Deployment Guide

Requires: agents-cli (uv tool install google-agents-cli) — install uv first if needed.

Prefer using the agents-cli commands throughout this guide — they wrap Terraform, Docker, and deployment into a tested pipeline. If your project isn't scaffolded yet, see /google-agents-cli-scaffold to add deployment support first.

Reference Files

For deeper details, consult these reference files in references/:

• cloud-run.md — Scaling defaults, Dockerfile, session types, networking
• agent-runtime.md — container-based deploy, unified FastAPI app, the /api passthrough, Terraform resource, deployment metadata, CI/CD differences
• gke.md — GKE Autopilot cluster, Kubernetes manifests, Workload Identity, session types, networking
• terraform-patterns.md — Custom infrastructure, IAM, state management, importing resources
• batch-inference.md — BigQuery Remote Function trigger; for Pub/Sub / Eventarc on ADK see /google-agents-cli-adk-code
• cicd-pipeline.md — Full CI/CD pipeline setup, infra cicd flags, runner comparison, WIF auth, pipeline stages
• testing-deployed-agents.md — Testing instructions per deployment target, curl examples, load tests
• cmek.md — Customer-managed encryption keys on Agent Runtime in Gemini platform: key grants, deploy --key for dev, Terraform edits for staging/prod

Observability: See the /google-agents-cli-observability skill for Cloud Trace, prompt-response logging, BigQuery Analytics, and third-party integrations.

Deployment Target Decision Matrix

Choose the right deployment target based on your requirements:

Ask the user which deployment target fits their needs. Each is a valid production choice with different trade-offs.

All three targets are container-based, so any language works.

Product name mapping: users may say "Agent Engine", "Vertex AI Agent Engine", or "Agent Runtime"; all mean Agent Runtime. Use --deployment-target agent_runtime.

Ambient / scheduled / event-driven agents (ADK projects): ADK's trigger_sources registers /apps/{app}/trigger/* endpoints on the same FastAPI app for all targets. On Cloud Run / GKE these are public HTTP routes you point a Pub/Sub push subscription or Eventarc trigger at; on Agent Runtime the same routes are reachable through its /api passthrough (e.g. .../reasoningEngines/v1/{resource}/api/apps/{app}/trigger/pubsub). Cloud Run remains the simplest target for unauthenticated trigger sources. See /google-agents-cli-adk-code (references/adk-python.md, section "12. Event-Driven / Ambient Agents") for the trigger_sources pattern.

OAuth / user consent agents: Use Agent Runtime, registered with Gemini, for agents that need OAuth 2.0 user consent (e.g., accessing Google Drive, Calendar, or other user-scoped APIs). Cloud Run does not currently support managed OAuth flows. For a worked ADK example, look up OAuth user consent in the topic index in /google-agents-cli-adk-code → references/samples.md.

Live and voice agents: pass --timeout 3600 on Cloud Run so a session outlives the 300s default, and --min-instances 1 on Cloud Run or Agent Runtime so the first caller after idle does not hear a cold start. GKE sizes pods in Terraform. URL shapes and session caps: /google-agents-cli-adk-code (references/adk-python-live.md).

Deploying to Dev

Deploy Workflow

Task tracking: Deployment involves multiple sequential steps (infra setup, CI/CD configuration, deploy, verification). Use a task list to track progress through these steps — skipping one often causes failures in later steps that are hard to trace back.

1. If prototype (no deployment target), first enhance: agents-cli scaffold enhance . --deployment-target <target>
2. Notify the human: paste the eval scores and test results, then ask "Ready to deploy to dev?"
3. Wait for explicit approval
4. Once approved: agents-cli deploy

Agent Runtime timeout recovery: Agent Runtime deploys can take 5-10 minutes and may exceed command timeouts. If the deploy command is cancelled or times out, the deployment continues server-side. Run agents-cli deploy --status to check progress — poll every 60 seconds until it reports completion or failure.

IMPORTANT: Never run agents-cli deploy without explicit human approval.

Not a prerequisite. agents-cli deploy works on its own. One exception: if the user wants Terraform-managed observability (prompt-response logging, BigQuery analytics), run agents-cli infra single-project --apply first, see /google-agents-cli-observability.

Single-Project Infrastructure Setup (Optional — Advanced)

agents-cli infra single-project --apply runs terraform apply in deployment/terraform/single-project/. Use this to provision single-project GCP infrastructure without CI/CD (service accounts, IAM bindings, telemetry resources, Artifact Registry). It is required before deployment only when Terraform will manage observability; basic Agent Runtime and Cloud Run deployments do not need it, while GKE deploy handles its own targeted Terraform.

# Optional — provision infrastructure in a single GCP project
agents-cli infra single-project --apply

Note: agents-cli deploy doesn't automatically use the Terraform-created app_sa. Pass the service account explicitly: agents-cli deploy --service-account SA_EMAIL.

Deploy Flag Reference

Run agents-cli deploy --help for the full flag reference.

Advanced Cloud Run Deploys: If you need features not exposed via agents-cli flags, use --dry-run (or -n) to print the full gcloud command, copy it, and add additional arguments as needed.

Project Confirmation: If the project is resolved automatically (not passed via --project), the command will prompt for confirmation in interactive mode. Since agents typically run in non-interactive mode, you MUST pass --no-confirm-project to proceed if you are relying on automatic project resolution.

Sizing a deployment

Defaults (same on Agent Runtime and Cloud Run): --cpu 1, --memory 4Gi, --concurrency 8, --min-instances 0, --max-instances 10. The generated service.tf matches, except it pins min_instances = 1 so production deployments don't experience cold starts. The recommended values were tuned against Python agents, so treat them as a starting point and tune them with load tests (see below).

agents-cli deploy scales to zero by default so idle dev and demo agents don't hold capacity. Pass --min-instances 1 (or deploy via Terraform) when you need a warm instance.

The params are coupled — scale them together:

• One process — scale out, not up. The container runs a single server process handling many requests concurrently, so throughput comes from --concurrency and horizontal scale (--max-instances), not from extra worker processes. Raise --cpu only when profiling shows real CPU saturation rather than time spent waiting on the model.
• Memory bounds concurrency. Each concurrent request keeps its full working set (context window, history, RAG chunks, response buffer) in memory while it waits on the model, so peak ≈ base + concurrency × per-request memory. Memory — not CPU — is the first limit, so raising --concurrency without --memory is the main OOM cause.
• Concurrency default is conservative. A worker can serve many concurrent requests while it waits on the model, but per-request memory is agent-specific, so 8 protects a memory-heavy (RAG/multimodal) agent. Light agents can raise it to 16–32+ after load-testing. See Underutilized asynchronous workers.

# 4x throughput: scale every param, not just one
agents-cli deploy --cpu 4 --concurrency 16 --memory 16Gi --max-instances 20

Tune with the scaffolded load test (tests/load_test/ in a Python project, e2e/load_test/ in a Go one; run locally or in the CI/CD staging pipeline): drive load, watch max latency and memory/OOM restarts, then adjust — high max latency → raise concurrency (+ workers/cpu); OOM → raise memory or lower concurrency.

On GKE these sizing flags are rejected — size via the Terraform manifests + HorizontalPodAutoscaler under deployment/terraform/.

Production Deployment — CI/CD Pipeline

For the full CI/CD pipeline setup guide — prerequisites, infra cicd flags, runner comparison, WIF authentication, pipeline stages, and production approval — see references/cicd-pipeline.md.

Cloud Run Specifics

For detailed infrastructure configuration (scaling defaults, Dockerfile, FastAPI endpoints, session types, networking), see references/cloud-run.md. ADK: for ADK docs on Cloud Run deployment, fetch https://adk.dev/deploy/cloud-run/index.md.

ADK projects. For event-driven / ambient agent deployment on Cloud Run, see the ambient-expense-agent sample and /google-agents-cli-adk-code (references/adk-python.md, section "12. Event-Driven / Ambient Agents") for the trigger_sources pattern.

Agent Runtime specifics

Agent Runtime is a managed Gemini platform service for deploying agents as containers. Uses container-based deployment: agents-cli deploy packages your project and Agent Runtime builds the image from your project's Dockerfile (required) — the same image that serves Cloud Run and GKE.

No gcloud CLI exists for Agent Runtime. Deploy via agents-cli deploy. Query via the Python agentplatform.Client SDK.

Deployments can take 5-10 minutes. Use --no-wait to start a deployment and return immediately, then check on it later with --status:

# Start deployment without blocking
agents-cli deploy --no-wait

# Check on progress later
agents-cli deploy --status

When --status detects the operation has completed, it writes deployment_metadata.json and prints the same success output as a normal deploy.

For detailed infrastructure configuration (container deploy flow, the unified FastAPI app and /api passthrough, Terraform resource, deployment metadata, session/artifact services, CI/CD differences), see references/agent-runtime.md. ADK: for ADK docs on Agent Runtime deployment, fetch https://adk.dev/deploy/agent-runtime/index.md.

GKE Specifics

For detailed infrastructure configuration (Kubernetes manifests, Terraform resources, Workload Identity, session types, networking), see references/gke.md. ADK: for ADK docs on GKE deployment, fetch https://adk.dev/deploy/gke/index.md.

Service Account Architecture

Scaffolded projects use two service accounts:

• app_sa (per environment) — Runtime identity for the deployed agent. Roles defined in deployment/terraform/iam.tf.
• cicd_runner_sa (CI/CD project) — CI/CD pipeline identity (GitHub Actions / Cloud Build). Lives in the CI/CD project (defaults to prod project), needs permissions in both staging and prod projects.

Check deployment/terraform/iam.tf for exact role bindings. Cross-project permissions (Cloud Run service agents, artifact registry access) are also configured there.

Common 403 errors:

• "Permission denied on Cloud Run" → cicd_runner_sa missing deployment role in the target project
• "Cannot act as service account" → Missing iam.serviceAccountUser binding on app_sa
• "Secret access denied" → app_sa missing secretmanager.secretAccessor
• "Cloud SQL connection failed / Not authorized" → Runtime service account missing roles/cloudsql.client
• "Artifact Registry read denied" → Cloud Run service agent missing read access in CI/CD project

Required Permissions for CI/CD Setup

• roles/secretmanager.admin granted to the Cloud Build service account (service-<PROJECT_NUMBER>@gcp-sa-cloudbuild.iam.gserviceaccount.com) in the CI/CD project. This allows Cloud Build to access the GitHub token stored in Secret Manager.

Required APIs

The following Google Cloud APIs must be enabled in your project for the skills and deployment to work:

• cloudbuild.googleapis.com — Required for building container images and running CI/CD pipelines.
• secretmanager.googleapis.com — Required for managing secrets and API keys.
• run.googleapis.com — Required for deploying to Cloud Run.

Ensure these are enabled before running deployment or CI/CD setup commands:

gcloud services enable cloudbuild.googleapis.com secretmanager.googleapis.com run.googleapis.com --project=YOUR_PROJECT_ID

Secret Manager (for API Credentials)

Instead of passing sensitive keys as environment variables, use GCP Secret Manager.

# Create a secret
echo -n "YOUR_API_KEY" | gcloud secrets create MY_SECRET_NAME --data-file=-

# Update an existing secret
echo -n "NEW_API_KEY" | gcloud secrets versions add MY_SECRET_NAME --data-file=-

Grant access: For Cloud Run, grant secretmanager.secretAccessor to app_sa. For Agent Runtime, grant it to the platform-managed SA (service-PROJECT_NUMBER@gcp-sa-aiplatform-re.iam.gserviceaccount.com). For GKE, grant secretmanager.secretAccessor to app_sa. Access secrets via Kubernetes Secrets or directly via the Secret Manager API with Workload Identity.

Pass secrets at deploy time (Agent Runtime, Cloud Run):

agents-cli deploy --secrets "API_KEY=my-api-key,DB_PASS=db-password:2"

Format: ENV_VAR=SECRET_ID or ENV_VAR=SECRET_ID:VERSION (defaults to latest).

Cloud SQL Permissions (Manual Deployment)

When using Cloud SQL with Cloud Run in a manual deployment (e.g., adding --add-cloudsql-instances in non-Terraform setups), you must manually grant the Cloud SQL Client role to the runtime service account.

Without this, the deployment may succeed but fail at runtime with cloudsql.instances.get authorization errors.

gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding YOUR_PROJECT_ID \
  --member="serviceAccount:YOUR_RUNTIME_SA_EMAIL" \
  --role="roles/cloudsql.client"

Note: In full Terraform-managed setups (infra cicd / infra single-project), this role is configured and managed automatically.

Observability

See the agents-cli-observability skill for observability configuration (Cloud Trace, prompt-response logging, BigQuery Analytics, third-party integrations).

Testing Your Deployed Agent

The quickest way to test a deployed agent is agents-cli run --url <service-url> --mode a2a "your prompt" — it handles auth, sessions, and streaming automatically (supports Agent Runtime and Cloud Run). ADK: --mode adk talks to the ADK streaming API instead.

For advanced testing (custom headers, session reuse, scripting, load tests), see references/testing-deployed-agents.md.

Deploying with a UI (IAP)

IAP (Identity-Aware Proxy) secures a Cloud Run service so only authorized Google accounts can access it. Enable it by adding the --iap flag when deploying (Cloud Run only): agents-cli deploy --iap.

For Agent Runtime with a custom frontend, use a decoupled deployment — deploy the frontend separately to Cloud Run or Cloud Storage, connecting to the Agent Runtime backend API.

For more information on IAP with Cloud Run, see the Cloud Console IAP settings.

Rollback & Recovery

The primary rollback mechanism is git-based: fix the issue, commit, and push to main. The CI/CD pipeline will automatically build and deploy the new version through staging → production.

For immediate Cloud Run rollback without a new commit, use revision traffic shifting:

gcloud run revisions list --service=SERVICE_NAME --region=REGION
gcloud run services update-traffic SERVICE_NAME \
  --to-revisions=REVISION_NAME=100 --region=REGION

Agent Runtime doesn't support revision-based rollback — fix and redeploy via agents-cli deploy.

For GKE rollback, use kubectl rollout undo:

kubectl rollout undo deployment/DEPLOYMENT_NAME -n NAMESPACE
kubectl rollout status deployment/DEPLOYMENT_NAME -n NAMESPACE

Custom Infrastructure (Terraform)

CRITICAL: When your agent requires custom infrastructure (Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, Eventarc, BigQuery, etc.), you MUST define it in Terraform — never create resources manually via gcloud commands. Exception: quick experimentation is fine with gcloud or console, but production infrastructure must be in Terraform.

For custom infrastructure patterns, consult references/terraform-patterns.md for:

• Where to put custom Terraform files (single-project vs CI/CD)
• Resource examples (Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Eventarc triggers)
• IAM bindings for custom resources
• Terraform state management (remote vs local, importing resources)
• Common infrastructure patterns

Troubleshooting

Platform Registration

For registering deployed agents with Gemini, see /google-agents-cli-publish.

Agent Gateway

Note: There are no agents-cli commands for creating or managing Agent Gateways or Semantic Governance policies — set those up separately (via Terraform or the Cloud Console). agents-cli deploy is the only gateway-aware command, and its support is a passthrough: it binds the agent to an existing gateway as part of the Agent Runtime create/update call.

Agent Gateway is the networking + security entry/exit point for all agent interactions (user↔agent, agent↔tool, agent↔agent) — it centralizes access control and governed connectivity (ingress/egress). It is not a deployment target.

To set up a gateway, follow Set up an Agent Gateway and Route Agent Runtime traffic through Agent Gateway. You may also manage the gateway in Terraform with google_network_services_agent_gateway (currently in the google-beta provider).

Once a gateway exists, agents-cli deploy binds an agent to it with --agent-gateway-egress and/or --agent-gateway-ingress, each taking a full resource name (projects/PROJECT/locations/REGION/agentGateways/GATEWAY). Only Agent Runtime deployment is supported, and the agent must have Agent Identity.

An egress gateway performs TLS decryption and inspection on outbound agent communications, so the image must trust the gateway's root CA. That setup is opt-in at scaffold time. If you're creating a new project, pass --agent-gateway flag to agents-cli create:

agents-cli create my-agent --agent adk -d agent_runtime --agent-gateway

Alternatively, you can pass the same flag to agents-cli scaffold enhance to upgrade an existing project:

agents-cli scaffold enhance . --agent-gateway

Either writes a Dockerfile that consumes the AGENT_GATEWAY_ROOT_CERTIFICATES build arg the platform injects, and records agent_gateway: true under create_params so scaffold upgrade keeps it. Deploying with --agent-gateway-egress against a Dockerfile that lacks the build arg fails with a pointer to the command above; --no-agent-gateway removes the setup again.

Background: Agent Gateway overview.

Customer-managed encryption (CMEK)

An Agent Runtime agent can be encrypted with your Cloud KMS key. The key is fixed at creation, so set it where the agent is created: deploy --key for dev deployments, or the Terraform files for staging/prod (infra cicd) and infra single-project; --key cannot add a key to an agent Terraform created. Required key grants and the Terraform edits: references/cmek.md.

Semantic Governance

Semantic Governance Policies (SGP) add a natural-language security/compliance layer that keeps an agent's tool invocations aligned with user intent and organizational constraints.

• Overview: https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/govern/policies/semantic-governance-overview
• Configure: https://docs.cloud.google.com/gemini-enterprise-agent-platform/govern/policies/configure-semantic-governance

Related Skills

• /google-agents-cli-workflow — Development workflow, coding guidelines, and operational rules
• /google-agents-cli-adk-code — ADK API quick reference for writing agent code
• /google-agents-cli-eval — Evaluation methodology, dataset schema, and the eval-fix loop
• /google-agents-cli-scaffold — Project creation and enhancement with agents-cli scaffold create / scaffold enhance
• /google-agents-cli-observability — Cloud Trace, logging, BigQuery Analytics, and third-party integrations
• /google-agents-cli-publish — Gemini registration