Imports Style Guide

General Rules

• Source code (src/): Use relative imports. from ..agents.llm_agent import LlmAgent
• Tests (tests/): Use absolute imports. from google.adk.agents.llm_agent import LlmAgent
• Import from module: Import from the module file, not from __init__.py. from ..agents.llm_agent import LlmAgent (not from ..agents import LlmAgent)
• CLI package (cli/):
  • Treat as an external package.
  • Use relative imports for files within the cli/ package.
  • Use absolute imports for files outside of the cli/ package.
  • Dependency Direction: Only cli/ can import from the rest of the codebase. The other codebase must STRICTLY NOT import from cli/.

TYPE_CHECKING Imports

Use TYPE_CHECKING for imports needed only by type hints to avoid circular imports at runtime:

from __future__ import annotations
from typing import TYPE_CHECKING

if TYPE_CHECKING:
    from ..agents.invocation_context import InvocationContext

This works because from __future__ import annotations makes all annotations strings (deferred evaluation), so the import is never needed at runtime.