From Agent Starter Pack¶

agents-cli is the successor to Agent Starter Pack (ASP). It builds on the same foundation with key improvements.

What Changed¶

Coding agent first. ASP was built for humans running an interactive CLI. agents-cli is built for coding agents — with 7 bundled skills that give them deep context about ADK, evaluation, deployment, and observability. Every command still works from the terminal too.

CLI replaces Makefile. ASP used make targets (make dev, make eval, make deploy). agents-cli replaces them with a unified CLI covering the full lifecycle, with flags, help text, and structured output.

New capabilities. agents-cli adds commands that didn't exist in ASP: playground, run, deploy, the full eval surface (eval generate, eval grade, eval dataset synthesize, eval compare, eval analyze, eval metric list, eval optimize), lint, login, and skill management (setup, update).

Command Mapping¶

Agent Starter Pack	agents-cli
`create`	`create` (alias for `scaffold create`)
`enhance`	`scaffold enhance`
`upgrade`	`scaffold upgrade`
`setup-cicd`	`infra cicd`
`register-gemini-enterprise`	`publish gemini-enterprise`

Config Key¶

The configuration moved from [tool.agent-starter-pack] in pyproject.toml to a dedicated agents-cli-manifest.yaml:

Before (pyproject.toml)

[tool.agent-starter-pack]
agent_directory = "app"

[tool.agent-starter-pack.create_params]
deployment_target = "cloud_run"

After (agents-cli-manifest.yaml)

name: my-agent
agent_directory: app
create_params:
  deployment_target: cloud_run

Template Coverage¶

agents-cli currently supports adk, adk_a2a, and agentic_rag (Python). ASP had additional templates (adk_go, adk_java, adk_ts, adk_live, custom_a2a) that are not yet available in agents-cli. Support for these is planned.

What Stays the Same¶

Templates — same agent templates (adk, adk_a2a, agentic_rag), same deployment targets, same session storage options
Project structure — generated projects have the same layout, your app/agent.py code is unchanged
Terraform — same infrastructure-as-code under deployment/terraform/
CI/CD pipelines — same Cloud Build and GitHub Actions configurations

Migrating an Existing Project¶

Your existing ASP projects are fully compatible. The only required change is renaming the config section in pyproject.toml.

Step 1: Install agents-cli

uvx google-agents-cli setup

Step 2: Rename the config section

sed -i '' 's/tool.agent-starter-pack/tool.agents-cli/g' pyproject.toml

The next time config is read, it will trigger a migration to agents-cli-manifest.yaml and remove the tool.agents-cli section from pyproject.toml.

Step 3: Verify

agents-cli info

This shows your project config and confirms agents-cli can read it. Your agent code, tests, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines all work as before.

Existing eval cases under tests/eval/evalsets/?

ASP's default agent template shipped a basic.evalset.json using the ADK EvalSet schema. The eval surface in agents-cli reads a different format from tests/eval/datasets/. See Migrating Eval Datasets for the conversion.