it seems that using os.system(), import socket, import subprocess, etc., is blocked, I guess.

I also attempted to write the controller in Rust to use the aici_abi library directly, but I failed. After adding Z3 to Cargo.toml, some errors arose when compiling to Wasm.

[emrekiciman]

Hi @mindol,

Right now, the python controller only accepts a single python file as its input. So, the only option to add new packages is to recompile a new python controller image with the packages you need---as you found--in the pyctrl/lib folder. That's inconvenient, but should be do-able. You might need to modify some packages if they depend on functionality that is not supported inside the Wasm sandbox.

It would be a nice addition to extend the python controller to accept a set of python files, including new modules, instead of only running the 1 input file.

[mindol]

Oh, I see. Thank you very much for your answer.