Google Agent Development Kit (ADK)
Shares rank 17 of 28 agent frameworks by recommenders
Developers recommend it as a solid open-source framework for building agents across Python, TypeScript, Go and Java. Common caveat: Python dependency management is painful.
Developers recommend it as a solid open-source framework for building agents across Python, TypeScript, Go and Java. Common caveat: Python dependency management is painful.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Solid framework with building blocks
“A good framework will give you building blocks and flexibility in how you use these and how that happens.”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Why do so many "agentic AI" systems collapse without persistent state?” “Generally very optimistic that I found a solid foundation and framework”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Agent design is still hard” “Great framework, happy user with my personal agent stack”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “All your agents are going async” - Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Go LLM SDK for streaming, tool-calling AI backends (plus frontend React lib)”
- Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I built a small OSS kernel for replaying and diffing AI decisions”
Handles orchestration and bookkeeping for you
“It's my "kubernetes for agents" from this perspective of abstractions and common task management handled by the system.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Kubernetes for AI Agents” “ADK certainly addresses all of the points you have in the post.”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “If Dspy is so great, why isn't anyone using it?” “Any framework worth it's muster is already handling this.”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “A remote control for your agents” - Comment from 31 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: I built a small OSS kernel for replaying and diffing AI decisions”
- Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “SSE sucks for transporting LLM tokens”
Easy to build with quickly
“Building a full, custom agent setup is surprisingly easy and a great learning experience”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent” “am quite impressed after a week of test driving”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Best solution to build AI agents?” “I've come quite far in just a week with ADK”
Comment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Agent design is still hard” Open source, cloud or local models
“is really fun to play with. It's open source and supports both using a LLM in the cloud and running locally.”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “You should write an agent” “I'm building my custom agent on their open source Agent Development Kit and the Gemini family.”
Comment from 1 Feb 2026 in “Towards a science of scaling agent systems: When and why agent systems work”
Other agent frameworks people recommend
The four most recommended other agent frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Agent SDK | 36 | 25 | 59% | 11 | — | — |
| LangChain | 32 | 79 | 29% | 10 | 1 yr3 owners | — |
| Mastra | 32 | 3 | 91% | 10 | — | Approved |
| LangGraph | 31 | 23 | 57% | 12 | — | — |
| Google Agent Development Kit (ADK)This page | 8 | 2 | 80% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
32 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I hated it in so far as dep management is still a nightmare in python for me.”
“ADK has a decent page on this”
“I use it with ADK agents, works well.”
“Vendor neutral memory & context management is a challenge as default long-term memory uses vertext AI (gemini) in ADK.”
“ADK seems like a better thought through SDK family”
“I don't find anything that makes me think "this is better than just having 4 terminals splitted in my pc and toggling between them"”
“ADK has a built-in support when the agents calls other remote agents or MCP servers, there is nothing similar”
“Great framework, happy user with my personal agent stack”
“ADK was (and is) exceptional, but nobody is actually making noise and pushing for it as they should.”
“That one I think is good and has legs for longevity.”
“works for non-coding use cases”
“it comes in four languages (Py, TS, Go, Java; so far), which means understanding can transfer over/between teams in larger orgs”
“ADK certainly addresses all of the points you have in the post.”
“ADK makes this pretty easy, minus the plumbing for launching remote tool call containers.”
“I do like their models and the Agent Development Kit (and actually gaining adoption)”
“Any framework worth it's muster is already handling this.”
“It's my "kubernetes for agents" from this perspective of abstractions and common task management handled by the system.”
“Using this has let me get at the lower layers of the stack, so I get deeper customization.”
“I can switch sessions in my coding agent and they keep running in the background”
“I'm building my custom agent on their open source Agent Development Kit and the Gemini family.”
“Building a full, custom agent setup is surprisingly easy and a great learning experience”
“The ADK framework I use does most of the rest”
“A good framework will give you building blocks and flexibility in how you use these and how that happens.”
“enjoy using it quite a bit”
“it handles all that bookkeeping for me”
“These projects are all a level above open router, they call the same standard APIs”
“It's a feature that doesn't solve any problems, it's a feature for the sake of being a cool talking point”
“Generally very optimistic that I found a solid foundation and framework”
“I've come quite far in just a week with ADK”
“am quite impressed after a week of test driving”
“Google ADK (agent development kit, awesome)”
“is really fun to play with. It's open source and supports both using a LLM in the cloud and running locally.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.