Google Agents CLI — Setup Guide¶
Source: google/agents-cli (357K+ combined installs) Category: Agent Infrastructure Quality Tier: 🟢 Production
Google's official Agent Development Kit (ADK) — a complete workflow for building, scaffolding, evaluating, deploying, and observing AI agents. Six skills covering the full agent lifecycle. Production-grade, maintained by Google.
Installation¶
# Install individual skills
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-adk-code
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-workflow
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-eval
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-scaffold
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-deploy
npx skills add google/agents-cli --skill google-agents-cli-observability
Included Skills¶
| Skill | Installs | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| google-agents-cli-adk-code | 59.8K | Core ADK coding patterns — build agents with Google's framework |
| google-agents-cli-workflow | 59.6K | Define multi-step agent workflows with chaining and branching |
| google-agents-cli-eval | 59.5K | Evaluate agent performance with structured test suites |
| google-agents-cli-scaffold | 59.5K | Scaffold new agent projects from templates |
| google-agents-cli-deploy | 59.5K | Deploy agents to Google Cloud / Vertex AI |
| google-agents-cli-observability | 59.5K | Monitor agent runs with traces, logs, and metrics |
Prerequisites¶
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud account | Required for deploy and observability skills |
| Python 3.10+ | Core runtime |
| gcloud CLI | For deployment workflows |
Key Capabilities¶
Agent Development (adk-code)¶
Full Google ADK development patterns — tool definitions, memory management, multi-turn conversations, streaming responses, and safety filters.
Agent Workflows (workflow)¶
Chain agents together, define conditional branching, parallel execution, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints.
Agent Evaluation (eval)¶
Structured eval harness — test datasets, metric definitions, regression detection, and A/B comparison between agent versions.
Scaffolding (scaffold)¶
adk init equivalent — project templates, directory structures, config files, and CI/CD pipeline generation.
Deployment (deploy)¶
Push agents to Vertex AI Agent Builder, Cloud Run, or GKE. Environment variable management and canary rollout support.
Observability¶
OpenTelemetry-based tracing for agent runs, latency breakdowns by step, token usage tracking, and error rate dashboards.
Quick Start¶
# Scaffold a new agent project
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-scaffold
# Build the agent logic
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-adk-code
# Define multi-step workflows
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-workflow
# Evaluate before deploying
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-eval
# Deploy to Google Cloud
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-deploy
# Monitor in production
npx skills use google/agents-cli@google-agents-cli-observability
Verification¶
npx skills list | grep google-agents-cli
Notes¶
- Official Google product — actively maintained, frequent updates
- All 6 skills have near-identical install counts (~59.5K), indicating they're typically installed as a bundle
- Requires Google Cloud for deploy/observability skills; code/eval/scaffold work standalone
- Complements Hermes agent infrastructure for production deployment patterns
- Quality tier 🟢 Production: 357K+ combined installs, Google-maintained