Agentic Commerce with ADK 2 — Building & Shipping CartPilot
A comprehensive 18-part developer's guide to building, testing, and shipping production AI agents with Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) 2.0 and Gemini — covering graph workflow runtimes, multi-agent coordination, Task API delegation, Human-in-the-Loop gates, token economics, evaluation suites, MCP integrations, multi-provider model routing, pre-flight token budgeting, cross-provider TCO comparison, and self-hosted native deployment.
Learning Path & Timeline
- Part 1•2026-08-01•Editorial
Your First ADK 2 Agent: From Zero to adk web
Build your first autonomous AI agent with Google ADK 2.0 and Gemini. Learn project structure, agent definitions, dev tooling, and live chat with adk web.
- Part 2•2026-08-02•Editorial
Giving Agents Tools: Python Functions as First-Class Capabilities
Equip your ADK 2 agents with typed Python tools. Learn schema auto-generation, tool payload optimization, and cost-conscious tool design.
- Part 3•2026-08-03•Editorial
Sessions & State: Making CartPilot Remember the Cart
Master multi-turn conversational memory and session persistence in ADK 2. Isolate state with InMemorySessionService and minimize context window token inflation.
- Part 4•2026-08-04•Editorial
Guaranteed Structured Output with Pydantic Schemas
Eliminate JSON parsing failures in AI workflows. Enforce guaranteed structured outputs with Pydantic models in Google ADK 2.
- Part 5•2026-08-05•Editorial
From Executor to Graph: ADK 2's Workflow Runtime
Master ADK 2's graph-based Workflow Runtime. Construct deterministic execution pipelines with Sequential, Branch, and Loop agents.
- Part 6•2026-08-06•Editorial
Multi-Agent by Design: Coordinator and Specialist Sub-Agents
Architect scalable multi-agent systems in ADK 2. Build a central Master Coordinator that routes requests to specialized search, cart, and support agents.
- Part 7•2026-08-07•Editorial
The Task API: Structured Agent-to-Agent Delegation
Optimize agent-to-agent communication with ADK 2's Task API. Perform single-turn bounded delegation without conversational context overhead.
- Part 8•2026-08-08•Editorial
Human-in-the-Loop: Pausing for Approval on High-Stakes Actions
Safeguard high-risk operations in AI agents. Implement ADK 2's Tool Confirmation flow to pause execution and require human approval on financial refunds.
- Part 9•2026-08-09•Editorial
Resilient Tools: ADK's Error Conventions & Self-Healing Agents
Build production-resilient AI agent toolsets. Implement structured error schemas, bounded retries with jitter, and self-healing agent logic.
- Part 10•2026-08-10•Editorial
Token Economics & Cost Optimization for Agents
Track, measure, and optimize LLM token costs in Google ADK 2. Implement after_model_callback telemetry and model tiering strategies.
- Part 11•2026-08-11•Editorial
Guardrails & Observability with Callbacks
Implement deterministic guardrails, audit logging, and runtime policy enforcement across all six ADK 2 lifecycle callback hooks.
- Part 12•2026-08-12•Editorial
Evaluating CartPilot: ADK's Eval Framework
Automate regression testing and benchmark agent performance with ADK's AgentEvaluator. Measure tool trajectory accuracy and response match scores.
- Part 13•2026-08-13•Editorial
Extending CartPilot with MCP Tools
Connect external microservices and third-party tools to ADK 2 agents using Model Context Protocol (MCP) and McpToolset.
- Part 14•2026-08-14•Editorial
Shipping CartPilot: Deployment & Production Operations
Take Google ADK 2 agents to production. Deploy CartPilot on Google Cloud Run and Vertex AI Agent Runtime with CI/CD and observability.
- Part 15•2026-08-15•Editorial
Bonus: Bring Your Own Model — Any LLM, Cloud or Local, with ADK 2
Run Google ADK 2 agents on any model provider. Integrate OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Ollama, and local open-source LLMs using LiteLLM.
- Part 16•2026-08-16•Editorial
Bonus: Tokenization, Cost Strategy & Total Cost of Ownership for ADK Agents
Count tokens pre-flight and model full total cost of ownership (TCO) for production AI agents beyond raw LLM pricing.
- Part 17•2026-08-17•Editorial
Bonus: Comparing Total Cost of Ownership Across LLM Providers
Compare production agent TCO side-by-side across Google Gemini, OpenAI GPT, Anthropic Claude, and self-hosted Ollama.
- Part 18•2026-08-18•Editorial
Bonus: Native Deployment — Running CartPilot Without Any Proprietary Cloud
Deploy ADK 2 agents completely self-hosted with Docker, Postgres DatabaseSessionService, Caddy HTTPS, Jaeger tracing, and Loki logging.