Technology Radar
Agent Development Kit (ADK) is Google’s framework for building and operating AI agents with software-engineering-oriented abstractions for orchestration, tools, evaluation and deployment. Its ecosystem and operational capabilities have matured significantly since we included it in Assess, with active multi-language development and stronger observability and run-time features. Vendor-native agent frameworks are now a crowded field, with Microsoft Agent Framework, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, the OpenAI Agents SDK and the Claude Agent SDK advancing competing options. Open-source alternatives such as LangGraph and CrewAI remain strong choices, especially where teams prioritize framework portability and broader ecosystems. ADK remains pre-GA in parts, with occasional rough edges and upgrade friction, but we’ve seen more projects using it successfully, particularly those already invested in Google’s platform.
Agent Development Kit (ADK) is a framework for developing and deploying AI agents that applies modern software engineering discipline rather than relying solely on prompting. It introduces familiar abstractions such as classes, methods, workflow patterns and CLI support. Compared to frameworks like LangGraph or CrewAI, ADK’s strength lies in its deep integration with Google’s AI infrastructure, providing enterprise-ready grounding, data access and monitoring. It’s also designed for interoperability, supporting tool wrappers and the A2A protocol for agent-to-agent communication. For organizations already invested in GCP, ADK presents a promising foundation for building scalable, secure and manageable agentic architecture. Though still early in its evolution, it signals Google’s direction toward a native, full-stack agent development environment. We recommend keeping a close eye on its maturity and ecosystem growth.
