Getting started
Before you work with Vertex AI Agent Engine Memory Bank, you must set up your environment.
Set up your Google Cloud project
Every project can be identified in two ways: the project number or the project
ID. The PROJECT_NUMBER
is automatically created when you
create the project, whereas the PROJECT_ID
is created by you,
or whoever created the project. To set up a project:
- Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
-
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
Roles required to select or create a project
- Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
-
Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator
(
roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator
), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create
permission. Learn how to grant roles.
-
Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
-
Enable the Vertex AI API.
Roles required to enable APIs
To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (
roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin
), which contains theserviceusage.services.enable
permission. Learn how to grant roles. -
In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.
Roles required to select or create a project
- Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
-
Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator
(
roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator
), which contains theresourcemanager.projects.create
permission. Learn how to grant roles.
-
Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.
-
Enable the Vertex AI API.
Roles required to enable APIs
To enable APIs, you need the Service Usage Admin IAM role (
roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin
), which contains theserviceusage.services.enable
permission. Learn how to grant roles.
Get the required roles
To get the permissions that
you need to use Vertex AI Agent Engine,
ask your administrator to grant you the
Vertex AI User (roles/aiplatform.user
)
IAM role on your project.
For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.
You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.
If you're making requests to Memory Bank from an agent deployed on Google Kubernetes Engine or Cloud Run, make sure that your service account has the necessary permissions. The Reasoning Engine Service Agent already has the necessary permissions to read and write memories, so outbound requests from Agent Engine Runtime should already have permission to access Memory Bank.
Install libraries
This section assumes that you have set up a Python development environment, or are using a runtime with a Python development environment (such as Colab).
Install the Vertex AI SDK:
pip install google-cloud-aiplatform>=1.111.0
Authentication
Authentication instructions depend on whether you're using Vertex AI in express mode:
If you're not using Vertex AI in express mode, follow the instructions at Authenticate to Vertex AI.
If you're using Vertex AI in express mode, set up authentication by setting the API key in the environment:
os.environ["GOOGLE_API_KEY"] = "API_KEY"
Set up a Vertex AI SDK client
Run the following code to set up a Vertex AI SDK client:
import vertexai
client = vertexai.Client(
project="PROJECT_ID",
location="LOCATION",
)
where
PROJECT_ID
is your project ID.LOCATION
is one of the supported regions for Memory Bank.
Create or update an Agent Engine instance
If you already have an Agent Engine instance, you can skip to Configure your Agent Engine instance for Memory Bank.
To get started with Memory Bank, you first need an Agent Engine instance. Your Agent Engine instance supports Vertex AI Agent Engine Sessions and Memory Bank out-of-the-box. No agent is deployed when you create the instance. To use Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime, you must provide the agent that should be deployed when creating or updating your Agent Engine instance.
Once you have an Agent Engine instance, you can use the name of the instance to read or write memories. For example:
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.create()
client.agent_engines.memories.generate(
name=agent_engine.api_resource.name,
...
)
Use with Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime
Although Memory Bank can be used in any runtime, you can also use Memory Bank with Agent Engine Runtime to read and write memories from your deployed agent.
To deploy an agent with Memory Bank on Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime, first set up your environment for Agent Engine runtime. Then, prepare your agent to be deployed on Agent Engine Runtime with memory integration. Your deployed agent should make calls to read and write memories as needed.
AdkApp
If you're using the Agent Engine Agent Development Kit template, the agent uses the VertexAiMemoryBankService
by default when deployed to Agent Engine Runtime. This means that the ADK Memory tools read memories from Memory Bank.
from google.adk.agents import Agent
from vertexai.preview.reasoning_engines import AdkApp
# Develop an agent using the ADK template.
agent = Agent(...)
adk_app = AdkApp(
agent=adk_agent,
...
)
# Deploy the agent to Agent Engine Runtime.
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.create(
agent_engine=adk_app,
config={
"staging_bucket": "STAGING_BUCKET",
"requirements": ["google-cloud-aiplatform[agent_engines,adk]"],
# Optional.
**context_spec
}
)
# Update an existing Agent Engine to add or modify the Runtime.
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.update(
name=agent_engine.api_resource.name,
agent=adk_app,
config={
"staging_bucket": "STAGING_BUCKET",
"requirements": ["google-cloud-aiplatform[agent_engines,adk]"],
# Optional.
**context_spec
}
)
Replace the following:
- STAGING_BUCKET: Your Cloud Storage bucket to use for staging your Agent Engine Runtime.
For more information about using Memory Bank with ADK, refer to the Quickstart with Agent Development Kit.
Custom agent
You can use Memory Bank with your custom agent deployed on Agent Engine Runtime. In this case, your agent should orchestrate calls to Memory Bank to trigger memory generation and memory retrieval calls.
Your application deployed to Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime can read the environment variables GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT
, GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION
,GOOGLE_CLOUD_AGENT_ENGINE_ID
to infer the Agent Engine name from the environment:
project = os.environ.get("GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT")
location = os.environ.get("GOOGLE_CLOUD_LOCATION")
agent_engine_id = os.environ.get("GOOGLE_CLOUD_AGENT_ENGINE_ID")
agent_engine_name = f"projects/{project}/locations/{location}/reasoningEngines/{agent_engine_id}"
If you're using the default service agent for your agent on Vertex AI Agent Engine Runtime, your agent already has permission to read and write memories. If you're using a customer service account, you need to grant permissions to your service account to read and write memories. The required permissions depend on what operations your agent should be able to perform. If you only want your agent to retrieve and generate memories, aiplatform.memories.generate
and aiplatform.memories.retrieve
are sufficient.
Use in all other runtimes
If you want to use Memory Bank in a different environment, like Cloud Run or Colab, create an Agent Engine without providing an agent. Creating a new Agent Engine without a Runtime should only take a few seconds. If you don't provide a configuration, Memory Bank is created with the default settings for managing memory generation and retrieval:
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.create()
If you want to configure behavior, provide a Memory Bank configuration:
Create
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.create(
config={
"context_spec": {
"memory_bank_config": ...
}
}
)
Update
If you want to change your Memory Bank configuration, you can update your Vertex AI Agent Engine instance.
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.update(
# You can access the name using `agent_engine.api_resource.name` for an AgentEngine object.
name="AGENT_ENGINE_NAME",
config={
"context_spec": {
"memory_bank_config": ...
}
}
)
Replace the following:
- AGENT_ENGINE_NAME: The name of the Agent Engine. It should be in the format
projects/.../locations/.../reasoningEngines/...
. See the supported regions for Memory Bank.
You can use Memory Bank in any environment that has permission to read and write memories. For example, to use Memory Bank with Cloud Run, grant permissions to the Cloud Run service identity to read and write memories. The required permissions depend on what operations your agent should be able to perform. If you only want your agent to retrieve and generate memories, aiplatform.memories.generate
and aiplatform.memories.retrieve
are sufficient.
Configure your Agent Engine instance for Memory Bank
You can configure your Memory Bank to customize how memories are generated and managed. If the configuration is not provided, then Memory Bank uses the default settings for each type of configuration.
The Memory Bank configuration is set when creating or updating your Agent Engine instance:
client.agent_engines.create(
...,
config={
"context_spec": {
"memory_bank_config": memory_bank_config
}
}
)
# Alternatively, update an existing Agent Engine's Memory Bank config.
agent_engine = client.agent_engines.update(
name=agent_engine.api_resource.name,
config={
"context_spec": {
"memory_bank_config": memory_bank_config
}
}
)
You can configure the following settings for your instance:
- Customization configuration: Configures how memories should be extracted from source data.
- Similarity search configuration: Configures which embedding model is used for similarity search. Defaults to
text-embedding-005
. - Generation configuration: Configures which LLM is used for memory generation. Defaults to
gemini-2.5-flash
. - TTL configuration: Configures how TTL is automatically set for created or updated memories. Defaults to no TTL.
Customization configuration
If you want to customize how memories are extracted from your source data, you can configure the memory extraction behavior when setting up your Agent Engine instance. There are two levers that you can use for customization:
- Configuring memory topics: Define the type of information that Memory Bank should consider meaningful to persist. Only information that fits one of these memory topics will be persisted by Memory Bank.
- Providing few-shot examples: Demonstrate expected behavior for memory extraction to Memory Bank.
You can optionally configure different behavior for different scope-levels. For example, the topics that are meaningful for session-level memories may not be meaningful for user-level memories (across multiple sessions). To configure behavior for a certain subset of memories, set the scope keys of the customization configuration. Only GenerateMemories
requests that include those scope keys will use that configuration. You can also configure default behavior (applying to all sets of scope keys) by omitting the scope_key
field. This configuration will apply to all requests that don't have a configuration that exactly match the scope keys for another customization configuration.
For example, the user_level_config
would only apply to GenerateMemories
requests that exactly use the scope key user_id
(i.e. scope={"user_id": "123"}
with no additional keys). default_config
would apply to other requests:
Dictionary
user_level_config = {
"scope_keys": ["user_id"],
"memory_topics": [...],
"generate_memories_examples": [...]
}
default_config = {
"memory_topics": [...],
"generate_memories_examples": [...]
}
config = {
"customization_configs": [
user_level_config,
default_config
]
}
Class-based
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfig as CustomizationConfig
user_level_config = CustomizationConfig(
scope_keys=["user_id"],
memory_topics=[...],
generate_memories_examples=[...]
)
Configuring memory topics
"Memory topics" identify what information Memory Bank considers to be meaningful and should thus be persisted as generated memories. Memory Bank supports two types of memory topics:
Managed topics: Label and instructions are defined by Memory Bank. You only need to provide the name of the managed topic. For example,
Dictionary
memory_topic = { "managed_memory_topic": { "managed_topic_enum": "USER_PERSONAL_INFO" } }
Class-based
from vertexai.types import ManagedTopicEnum from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopic as MemoryTopic from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopicManagedMemoryTopic as ManagedMemoryTopic memory_topic = MemoryTopic( managed_memory_topic=ManagedMemoryTopic( managed_topic_enum=ManagedTopicEnum.USER_PERSONAL_INFO ) )
The following managed topics are supported by Memory Bank:
- Personal information (
USER_PERSONAL_INFO
): Significant personal information about the user, like names, relationships, hobbies, and important dates. For example, "I work at Google" or "My wedding anniversary is on December 31". - User preferences (
USER_PREFERENCES
): Stated or implied likes, dislikes, preferred styles, or patterns. For example, "I prefer the middle seat." - Key conversation events and task outcomes (
KEY_CONVERSATION_DETAILS
): Important milestones or conclusions within the dialogue. For example, "I booked plane tickets for a round trip between JFK and SFO. I leave on June 1, 2025 and return on June 7, 2025." - Explicit remember / forget instructions (
EXPLICIT_INSTRUCTIONS
): Information that the user explicitly asks the agent to remember or forget. For example, if the user says "Remember that I primarily use Python," Memory Bank generates a memory such as "I primarily use Python."
- Personal information (
Custom topics: Label and instructions are defined by you when setting up your Memory Bank instance. They will be used in the prompt for Memory Bank's extraction step. For example,
Dictionary
memory_topic = { "custom_memory_topic": { "label": "business_feedback", "description": """Specific user feedback about their experience at the coffee shop. This includes opinions on drinks, food, pastries, ambiance, staff friendliness, service speed, cleanliness, and any suggestions for improvement.""" } }
Class-based
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopic as MemoryTopic from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopicCustomMemoryTopic as CustomMemoryTopic memory_topic = MemoryTopic( custom_memory_topic=CustomMemoryTopic( label="business_feedback", description="""Specific user feedback about their experience at the coffee shop. This includes opinions on drinks, food, pastries, ambiance, staff friendliness, service speed, cleanliness, and any suggestions for improvement.""" ) )
When using custom topics, it's recommended to also provide few-shot examples demonstrating how memories should be extracted from your conversation.
With customization, you can use any combination of memory topics. For example, you can use a subset of the available managed memory topics:
Dictionary
{
"memory_topics": [
"managed_memory_topic": { "managed_topic_enum": "USER_PERSONAL_INFO" },
"managed_memory_topic": { "managed_topic_enum": "USER_PREFERENCES" }
]
}
Class-based
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfig as CustomizationConfig
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopic as MemoryTopic
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopicManagedMemoryTopic as ManagedMemoryTopic
from vertexai.types import ManagedTopicEnum
CustomizationConfig(
memory_topics=[
MemoryTopic(
managed_memory_topic=ManagedMemoryTopic(
managed_topic_enum=ManagedTopicEnum.USER_PERSONAL_INFO)
),
MemoryTopic(
managed_memory_topic=ManagedMemoryTopic(
managed_topic_enum=ManagedTopicEnum.USER_PREFERENCES)
),
]
)
You can also use a combination of managed and custom topics (or only use custom topics):
Dictionary
{
"memory_topics": [
"managed_memory_topic": { "managed_topic_enum": "USER_PERSONAL_INFO" },
"custom_memory_topic": {
"label": "business_feedback",
"description": """Specific user feedback about their experience at
the coffee shop. This includes opinions on drinks, food, pastries, ambiance,
staff friendliness, service speed, cleanliness, and any suggestions for
improvement."""
}
]
}
Class-based
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfig as CustomizationConfig
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopic as MemoryTopic
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopicCustomMemoryTopic as CustomMemoryTopic
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigMemoryTopicManagedMemoryTopic as ManagedMemoryTopic
from vertexai.types import ManagedTopicEnum
CustomizationConfig(
memory_topics=[
MemoryTopic(
managed_memory_topic=ManagedMemoryTopic(
managed_topic_enum=ManagedTopicEnum.USER_PERSONAL_INFO)
),
MemoryTopic(
custom_memory_topic=CustomMemoryTopic(
label="business_feedback",
description="""Specific user feedback about their experience at
the coffee shop. This includes opinions on drinks, food, pastries, ambiance,
staff friendliness, service speed, cleanliness, and any suggestions for
improvement."""
)
)
]
)
Few-shot examples
Few-shot examples allow you to demonstrate expected memory extraction behavior to Memory Bank. For example, you can provide a sample input conversation and the memories that are expected to be extracted from that conversation.
We recommend always using few-shots with custom topics so that Memory Bank can learn the intended behavior. Few-shots are optional when using managed topics since Memory Bank defines examples for each topic. Demonstrate conversations that are not expected to result in memories by providing an empty generated_memories
list.
For example, you can provide few-shot examples that demonstrate how to extract feedback about your business from customer messages:
Dictionary
example = {
"conversationSource": {
"events": [
{
"content": {
"role": "model",
"parts": [{ "text": "Welcome back to The Daily Grind! We'd love to hear your feedback on your visit." }] }
},
{
"content": {
"role": "user",
"parts": [{ "text": "Hey. The drip coffee was a bit lukewarm today, which was a bummer. Also, the music was way too loud, I could barely hear my friend." }] }
}
]
},
"generatedMemories": [
{
"fact": "The user reported that the drip coffee was lukewarm."
},
{
"fact": "The user felt the music in the shop was too loud."
}
]
}
Class-based
from google.genai.types import Content, Part
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExample as GenerateMemoriesExample
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExampleConversationSource as ConversationSource
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExampleConversationSourceEvent as ConversationSourceEvent
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExampleGeneratedMemory as ExampleGeneratedMemory
example = GenerateMemoriesExample(
conversation_source=ConversationSource(
events=[
ConversationSourceEvent(
content=Content(
role="model",
parts=[Part(text="Welcome back to The Daily Grind! We'd love to hear your feedback on your visit.")]
)
),
ConversationSourceEvent(
content=Content(
role="user",
parts=[Part(text= "Hey. The drip coffee was a bit lukewarm today, which was a bummer. Also, the music was way too loud, I could barely hear my friend.")]
)
)
]
),
generated_memories=[
ExampleGeneratedMemory(
fact="The user reported that the drip coffee was lukewarm."
),
ExampleGeneratedMemory(
fact="The user felt the music in the shop was too loud."
)
]
)
You can also provide examples of conversations that shouldn't result in any generated memories by providing an empty list for the expected output (generated_memories
):
Dictionary
example = {
"conversationSource": {
"events": [
{
"content": {
"role": "model",
"parts": [{ "text": "Good morning! What can I get for you at The Daily Grind?" }] }
},
{
"content": {
"role": "user",
"parts": [{ "text": "Thanks for the coffee." }] }
}
]
},
"generatedMemories": []
}
Class-based
from google.genai.types import Content, Part
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExample as GenerateMemoriesExample
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExampleConversationSource as ConversationSource
from vertexai.types import MemoryBankCustomizationConfigGenerateMemoriesExampleConversationSourceEvent as ConversationSourceEvent
example = GenerateMemoriesExample(
conversation_source=ConversationSource(
events=[
ConversationSourceEvent(
content=Content(
role="model",
parts=[Part(text="Welcome back to The Daily Grind! We'd love to hear your feedback on your visit.")]
)
),
ConversationSourceEvent(
content=Content(
role="user",
parts=[Part(text= "Thanks for the coffee!")]
)
)
]
),
generated_memories=[]
)
Similarity search configuration
The similarity search configuration controls which embedding model is used by your instance for similarity search. Similarity search is used for identifying which memories should be candidates for consolidation and for similarity search-based memory retrieval. If this configuration is not provided, Memory Bank uses text-embedding-005
as the default model.
If you expect user conversations to be in non-English languages, use a model that supports multiple languages, such as gemini-embedding-001
or text-multilingual-embedding-002
, to improve retrieval quality.
Dictionary
memory_bank_config = {
"similarity_search_config": {
"embedding_model": "EMBEDDING_MODEL",
}
}
Class-based
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfig as MemoryBankConfig
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfigSimilaritySearchConfig as SimilaritySearchConfig
memory_bank_config = MemoryBankConfig(
similarity_search_config=SimilaritySearchConfig(
embedding_model="EMBEDDING_MODEL"
)
)
Replace the following:
- EMBEDDING_MODEL: The Google text embedding model to use for similarity search, in the format
projects/{project}/locations/{location}/publishers/google/models/{model}
.
Generation configuration
The generation configuration controls which LLM is used for generating memories, including extracting memories and consolidating new memories with existing memories.
Memory Bank uses gemini-2.5-flash
as the default model.
Dictionary
memory_bank_config = {
"generation_config": {
"model": "LLM_MODEL",
}
}
Class-based
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfig as MemoryBankConfig
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfigGenerationConfig as GenerationConfig
memory_bank_config = MemoryBankConfig(
generation_config=GenerationConfig(
model="LLM_MODEL"
)
)
Replace the following:
- LLM_MODEL: The Google LLM model to use for extracting and consolidating memories, in the format
projects/{project}/locations/{location}/publishers/google/models/{model}
.
Time to live (TTL) configuration
The TTL configuration controls how Memory Bank should dynamically set memories' expiration time. After their expiration time elapses, memories won't be available for retrieval and will be deleted.
If the configuration is not provided, expiration time won't be dynamically set for created or updated memories, so memories won't expire unless their expiration time is manually set.
There are two options for the TTL configuration:
Default TTL: The TTL will be applied to all operations that create or update a memory, including
UpdateMemory
,CreateMemory
, andGenerateMemories
.Dictionary
memory_bank_config = { "ttl_config": { "default_ttl": f"TTLs" } }
Class-based
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfig as MemoryBankConfig from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfigTtlConfig as TtlConfig memory_bank_config = MemoryBankConfig( ttl_config=TtlConfig( default_ttl=f"TTLs" ) )
Replace the following:
- TTL: The duration in seconds for the TTL. For updated memories, the newly calculated expiration time (now + TTL) will overwrite the Memory's previous expiration time.
Granular (per-operation) TTL: The TTL is calculated based on which operation created or updated the Memory. If not set for a given operation, then the operation won't update the Memory's expiration time.
Dictionary
memory_bank_config = { "ttl_config": { "granular_ttl": { "create_ttl": f"CREATE_TTLs", "generate_created_ttl": f"GENERATE_CREATED_TTLs", "generate_updated_ttl": f"GENERATE_UPDATED_TTLs" } } }
Class-based
from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfig as MemoryBankConfig from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfigTtlConfig as TtlConfig from vertexai.types import ReasoningEngineContextSpecMemoryBankConfigTtlConfigGranularTtlConfig as GranularTtlConfig memory_bank_config = MemoryBankConfig( ttl_config=TtlConfig( granular_ttl_config=GranularTtlConfig( create_ttl=f"CREATE_TTLs", generate_created_ttl=f"GENERATE_CREATED_TTLs", generate_updated_ttl=f"GENERATE_UPDATED_TTLs", ) ) )
Replace the following:
- CREATE_TTL: The duration in seconds for the TTL for memories created using
CreateMemory
. - GENERATE_CREATED_TTL: The duration in seconds for the TTL for memories created using
GeneratedMemories
. - GENERATE_UPDATED_TTL: The duration in seconds for the TTL for memories updated using
GeneratedMemories
. The newly calculated expiration time (now + TTL) will overwrite the Memory's previous expiration time.
- CREATE_TTL: The duration in seconds for the TTL for memories created using