AGNA

Who is AGNA for?

AGNA is particularly suited to small and medium research networks: communication, collaboration, affiliation, interaction, behavioral, institutional, historical, and other relational data. It can be used in sociology, anthropology, communication research, psychology, education, organizational research, animal-behavior studies, and the humanities.

At a glance

Source, licensing, and reproducible workflows

AGNA Desktop, AGNA Core, and AGNA CLI are free and open-source software released under the Apache License, Version 2.0. The licence permits use, modification, distribution, and commercial use, subject to preservation of applicable copyright, licence, and notice material. It also includes an explicit patent licence. Read the full Apache License 2.0.

The projects share a common architecture: AGNA Desktop provides the graphical interface; AGNA Core provides the reusable engine; and AGNA CLI makes core functions available for command-line, scripted, and reproducible work.

AGNA Desktop  ──────►  AGNA Core  ◄──────  AGNA CLI
(graphical UI)          (engine)           (command line)

Browse source code · Read the contribution guide · Report a bug or propose an improvement · Report security vulnerabilities privately

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/baeckett/AGNA.git
cd AGNA
mvn verify   # requires JDK 17 and Maven

The repository builds with Maven against JDK 17; the full test suite (230 tests) runs with mvn verify.

Use AGNA Core

When AGNA Core is published to Maven Central, Java projects will be able to declare it as a dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.agna</groupId>
  <artifactId>agna-core</artifactId>
  <version>2.1.3</version>
</dependency>

Installation

Download AGNA

The installers bundle the Java runtime. The plain desktop jar requires Java 17 or newer.

Install AGNA Desktop

System requirements

• Supported systems: AGNA runs on any system with Java 17 or newer (Windows, macOS, Linux). The installers bundle a Java runtime, so no separate Java installation is needed.
• Memory: 512 MB minimum; 2 GB recommended
• Disk space: about 150–250 MB installed
• Internet connection: not required for normal analysis after installation.

Advanced downloads

For advanced verification, see SHA-256 checksums and the release notes.

First steps

Quick Start

This short exercise introduces a small directed communication network. It is intended to help a new user open data, inspect a graph, calculate basic measures, and save results.

1. Download the example data

Download the six-person communication example. The file should contain either an adjacency matrix or an edge list, depending on the version of AGNA you release.

2. Open the network

1. Start AGNA Desktop.
2. Select File → Open.
3. Choose the example file.
4. Confirm whether ties are directed, and whether values are binary or weighted.

3. Inspect the network

Open the graph view. Each node represents a person, and each arrow represents a directed communication tie. Drag a node to improve readability if necessary. Notice which people receive or send several ties and whether any are isolated.

4. Calculate basic measures

1. Run the network description command to obtain the number of nodes, ties, density, and components.
2. Run degree centrality to inspect who has the most incoming or outgoing relations.
3. Run shortest-path or distance analysis to examine how easily actors can reach each other through the network.

5. Save and export

1. Save the AGNA project under a new name.
2. Export any table needed for later work.
3. Export the graph image or vector graphic for a presentation or paper.
4. Record the AGNA version and the analytical choices used.

Continue with the documentation for importing data, working with different tie types, interpreting measures, and exporting results.

Manual and learning resources

Documentation

AGNA documentation is organized around research tasks. Replace the links below with the corresponding manual pages, PDFs, or downloadable examples when they are available.

Examples and teaching materials

Browse example networks and teaching exercises. Each example should include a small data file, a research question, expected output, and interpretive notes.

Need help?

See the support page, search the issue tracker, or report a reproducible problem using the information requested there. Please remove confidential network data before attaching example files to a public issue.

Research use

Cite AGNA

If you use AGNA in research, teaching, a thesis, or a publication, please cite the software version used. Where relevant, also cite the publication describing AGNA 2.1.

Preferred software citation

Benta, Marius I. (2026). AGNA: Applied Graph and Network Analysis Open Source
(Version 2.1.3) [Computer software]. 10.5281/zenodo.22708199
https://github.com/baeckett/AGNA

AGNA 2.1 publication

Benta, Marius I. (2005). Studying Communication Networks with AGNA 2.1.
[Complete journal / publisher details].
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22708199

BibTeX

@software{benta_agna_2026,
  author  = {Benta, Marius I.},
  title   = {AGNA: Applied Graph and Network Analysis Open Source},
  version = {2.1.3},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {www.netanalysis.co.uk},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22708199}
}

Version history

Releases

Every release includes a version number, release notes, source tag, downloadable artifacts, and checksums. Record the version you use in research outputs.

Known issues

No critical known issues are currently recorded. The Linux installer is available from the release page; the macOS and Windows installers are built on their respective platforms (see packaging/).

Update policy

AGNA aims for stable releases appropriate to research and teaching. If AGNA includes an update check, it should retrieve only public version information and should never transmit project files, graph data, node labels, edge labels, or file paths.

Verify downloads

Advanced users can compare the SHA-256 checksum of a downloaded installer or archive with the values published for the release. This helps confirm that the file matches the released artifact.

# Example only — adapt to the user’s operating system
sha256sum AGNA-2.1.3-amd64.deb

Project history

About AGNA

AGNA—Applied Graph and Network Analysis Open Source—was created by Marius I. Benta as a free application for social network analysis, sociometry, and sequential analysis.

From its beginning, AGNA was intended for researchers, teachers, and students who needed accessible graphical tools rather than a programming environment. Ease of use, direct visual interaction, and clarity of output were central priorities.

AGNA today

AGNA 2.1.3 is a stable open-source release. It preserves the Desktop application while separating the reusable computational engine as AGNA Core and providing AGNA CLI for reproducible command-line workflows.

The project’s long-term aim is modest and practical: to keep accessible network analysis available to researchers who work with relational data and to provide an open foundation for teaching, scholarship, and future development.

Acknowledgements

AGNA was created and is maintained by Marius I. Bența.

The author gratefully acknowledges the researchers, teachers, students, and early users whose feedback helped shape AGNA’s design, especially its emphasis on accessibility for non-programming social scientists and humanists.

The author also extends many thanks to Alina S. Rusu for testing and for her educational involvement in the AGNA project.

Third-party software, libraries, icons, fonts, and other materials are listed separately in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Contact

• General contact: contact@netanalysis.co.uk
• Source code and issue tracker: https://github.com/baeckett/AGNA
• Security reports: contact@netanalysis.co.uk

Privacy

AGNA Desktop is intended to process network data locally on the user’s computer. It does not upload project files, node labels, edge information, or analysis results to AGNA servers.