ADK Code Reference
SkillAI & modelsThis skill turns your coding assistant into an expert at building AI agents on Google Cloud. Once added, it can help you create agents, check how well they work, and deploy them to Google Cloud. It includes Google's agents command line tool to support that work.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
After adding it, ask your coding assistant to build and test a first agent, then deploy it to Google Cloud. The underlying project lives at github.com/google/agents-cli.
Then ask your AI: use the ADK Code Reference skill
What your AI can do with it
- Create AI agents with expert-level guidance
- Evaluate agents to see how well they perform
- Deploy finished agents to Google Cloud
- Work with Google's agents command line tool
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by google/agents-cli in skills/google-agents-cli-adk-code/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
Activate /google-agents-cli-workflow first for required development phases and scaffolding steps.
1. Study Recipes (No Project Needed)
Read the topic index in references/samples.md before answering "how do I build X". Worked implementations exist for: sandboxed/per-user code execution, agent-loadable SKILL.md skills, cross-session memory, approval gates before risky actions, tool guardrails, per-user credentials, and scheduled/event-driven runs.
The index only gives you a name; the recipe is the code. Clone it and read its AGENTS.md before you implement anything it covers. Hand-writing a Docker or E2B sandbox wrapper, a skill loader, a moderation callback or a memory store — for a capability the index lists — means you stopped at the name.
2. Prerequisites for Writing Code
Do NOT write agent code until a project is scaffolded.
- Verify project: run
agents-cli info(proceed if config exists). - New project: run
agents-cli scaffold create <name>. - Existing code: run
agents-cli scaffold enhance ..
Language Support: This reference covers the Python ADK SDK. Support for other languages coming soon.
Quick Reference — Most Common Patterns
from google.adk.agents import Agent
def get_weather(city: str) -> dict:
"""Get current weather for a city."""
return {"city": city, "temp": "22°C", "condition": "sunny"}
root_agent = Agent(
name="my_agent",
model="gemini-3.7-flash",
instruction="You are a helpful assistant that ...",
tools=[get_weather],
)
References
Use cheatsheets for common patterns. For deep knowledge, fetch the docs index or inspect the installed package.
| Reference | When to read |
|---|---|
references/samples.md | Topic-indexed catalog of ADK reference recipes. Read in workflow Phase 1 — before scaffolding and before writing code — maps a capability to the recipe that implements it. |
references/adk-python.md | Core ADK API: Agent, tools, callbacks, plugins, state, artifacts, multi-agent systems, SequentialAgent / ParallelAgent / LoopAgent, custom BaseAgent, ManagedAgent (server-hosted first-party agents), A2A protocol, A2UI. Default for most agents. |
references/adk-workflows.md | Graph-based Workflow API (ADK 2.0): nodes, edges, fan-out/fan-in, HITL, parallel processing. Use when you need explicit graph topology. |
curl https://adk.dev/llms.txt | Docs index (every page title + URL). Fetch it, then WebFetch the specific page for anything beyond the cheatsheets. |
| Installed ADK package | Exact signatures and symbols — inspect the source (see "Inspecting ADK Source Code" in references/adk-python.md). |
Related Skills
/google-agents-cli-workflow— Development workflow, coding guidelines, and operational rules/google-agents-cli-scaffold— Project creation and enhancement withagents-cli scaffold create/scaffold enhance/google-agents-cli-eval— Evaluation methodology, dataset schema, and the eval-fix loop/google-agents-cli-deploy— Deployment targets, CI/CD pipelines, and production workflows
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 6k
- Forks
- 660
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
- Installs
- 195k installs
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
google-agents-cli-adk-code- Source
- github.com/google/agents-cli