Error code 10 when adk deploy agent_engine

[francamacdowell]

🔴 Required Information

Describe the Bug:
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

Steps to Reproduce:
Please provide a numbered list of steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Building and setting up a local agent (with google ADK)
2. Run (in my case)

adk deploy agent_engine \
        --project=$PROJECT_ID \
        --region=$LOCATION_ID \
        --display_name="My First Agent" \
        multi_tool_agent

3. The error:

Deploy failed: Failed to create Agent Engine: {'code': 10, 'message': 'Please refer to our documentation (https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/agent-engine/troubleshooting/deploy) for checking logs and other troubleshooting tips.'}

Expected Behavior:
A message informing the success of deployment

Observed Behavior:
The error message:
Deploy failed: Failed to create Agent Engine: {'code': 10, 'message': 'Please refer to our documentation (https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/agent-engine/troubleshooting/deploy) for checking logs and other troubleshooting tips.'}

Environment Details:

• ADK Library Version (pip show google-adk): 1.24.0"
• Desktop OS:** [e.g., macOS, Linux, Windows] MacOS
• Python Version (python -V): 3.12

Model Information:

• Which model is being used: (gemini-2.5-flash)

---

Logs:

Staging all files in: /Users/franca.sales/Workspace/Kanastra/agents-lab/jedais-agents/monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326
Staging all files in: /Users/franca.sales/Workspace/Kanastra/agents-lab/jedais-agents/monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326
Copying agent source code...
Copying agent source code complete.
Resolving files and dependencies...
Creating /Users/franca.sales/Workspace/Kanastra/agents-lab/jedais-agents/monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326/requirements.txt...
Created /Users/franca.sales/Workspace/Kanastra/agents-lab/jedais-agents/monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326/requirements.txt
Reading environment variables from /Users/franca.sales/Workspace/Kanastra/agents-lab/jedais-agents/monitoring_agent/.env
Ignoring GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT in .env as `--project` was explicitly passed and takes precedence
Ignoring GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION in .env as `--region` was explicitly passed and takes precedence
Initializing Vertex AI...
Vertex AI initialized.
Created monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326/agent_engine_app.py
Files and dependencies resolved
Deploying to agent engine...
Cleaning up the temp folder: monitoring_agent_tmp20260302_190326
Deploy failed: Failed to create Agent Engine: {'code': 10, 'message': 'Please refer to our documentation (https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/agent-engine/troubleshooting/deploy) for checking logs and other troubleshooting tips.'}

Context.
Already read all documentation referenced and the error 10 is not described.
How often has this issue occurred?:

• Always (100%)

[llalitkumarrr]

Hello @francamacdowell ,

We recommend upgrading to google-adk==1.26.0 and testing with this version.

You could also try agent_engines.create to deploy.

Code for your reference:

from vertexai import agent_engines
from google.adk.apps.app import App
from agent import my_agent

app = App(
    name="test_app",
    root_agent=my_agent
    )
# Deploy to Agent Engine


adk_app = agent_engines.AdkApp(app=app,enable_tracing=False)


deployed = agent_engines.create(
    agent_engine=adk_app,
    requirements=["google-adk>=1.25.1"],
    display_name="test-compaction"
)

You might want to initiate vertexai before doing this:

vertexai.init(
    project=PROJECT_ID,
    location=LOCATION,
    staging_bucket=STAGING_BUCKET,
)


# Create a simple agent
my_agent = Agent(
    name="test_agent",
    model="gemini-2.5-flash",
    instruction="You are a helpful assistant.",
)



``

[fgimenezm]

EDIT: my bad, in my case it was error code 3

I saw the same a similar issue yesterday and looking at the logs it looked like some base image that agent engine uses was broken. In my case it resolved by itself a couple of hours later.

Here's what I saw in the logs explorer when it failed:

Step #3: Step 20/21 : RUN .venv/bin/python -m compileall "$(/code/.venv/bin/python -c "import site; print(site.getsitepackages()[0])")" .
Step #3: ---> Running in ........
Step #3: �[91m/bin/sh: 1: /code/.venv/bin/python: not found
Step #3: �[0m�[91m/bin/sh: 1: .venv/bin/python: not found
Step #3: The command '/bin/sh -c .venv/bin/python -m compileall "$(/code/.venv/bin/python -c "import site; print(site.getsitepackages()[0])")" .' returned a non-zero code: 127
Finished Step #3
ERROR

But now it works OK without any changes on my code.

[francamacdowell]

@llalitkumarrr thanks for the answer!

I saw your response at another issued and already tried, but didn't worked ;(

Upgraded to "google-adk==1.26.0", and got the same error, similar log:

google.api_core.exceptions.Aborted: 409 Please refer to our documentation (https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/agent-engine/troubleshooting/deploy) for checking logs and other troubleshooting tips. 10: Please refer to our documentation (https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/generative-ai/docs/agent-engine/troubleshooting/deploy) for checking logs and other troubleshooting tips.

Script python used to create agent engine:

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Initialize Vertex AI
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
vertexai.init(
    project=PROJECT_ID,
    location=LOCATION_ID,
    staging_bucket=STAGING_BUCKET,
)

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Wrap the agent in AdkApp
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
app = agent_engines.AdkApp(
    agent=root_agent,
    enable_tracing=True,
)

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Deploy to Agent Engine
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

remote_app = agent_engines.create(
    agent_engine=app,
    requirements=[
        "google-cloud-aiplatform[adk,agent_engines]",
        "google-adk>=1.26.0",
        "google-cloud-bigquery>=3.0.0",
        "duckdb>=1.4.4",
        "pyyaml>=6.0.0",
        "python-dateutil>=2.8.0",
    ],
    display_name="Monitoring Agent",
)

[francamacdowell]

@fgimenezm in my case, the error 10 persisted

[llalitkumarrr]

Hello @francamacdowell ,

Could you please share you code to help us analyze this issue in more detail?

[MakkOen]

Having the same error code 10 issue since last week. Found that it's a us-east1 issue (us-central1 and eu-west1 work normally for me).

[francamacdowell]

@llalitkumarrr the deployment code or agent code?

Deployment script following:

import os
import sys
from pathlib import Path

from dotenv import load_dotenv
import vertexai
from vertexai import agent_engines

# Ensure workspace root is in path so monitoring_agent can be imported
ROOT_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent
sys.path.insert(0, str(ROOT_DIR))

# Load env vars from monitoring_agent/.env
load_dotenv(ROOT_DIR / "monitoring_agent" / ".env")

from monitoring_agent.agent import root_agent  # noqa: E402


PROJECT_ID = os.environ["GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT"]
# Agent Engine requires a specific region (not 'global').
# Falls back to GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION if AGENT_ENGINE_LOCATION is not set.
LOCATION_ID = 'us-central1'
STAGING_BUCKET = os.environ["STAGING_BUCKET"]

vertexai.init(
    project=PROJECT_ID,
    location=LOCATION_ID,
    staging_bucket=STAGING_BUCKET,
)


app = agent_engines.AdkApp(
    agent=root_agent,
    enable_tracing=True,
)

# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Deploy to Agent Engine
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
print("Deploying Monitoring Agent to Agent Engine...")

remote_app = agent_engines.create(
    agent_engine=app,
    requirements=[
        "google-cloud-aiplatform[adk,agent_engines]",
        "google-adk>=1.26.0",
        "google-cloud-bigquery>=3.0.0",
        "duckdb>=1.4.4",
        "pyyaml>=6.0.0",
        "python-dateutil>=2.8.0",
    ],
    display_name="Monitoring Agent",
)

[llalitkumarrr]

Hello @francamacdowell ,

Could you try using us-central1 location? I used this location and my code is similar as yours and but fine for me.

[adk-bot]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity for 7 days after a maintainer requested clarification. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 7 days.