Develop and deploy agents on Vertex AI Agent Engine with Agent Development Kit

This page demonstrates how to create and deploy an agent to Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime using the Agent Development Kit (ADK). This quickstart guides you through the following steps:

  • Set up your Google Cloud project.

  • Install the Vertex AI SDK for Python and ADK.

  • Develop a currency exchange agent.

  • Deploy the agent to Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime.

  • Test the deployed agent.

You can also use the following alternative quickstarts for ADK:

  • ADK quickstart: The ADK quickstart runs entirely on your machine and assumes you're using a local IDE and terminal access.

  • Agent Starter Pack: a collection of production-ready generative AI agent templates built for Vertex AI Agent Engine.

For the quickstart using supported frameworks other than Agent Development Kit, see Develop and deploy agents on Vertex AI Agent Engine.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  3. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Enable the Vertex AI and Cloud Storage APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

  5. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  6. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  7. Enable the Vertex AI and Cloud Storage APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin), which contains the serviceusage.services.enable permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

    8.

To get the permissions that you need to use Vertex AI Agent Engine, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on your project:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Install and initialize the Vertex AI SDK for Python

  1. Run the following command to install the Vertex AI SDK for Python and other required packages:

    pip install --upgrade --quiet google-cloud-aiplatform[agent_engines,adk]>=1.112

  2. Authenticate as a user

    Local Shell

    Run the following command:

    gcloud auth application-default login

    Colab

    Run the following code:

    from google.colab import auth

auth.authenticate_user(project_id="PROJECT_ID")

    Cloud Shell

    No action required.

  3. Run the following code to import Vertex AI Agent Engine and initialize the SDK:

    import vertexai

client = vertexai.Client(
    project="PROJECT_ID",               # Your project ID.
    location="LOCATION",                # Your cloud region.
)

    Where:

Develop an agent

  1. Develop a currency exchange tool for your agent:

    def get_exchange_rate(
    currency_from: str = "USD",
    currency_to: str = "EUR",
    currency_date: str = "latest",
):
    """Retrieves the exchange rate between two currencies on a specified date."""
    import requests

    response = requests.get(
        f"https://api.frankfurter.app/{currency_date}",
        params={"from": currency_from, "to": currency_to},
    )
    return response.json()

  2. Instantiate an agent:

    from google.adk.agents import Agent
from vertexai import agent_engines

agent = Agent(
    model="gemini-2.0-flash",
    name='currency_exchange_agent',
    tools=[get_exchange_rate],
)

app = agent_engines.AdkApp(agent=agent)

  3. Test the agent locally:

    async for event in app.async_stream_query(
    user_id="USER_ID",
    message="What is the exchange rate from US dollars to SEK today?",
):
    print(event)

    where USER_ID is a user-defined ID with a character limit of 128.

Deploy an agent

Deploy the agent by creating a reasoningEngine resource in Vertex AI:

remote_agent = client.agent_engines.create(
    agent=app,
    config={
        "requirements": ["google-cloud-aiplatform[agent_engines,adk]"],
    }
)

Use an agent

Test the deployed agent by sending a query:

async for event in remote_agent.async_stream_query(
    user_id="USER_ID",
    message="What is the exchange rate from US dollars to SEK today?",
):
    print(event)

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used on this page, follow these steps. 

remote_agent.delete(force=True)

What's next