Autonomous agents and multi-agent systems have grown into a promising technology offering a credible alternative for the design of intelligent and cooperative systems. Recently efforts have been made to provide novel tools, methods, and frameworks to establish the necessary standards for wider use of MAS as a technology of its own and not only as an attractive paradigm.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the First International Workshop on Programming of the First International Workshop on Programming Multi-Agent Systems, PROMAS 2003, held in Melbourne, Australia in July 2003 as part of AAMAS 2003. Besides 8 workshop papers, the volume contains 3 invited papers to complete coverage of the relevant aspects. The papers are organized in topical sections on programming multi-agent systems, languages for multi-agent systems, and principles and tools for multi-agent systems