06-evaluation-debugging-and-quality-gates.md

layout	default
title	Chapter 6: Evaluation, Debugging, and Quality Gates
nav_order	6
parent	ADK Python Tutorial

Chapter 6: Evaluation, Debugging, and Quality Gates

Welcome to Chapter 6: Evaluation, Debugging, and Quality Gates. In this part of ADK Python Tutorial: Production-Grade Agent Engineering with Google's ADK, you will build an intuitive mental model first, then move into concrete implementation details and practical production tradeoffs.

This chapter shows how to harden ADK behavior with repeatable evaluation workflows.

Learning Goals

• run ADK evaluation commands against test sets
• instrument debugging in runner and tool paths
• detect regressions before release
• define release gates for agent quality

Evaluation Workflow

1. create representative evaluation sets
2. run adk eval in CI and locally
3. inspect failures by event trace and tool outputs
4. block release when quality thresholds fail

Source References

• ADK README: Evaluate Agents
• ADK Evaluate Docs
• ADK Testing Guidance

Summary

You now have a quality loop that makes ADK systems safer to evolve.

Next: Chapter 7: Deployment and Production Operations

Source Code Walkthrough

google/adk/evaluation/

The evaluation framework lives in google/adk/evaluation/. This module contains the evaluator classes and dataset formats used for agent quality testing. Reviewing the evaluation module alongside the contributing/samples/runner_debug_example/ sample shows how to run an agent against a test set and validate its outputs — the core quality gate workflow described in Chapter 6.