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App workflow management class¶

The App class is a top-level container for an entire Agent Development Kit (ADK) agent workflow. It is designed to manage the lifecycle, configuration, and state for a collection of agents grouped by a root agent. The App class separates the concerns of an agent workflow's overall operational infrastructure from individual agents' task-oriented reasoning.

Defining an App object in your ADK workflow is optional and changes how you organize your agent code and run your agents. From a practical perspective, you use the App class to configure the following features for your agent workflow:

• Context caching
• Context compression
• Agent resume
• Plugins

This guide explains how to use the App class for configuring and managing your ADK agent workflows.

Purpose of App Class¶

The App class addresses several architectural issues that arise when building complex agentic systems:

• Centralized configuration: Provides a single, centralized location for managing shared resources like API keys and database clients, avoiding the need to pass configuration down through every agent.
• Lifecycle management: The App class includes on startup and on shutdown hooks, which allow for reliable management of persistent resources such as database connection pools or in-memory caches that need to exist across multiple invocations.
• State scope: It defines an explicit boundary for application-level state with an app:* prefix making the scope and lifetime of this state clear to developers.
• Unit of deployment: The App concept establishes a formal deployable unit, simplifying versioning, testing, and serving of agentic applications.

Define an App object¶

The App class is used as the primary container of your agent workflow and contains the root agent of the project. The root agent is the container for the primary controller agent and any additional sub-agents.

Define app with root agent¶

Create a root agent for your workflow by creating an instance of the Agent class. Then define an App object and configure it with the root agent object and optional features, as shown in the following sample code:

from google.adk.agents.llm_agent import Agent
from google.adk.apps import App

root_agent = Agent(
    model='gemini-flash-latest',
    name='greeter_agent',
    description='An agent that provides a friendly greeting.',
    instruction='Reply with Hello, World!',
)

app = App(
    name="agents",
    root_agent=root_agent,
    # Optionally include App-level features:
    # plugins, context_cache_config, events_compaction_config,
    # resumability_config
)

import com.google.adk.agents.LlmAgent;
import com.google.adk.apps.App;

LlmAgent rootAgent = LlmAgent.builder()
    .model("gemini-flash-latest")
    .name("greeter_agent")
    .description("An agent that provides a friendly greeting.")
    .instruction("Reply with Hello, World!")
    .build();

App app = App.builder()
    .name("agents")
    .rootAgent(rootAgent)
    // Optionally include App-level features:
    // .plugins(plugins)
    // .contextCacheConfig(contextCacheConfig)
    // .eventsCompactionConfig(eventsCompactionConfig)
    .build();

Run your App agent¶

You can use the Runner class to run your agent workflow using the app parameter, as shown in the following code sample:

import asyncio
from dotenv import load_dotenv
from google.adk.runners import InMemoryRunner
from agent import app # import code from agent.py

load_dotenv() # load API keys and settings
# Set a Runner using the imported application object
runner = InMemoryRunner(app=app)

async def main():
    try:  # run_debug() requires ADK Python 1.18 or higher:
        response = await runner.run_debug("Hello there!")

    except Exception as e:
        print(f"An error occurred during agent execution: {e}")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

import com.google.adk.agents.Content;
import com.google.adk.runner.Runner;

public class AppMain {

  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    // Set a Runner using the application object

    App app = ...;

    Runner runner = Runner.builder()
        .app(app) // Use the 'app' object defined previously
        .build();

    runner.runAsync("user", "session-1", Content.fromParts(Part.fromText("Hello there!")))
        .filter(event -> event.finalResponse() && event.content().isPresent())
        .blockingSubscribe(event -> System.out.println("Response: " + event.stringifyContent()));
  }
}

python3 main.py

./gradlew run

Next steps¶

For a more complete sample code implementation, see the Hello World App code example.