---
title: Google Vertex AI Guide | Multi-Agent Framework
sidebarTitle: Google Vertex AI
description: "How to use Google Vertex AI with AG2. Authentication, configuration, and code examples for enterprise multi-agent deployments on GCP."
---

This notebook demonstrates how to use AG2 with Gemini via Vertex AI, which enables enhanced authentication method that also supports enterprise requirements using service accounts or even a personal Google cloud account.

## Requirements

Install AG2 with Gemini features:
```bash
pip install ag2[gemini]
```

<Tip>
If you have been using `autogen` or `ag2`, all you need to do is upgrade it using:
```bash
pip install -U autogen[gemini]
```
or
```bash
pip install -U ag2[gemini]
```
as `autogen` and `ag2` are aliases for the same PyPI package.
</Tip>

### Install other Dependencies of this Notebook
```bash
pip install chromadb markdownify pypdf
```

### Google Cloud Account
To use VertexAI a Google Cloud account is needed. If you do not have one yet, just sign up for a free trial [here](https://cloud.google.com).

Login to your account at [console.cloud.google.com](https://console.cloud.google.com)

In the next step we create a Google Cloud project, which is needed for VertexAI. The official guide for creating a project is available is [here](https://developers.google.com/workspace/guides/create-project).

We will name our project AG2-with-Gemini.

### Enable Google Cloud APIs

If you wish to use Gemini with your personal account, then creating a Google Cloud account is enough. However, if a service account is needed, then a few extra steps are needed.

#### Enable API for Gemini
 * For enabling Gemini for Google Cloud search for "api" and select Enabled APIs & services.
 * Then click ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES.
 * Search for Gemini, and select Gemini for Google Cloud. <br/> A direct link will look like this for our ag2-with-gemini project:
https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/cloudaicompanion.googleapis.com?project=ag2-with-gemini&supportedpurview=project
* Click ENABLE for Gemini for Google Cloud.

### Enable API for Vertex AI
* For enabling Vertex AI for Google Cloud search for "api" and select Enabled APIs & services.
* Then click ENABLE APIS AND SERVICES.
* Search for Vertex AI, and select Vertex AI API. <br/> A direct link for our ag2-with-gemini will be: https://console.cloud.google.com/apis/library/aiplatform.googleapis.com?project=ag2-with-gemini
* Click ENABLE Vertex AI API for Google Cloud.

### Create a Service Account

You can find an overview of service accounts [can be found in the cloud console](https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/serviceaccounts)

Detailed guide: https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/service-accounts-create

A service account can be created within the scope of a project, so a project needs to be selected.

![Screenshot](./assets/create-gcp-svc.png)

Next we assign the [Vertex AI User](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/general/access-control#aiplatform.user) for the service account. This can be done in the [Google Cloud console](https://console.cloud.google.com/iam-admin/iam?project=ag2-with-gemini) in our `ag2-with-gemini` project.<br/>
Alternatively, we can also grant the [Vertex AI User](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/general/access-control#aiplatform.user) role by running a command using the gcloud CLI, for example in [Cloud Shell](https://shell.cloud.google.com/cloudshell):
```bash
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding ag2-with-gemini \
    --member=serviceAccount:ag2@ag2-with-gemini.iam.gserviceaccount.com --role roles/aiplatform.user
```

* Under IAM & Admin > Service Account select the newly created service accounts, and click the option "Manage keys" among the items.
* From the "ADD KEY" dropdown select "Create new key" and select the JSON format and click CREATE.
    * The new key will be downloaded automatically.
* You can then upload the service account key file to the from where you will be running AG2.
    * Please consider restricting the permissions on the key file. For example, you could run `chmod 600 ag2-with-gemini-service-account-key.json` if your keyfile is called ag2-with-gemini-service-account-key.json.

### Configure Authentication

Authentication happens using standard [Google Cloud authentication methods](https://cloud.google.com/docs/authentication), <br/> which means
that either an already active session can be reused, or by specifying the Google application credentials of a service account. <br/><br/>
Additionally, AG2 also supports authentication using `Credentials` objects in Python with the [google-auth library](https://google-auth.readthedocs.io/), which enables even more flexibility.<br/>
For example, we can even use impersonated credentials.

#### <a id='use_svc_keyfile'></a>Use Service Account Keyfile

The Google Cloud service account can be specified by setting the `GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS` environment variable to the path to the JSON key file of the service account. <br/>

We could even just directly set the environment variable, or we can add the `"google_application_credentials"` key with the respective value for our model in the OAI_CONFIG_LIST.

#### Use the Google Default Credentials

If you are using [Cloud Shell](https://shell.cloud.google.com/cloudshell) or [Cloud Shell editor](https://shell.cloud.google.com/cloudshell/editor) in Google Cloud, <br/> then you are already authenticated. If you have the Google Cloud SDK installed locally,  <br/> then you can login by running `gcloud auth application-default login` in the command line.

Detailed instructions for installing the Google Cloud SDK can be found [here](https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install).

#### Authentication with the Google Auth Library for Python

The google-auth library supports a wide range of authentication scenarios, and you can simply pass a previously created `Credentials` object to the `llm_config`.<br/>
The [official documentation](https://google-auth.readthedocs.io/) of the Python package provides a detailed overview of the supported methods and usage examples.<br/>
If you are already authenticated, like in [Cloud Shell](https://shell.cloud.google.com/cloudshell), or after running the `gcloud auth application-default login` command in a CLI, then the `google.auth.default()` Python method will automatically return your currently active credentials.

## Example Config List
The config could look like the following (change `project_id` and `google_application_credentials`):
```python
config_list = [
    {
        "model": "gemini-2.5-pro",
        "api_type": "google",
        "project_id": "ag2-with-gemini",
        "location": "us-west1"
    },
    {
        "model": "gemini-2.5-flash",
        "api_type": "google",
        "project_id": "ag2-with-gemini",
        "location": "us-west1"
    },
    {
        "model": "gemini-2.0-flash",
        "api_type": "google",
        "project_id": "ag2-with-gemini",
        "location": "us-west1",
        "google_application_credentials": "ag2-with-gemini-service-account-key.json"
    }
]
```

## Configure Safety Settings for VertexAI
Configuring safety settings for VertexAI is slightly different, as we have to use the speicialized safety setting object types instead of plain strings

```python
from vertexai.generative_models import HarmBlockThreshold, HarmCategory

safety_settings = {
    HarmCategory.HARM_CATEGORY_HARASSMENT: HarmBlockThreshold.BLOCK_ONLY_HIGH,
    HarmCategory.HARM_CATEGORY_HATE_SPEECH: HarmBlockThreshold.BLOCK_ONLY_HIGH,
    HarmCategory.HARM_CATEGORY_SEXUALLY_EXPLICIT: HarmBlockThreshold.BLOCK_ONLY_HIGH,
    HarmCategory.HARM_CATEGORY_DANGEROUS_CONTENT: HarmBlockThreshold.BLOCK_ONLY_HIGH,
}

import autogen
from autogen import AssistantAgent, UserProxyAgent, LLMConfig
from autogen.agentchat.contrib.multimodal_conversable_agent import MultimodalConversableAgent
from autogen.code_utils import content_str

seed = 25  # for caching
llm_config_gemini = LLMConfig.from_json(path="OAI_CONFIG_LIST", seed=seed).where(model="gemini-2.5-flash")

llm_config_gemini_vision = LLMConfig.from_json(path="OAI_CONFIG_LIST").where(model="gemini-2.0-flash")

for llm_config in [llm_config_gemini, llm_config_gemini_vision]:
    for config_list_item in llm_config.config_list:
        config_list_item.safety_settings = safety_settings

assistant = AssistantAgent(
    "assistant",
    max_consecutive_auto_reply=3,
    llm_config=llm_config_gemini,
)

user_proxy = UserProxyAgent(
    "user_proxy",
    code_execution_config={"work_dir": "coding", "use_docker": False},
    human_input_mode="NEVER",
    is_termination_msg=lambda x: content_str(x.get("content")).find("TERMINATE") >= 0,
)

result = user_proxy.initiate_chat(
    assistant,
    message="""
    Compute the integral of the function f(x)=x^2 on the interval 0 to 1 using a Python script,
    which returns the value of the definite integral""",
)
```

```console
user_proxy (to assistant):


    Compute the integral of the function f(x)=x^2 on the interval 0 to 1 using a Python script,
    which returns the value of the definite integral

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
assistant (to user_proxy):

Plan:
1. (code) Use Python's `scipy.integrate.quad` function to compute the integral.

'''python
# filename: integral.py
from scipy.integrate import quad

def f(x):
  return x**2

result, error = quad(f, 0, 1)

print(f"The definite integral of x^2 from 0 to 1 is: {result}")
'''

Let me know when you have executed this code.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>>> EXECUTING CODE BLOCK 0 (inferred language is python)...
user_proxy (to assistant):

exitcode: 0 (execution succeeded)
Code output:
The definite integral of x^2 from 0 to 1 is: 0.33333333333333337


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
assistant (to user_proxy):

The script executed successfully and returned the definite integral's value as approximately 0.33333333333333337.

This aligns with the analytical solution. The indefinite integral of x^2 is (x^3)/3. Evaluating this from 0 to 1 gives us (1^3)/3 - (0^3)/3 = 1/3 = 0.33333...

Therefore, the script successfully computed the integral of x^2 from 0 to 1.

TERMINATE


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

## Example with Gemini Multimodal
Authentication is the same for vision models as for the text based Gemini models. <br/>
In this example an object of type `Credentials` will be supplied in order to authenticate.<br/>
Here, we will use the google application default credentials, so make sure to run the following commands if you are not yet authenticated:
```bash
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=ag2-with-gemini-service-account-key.json
gcloud auth application-default login
gcloud config set project ag2-with-gemini
```
The `GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS` environment variable is a path to our service account JSON keyfile, as described in the [Use Service Account Keyfile](#use_svc_keyfile) section above.<br/>
We also need to set the Google cloud project, which is `ag2-with-gemini` in this example.<br/><br/>

Note, we could also run `gcloud auth application-default login` to use our personal Google account instead of a service account.
In this case we need to run the following commands:
```bash
gcloud auth application-default login
gcloud config set project ag2-with-gemini
```

```python
import google.auth

scopes = ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"]

credentials, project_id = google.auth.default(scopes)

llm_config_gemini_vision = LLMConfig({
    "model": "gemini-2.0-flash",
    "api_type": "google",
    "project_id": project_id,
    "credentials": credentials,
    "location": "us-west1",
    "safety_settings": safety_settings,
    "seed": seed,
})

image_agent = MultimodalConversableAgent(
    "Gemini Vision",
    max_consecutive_auto_reply=1,
    llm_config=llm_config_gemini_vision,
)

user_proxy = UserProxyAgent("user_proxy", human_input_mode="NEVER", max_consecutive_auto_reply=0)

user_proxy.initiate_chat(
    image_agent,
    message="""Describe what is in this image?
<img https://github.com/ag2ai/ag2/blob/main/website/docs/user-guide/models/assets/ag2-agentchat.png>.""",
)
```

```console
user_proxy (to Gemini Vision):

Describe what is in this image?
<image>.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>>> USING AUTO REPLY...
Gemini Vision (to user_proxy):

 The image describes a conversational agent that is able to have a conversation with a human user. The agent can be customized to the user's preferences. The conversation can be in form of a joint chat or hierarchical chat.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
```

## Use Gemini via the OpenAI Library in AG2
Using Gemini via the OpenAI library is also possible once you are already authenticated. <br/>
Be sure to install the `openai` package to do this.<br/>
Run `gcloud auth application-default login` to set up application default credentials locally for the example below.<br/>
Also set the Google cloud project on the CLI if you have not done so far: <br/>
```bash
gcloud config set project ag2-with-gemini
```
The prerequisites are essentially the same as in the example above.<br/>

You can read more on the topic in the [official Google docs](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/multimodal/call-gemini-using-openai-library).
<br/> A list of currently supported models can also be found in the [docs](https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/multimodal/call-gemini-using-openai-library#supported_models)
<br/>
<br/>
Note, that you will need to refresh your token regularly, by default every 1 hour.


```python
import google.auth

scopes = ["https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform"]
creds, project = google.auth.default(scopes)
auth_req = google.auth.transport.requests.Request()
creds.refresh(auth_req)
location = "us-west1"
prompt_price_per_1k = (
    0.000125  # For more up-to-date prices see https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/pricing
)
completion_token_price_per_1k = (
    0.000375  # For more up-to-date prices see https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/pricing
)

llm_config_openai_gemini = LLMConfig({
    "model": "google/gemini-2.5-flash",
    "api_type": "openai",
    "base_url": f"https://{location}-aiplatform.googleapis.com/v1beta1/projects/{project}/locations/{location}/endpoints/openapi",
    "api_key": creds.token,
    "price": [prompt_price_per_1k, completion_token_price_per_1k],
})

assistant = AssistantAgent(
    "assistant",
    max_consecutive_auto_reply=3,
    llm_config=llm_config_openai_gemini,
)

user_proxy = UserProxyAgent(
    "user_proxy",
    code_execution_config={"work_dir": "coding", "use_docker": False},
    human_input_mode="NEVER",
    is_termination_msg=lambda x: content_str(x.get("content")).find("TERMINATE") >= 0,
)

result = user_proxy.initiate_chat(
    assistant,
    message="""
    Compute the integral of the function f(x)=x^3 on the interval 0 to 10 using a Python script,
    which returns the value of the definite integral.""",
)
```

```console
user_proxy (to assistant):


    Compute the integral of the function f(x)=x^3 on the interval 0 to 10 using a Python script,
    which returns the value of the definite integral.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
assistant (to user_proxy):

'''python
# filename: integral.py
def integrate_x_cubed(a, b):
  """
  This function calculates the definite integral of x^3 from a to b.

  Args:
      a: The lower limit of integration.
      b: The upper limit of integration.

  Returns:
      The value of the definite integral.
  """
  return (b**4 - a**4) / 4

# Calculate the integral of x^3 from 0 to 10
result = integrate_x_cubed(0, 10)

# Print the result
print(result)
'''

This script defines a function `integrate_x_cubed` that takes the lower and upper limits of integration as arguments and returns the definite integral of x^3 using the power rule of integration. The script then calls this function with the limits 0 and 10 and prints the result.

Execute the script `python integral.py`, you should get the result: `2500.0`.

TERMINATE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
```
