{"type":"post","slug":"how-to-evaluate-live-and-voice-agents-in-adk","title":"How to evaluate live and voice agents in ADK","description":"Google brought live evaluation into ADK: a simulated user speaks its turns as audio so spoken replies can be scored inside the same eval loop already used for text agents.","retrieval_nugget":"Google brought live evaluation into ADK: a simulated user speaks its turns as audio so spoken replies can be scored inside the same eval loop already used for text agents.","published_at":"2026-09-01","updated_at":"2026-09-12","record_date":"2026-08-25","date_kind":"discovered_at","topics":["agent-security","agents","ai","evaluation","voice-agents"],"entities":["Google"],"source_url":"https://developers.googleblog.com/how-to-evaluate-live-voice-agents-in-adk","source_title":"How to Evaluate Live & Voice Agents in ADK- Google Developers Blog","source_domain":"developers.googleblog.com","source_terms":["evaluate","live","voice","model","import"],"summary_word_count":199,"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:how-to-evaluate-live-and-voice-agents-in-adk","status":"published","source_urls":["https://developers.googleblog.com/how-to-evaluate-live-voice-agents-in-adk"],"visuals":[],"editorial_provenance":{"schema_version":"newruntime-editorial-copy-v1","content_status":"source_grounded_final","final_copy_sha256":"sha256:586e19c5450f2f94bdd26a633e32cd5793780038e3bab5d82aee94634eddee24","reviewed_at":"2026-09-12T10:00:00Z","source_evidence_count":1,"verified_claim_count":2,"site_analysis_schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","site_object_kind":"field_note","observed_fact_count":2,"implication_count":1,"watch_condition_count":1,"related_record_count":3},"analysis":{"schema_version":"newruntime-site-analysis-v1","object_kind":"field_note","thesis":"Google added native live evaluation to the Agent Development Kit on 24 August.","observed_facts":[{"text":"ADK can now drive a live voice agent with a simulated user that speaks its turns as audio and score the spoken replies.","source_urls":["https://developers.googleblog.com/how-to-evaluate-live-voice-agents-in-adk"]},{"text":"The post names tools failing to fire, context slipping between turns and ignored interjections as live-agent failure modes.","source_urls":["https://developers.googleblog.com/how-to-evaluate-live-voice-agents-in-adk"]}],"mechanism":"A simulated user drives a live voice agent by speaking its turns as audio, the spoken replies are scored, and the whole thing runs inside the same evaluation loop teams already use for text agents rather than in a separate voice harness.","why_now":"behaviour that sounded perfect yesterday can change quietly on the next prompt tweak or model iteration: tools stop firing, context slips between turns, interjections go ignored","implications":["None of those are audible in a single-turn demo, which is why a demo is not evidence."],"evidence_boundary":"This is a how-to post with a worked example: it documents the loop without publishing scoring rubrics or reliability data for the simulated user itself.","watch_conditions":["The condition to watch is whether simulated-user audio becomes reproducible across runs, because an eval whose synthetic caller varies between executions moves the noise rather than removing it."],"related_records":[{"url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/langchain-agent-environments-spec-to-task-pipeline","relation":"Prior coverage of turning agent evals into a production pipeline."},{"url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/evals-move-from-leaderboards-to-operating-diagnostics","relation":"Prior coverage of evaluation as an operating diagnostic."},{"url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents","relation":"Topic hub for agent evaluation practice."}]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-to-evaluate-live-and-voice-agents-in-adk/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-to-evaluate-live-and-voice-agents-in-adk.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-to-evaluate-live-and-voice-agents-in-adk.json"},"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agent-security/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-security/","title":"Agent Security","reason":"Explore the agent-security topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-security.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agent-security.json"},{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/agents/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/agents/","title":"Agents","reason":"Explore 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