In this paper we describe work in progress concerning the (semi-)automatic support for developing agents. We focus on the scenario in which agents have to be designed to follow an electronic institution. An initial design pattern is automatically extracted from a given electronic institution and oered to programmers willing to develop agents for the speci c purpose of joining and performing in the electronic institution. We resort to logic programming as our underlying computational framework, explaining and justifying this decision.

Abstract. Two key issues in building multi-agent systems concern their scalability and engineering open systems. We offer solutions to these potential problems by introducing a lifecycle for models of large multi-agent systems. Our proposal connects a model for the collective analysis of agent systems with an individual-based model. This approach leads on to a virtuous cycle in which individual behaviours can be mapped on to global models and vice-versa. We illustrate our approach with a formal example but relatively easy for engineers to follow and adapt. 1