Ax 1.0.0

We released Ax in 2019 along with Botorch, and both libraries have evolved significantly since their initial release. Today, we are excited to release Ax version 1.0.0.

Along with typical new features, improvements, and bug fixes this release introduces a new public API (found in ax.api) which allows users to access all fully supported Ax features via a singular entry point. Classes and functions from Ax entry points (“Loop API, “Service API”, and “Developer API”) remain present in the library, but are considered deprecated and may be changed backwards incompatibly (or removed) in subsequent major or minor releases of Ax.

This release also comes with a full rewrite of our documentation which can be found at ax.dev

Highlights

• New unified API can be found in ax.api module. The classes and functions here constitute the Ax public API
  • The Client class manages state throughout the optimization process
  • Various Config classes allow the user to configure their search space, the optimization’s goals, etc.
• Complete documentation overhaul
  • An entirely rewritten https://ax.dev/ introduces users to important concepts, demonstrates usage on synthetic and real-world optimization problems, and thoroughly documents the API

Breaking changes

Now that we have defined a singular Ax API, users should make efforts to use this as an entry point into the library. This will give users assurance that the method signatures they use will remain stable between major versions of Ax, and allow our team to provide better support via Github Issues.

This will be straightforward for those previously using the “Service API”, which closely resembles the current API – users of the “Loop API” should look towards the Quickstart Guide (https://ax.dev/docs/next/tutorials/quickstart/) for an example which demonstrates using the new API for the simple optimizations the Loop API previously served, and “Developer API” users should also use the full documentation to understand how the new API can serve their needs.