My Journey Learning Google ADK: Building AI Agents from Scratch | Part 5

2026-02-05 · Source: Towards AI - Medium · Field: Technology & Digital — Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Software Development & Engineering, Robotics & Autonomous Systems · Depth: Intermediate, quick

Summary

This article, "My Journey Learning Google ADK: Building AI Agents from Scratch | Part 5," introduces the AgentTool feature within Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK). It addresses a limitation of the previously discussed multi-agent routing pattern, where control fully transfers to a specialist agent. AgentTool allows a main agent to call specialist agents as callable tools, retrieve their results, and then perform additional processing or combine outcomes. This mechanism ensures the main agent retains control throughout the interaction, facilitating complex orchestration scenarios. The article outlines building a DevOps Copilot as an example application, demonstrating how AgentTool can be used for tasks like generating kubectl commands.

Key takeaway

For AI Engineers designing multi-agent systems with Google ADK, understanding AgentTool is crucial for maintaining central control. If your application requires a primary agent to delegate tasks, receive results, and then perform further actions, you should integrate AgentTool instead of full control transfer. This approach enables more sophisticated workflows and better orchestration of specialist capabilities.

Key insights

AgentTool enables a main agent to call specialist agents as tools, retaining control and processing their results.

Principles

• Maintain main agent control in multi-agent systems.
• Orchestrate complex tasks by integrating specialist agent outputs.

Method

Wrap specialist agents as callable tools using AgentTool, allowing a primary agent to invoke them and process returned results.

In practice

• Use AgentTool for complex multi-agent orchestration.
• Integrate specialist agent outputs for post-processing.

Topics

• Google ADK
• AgentTool
• Multi-Agent Orchestration
• AI Agents
• DevOps AI

Best for: AI Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, AI Student

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Towards AI - Medium.