Google Releases Agent Development Kit for Kotlin 1.0 with On-Device AI Support

Production-Ready Kotlin ADK Released

Google has launched the Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Kotlin 1.0, providing a production-ready framework for developing AI agents. This kit supports Kotlin, Android, and JVM/server applications, bringing Kotlin to feature parity with Google's existing ADK for Python and Java. It also introduces new Android-specific functionalities for on-device and hybrid AI deployments.

Key Features and Capabilities

The ADK for Kotlin 1.0 allows developers to use idiomatic Kotlin APIs for agent orchestration, tool support, persistence, memory management, and human-in-the-loop workflows. Built on Kotlin Multiplatform, the ADK operates across various platforms, from server-side to mobile devices. Its architecture is designed to be agnostic to specific model backends, session providers, or memory systems.

New features include support for hierarchical multi-agent systems, where a parent agent can delegate tasks to child agents. It also offers context compaction and multi-turn conversation capabilities for automatic context management and history summarization, which reduces token usage. Session management allows agent states to be paused, serialized, and restored, and the kit provides first-class Java interoperability.

Enhanced Tooling and Safety

A significant design choice in ADK for Kotlin 1.0 is its support for tools and human-in-the-loop workflows. Tools can be declared using annotations like @Tool and @Param, which KSP uses to generate Kotlin function schemas at compile time. This approach avoids runtime reflection, improving type-safety and performance, particularly on mobile targets.

Human-in-the-loop workflows help prevent unintended or improper tool usage by requiring explicit human confirmation before sensitive actions are executed. Developers can set `requireConfirmation` in a tool's declaration to enable this feature, which is crucial for high-impact operations such as financial transactions. This allows generated functions to handle sensitive transactions while utilizing Android persistence services like Room for chat sessions, AppSearch for indexed memory, and direct Android storage for files.