This paper deals with the system of agents treated as a concurrent modular system, which is able to support the designer in solving complex design tasks. The behavior of design agents is modeled by sets of grammar rules. Each agent manages a graph grammar and a database of facts concerning the subtask for which it is responsible. The course of designing is determined by the interaction between cooperating specialized agents. The design context is expressed by the environment in which agents act and predicates describing design criteria. The organization, design methodology, and a semantic model of a grammar-based multiagent design system are presented. The notions of a valid design solution and a design solution consistent with the design criteria are also introduced. The proposed approach is illustrated by the example of designing a house estate.

An innovative approach has been developed for discovering better design methodologies that is based on simulating the design process using a multiagent system that mimics the behavior of a design team. The system implements a knowledge-based model of design in which highly specialized knowledge from expert sources is applied to synthesize a design. The agents activate the pieces of design knowledge when they become applicable. The use of knowledge by agents is recorded by tracing the steps that the agents have taken during a design project. Many traces are generated by solving a large number of design projects that differ in their requirements. A set of design methodologies is constructed by using inductive learning techniques to generalize the traces generated. These methodologies then can be used to guide human design teams through future design projects.

The research field of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) aims to find abstractions, languages, methodologies and toolkits for modeling, verifying, validating and prototyping complex applications conceptualized as Multiagent Systems (MASs). A very lively research sub-field studies how formal methods can be used for AOSE. This paper presents a detailed survey of six logic-based executable agent specification languages that have been chosen for their potential to be integrated in our ARPEGGIO project, an open framework for specifying and prototyping a MAS. The six languages are $\textsf{ConGolog}$, $\textsf{AGENT-0}$, the $\textsf{IMPACT}$ agent programming language, $\textsf{DyLOG}$, Concurrent $\textsf{METATEM}$ and ${\cal E}_{hhf}$. For each executable language, the logic foundations are described and an example of use is shown. A comparison of the six languages and a survey of similar approaches complete the paper, together with considerations of the advantages of using logic-based languages in MAS modeling and prototyping.