# Introducing DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI Agent Development Kit: Deploy agent code as a real application

DevFeed: [Introducing DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI Agent Development Kit: Deploy agent code as a real application](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/introducing-digitalocean-gradienttm-ai-agent-development-kit-deploy-agent-code-as-a-real-application-19857.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/agent-development-kit>)

Author: Grace Morgan

Published: 2025-12-17T17:32:25Z

Content type: release

Language: en

Sources: [DigitalOcean](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/digitalocean.md>)

Topics: [AI Agent](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-agent.md>), [SDK](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sdk.md>), [Deployment](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/deployment.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Command-line interface](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cli.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/observability.md>)

Tags: [ai-agent](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-agent.md>), [ai-ml](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-ml.md>), [cli](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cli.md>), [deployment](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/deployment.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/observability.md>), [sdk](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sdk.md>), [traces](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/traces.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tracing.md>)

## AI overview

DigitalOcean announces the public preview of Gradient™ AI Agent Development Kit, a Python SDK and CLI for deploying Python-based agent code as hosted services. The kit supports existing frameworks, multi-step workflows, evaluations, logs, execution traces, and knowledge bases.

## Source excerpt

AI agents are everywhere right now. You've seen the demos: agents that plan trips, write code, or manage inboxes. But once you try to run one outside a demo, reality sets in. Taking an agent from "it works locally" to "this runs reliably in production" usually means stitching together infrastructure, deployment pipelines, logging, endpoints, and monitoring, often without changing the agent logic itself. The gap between prototype and production is where most agent projects stall. The DigitalOcean Gradient™ AI Agent Development Kit (ADK), now available in public preview, is designed to close that gap. The ADK is a Python SDK and CLI that lets you deploy agent code as a hosted, production-ready service. Build your agent however you want. The ADK is how you deploy it cleanly onto real infrastructure, get started quickly using our GitHub repo. Why Choose ADK? There are plenty of tools out there, but the ADK offers a distinct edge for developers. Easiest path to production: Take the agent code you already have and deploy it as a hosted service without re-architecting your workflow. You don't have to rebuild your agent just to make it production-ready. Framework-agnostic execution: You can run any Python-based agent implementation that conforms to its entry point and runtime requirements. Whether you use LangGraph, LangChain, PydanticAI, agents, or custom orchestration, you keep your framework and abstractions. Framework-aware observability: The ADK provides built-in logs and execution traces so agents can be operated and debugged like real services. Deeper, node-level tracing is available for supported frameworks, while other agents still benefit from standardized input, outputs, and runtime visibility. DigitalOcean advantage: Most platforms focus narrowly on agent execution and leave data and application infrastructure as external dependencies. With the ADK, agents run alongside inference workloads, knowledge bases, and supporting application services on DigitalOcean, un