Interactions API: our primary interface for Gemini models and agents
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This content is generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental[[duration]] minutes
Today we’re announcing that the Interactions API has reached general availability and is now our primary API for interacting with Gemini models and agents. We launched its public beta in December 2025, and it has quickly become developers’ favorite way to build applications with Gemini
With this GA release, the API now has a stable schema and we also added major new capabilities that developers asked for, including Managed Agents, background execution, Gemini Omni (soon) and more. All of our documentation now defaults to Interactions API and we are working with ecosystem partners to make it the default interface across 3P SDKs and Libraries
The simplest way to build with Gemini
Whether you’re calling a model or running an agent, the Interactions API gets you there in a few lines of code. Pass a model ID for inference, an agent ID for autonomous tasks, set background=True for anything long-running
Key updates since December
- Managed Agents: A single API call provisions a remote Linux sandbox where an agent can reason, execute code, browse the web and manage files. The Antigravity agent ships as the default, and you can define your own custom agents with instructions, skills and data sources.
- Background execution: Set background=True on any call. The server runs the interaction asynchronously.
- Tool improvements: Mix built-in tools , such as Google Search, Google Maps with your own functions in one request. Tool results can now return images alongside text.
- Deep Researchupgrades: Two new agent versions (speed vs. depth), collaborative planning, native charts and infographics, and multimodal grounding with images, PDFs and audio.
- Media generation:Image generation with Nano Banana 2 and Google Image Search grounding, music with Lyria 3, and expressive speech with multi-speaker TTS.
- From Roles to Steps: Simplified schema where every action (user_input, thought, function_call, model_output, etc.) is its own typed step, replacing the old role structure.
- Cost and developer optimizations:Flex and Priority tiers let you optimize for cost or latency (Flex offers 50% cost reduction). Errors now pinpoint the exact field. Past interactions are retrievable with 55-day retention on the paid tier.
The new standard for development
The Interactions API is now the default for Google AI Studio, the Gemini API, and all our documentation, which includes a toggle to switch snippets back to the legacy format. We recommend using the Interactions API for all new projects and applications
While the legacy generateContent API remains fully supported and will continue to receive new mainline Gemini models for the foreseeable future, we expect frontier capabilities for long-running models and agents to increasingly land exclusively on the Interactions API. This is because it is designed from the ground up for stateful, agentic workflows. We have published a migration guide to help you transition at your own pace
An agent-first ecosystem
Most developers are now using coding agents (such as Antigravity) to build applications. To make it easier for agents to stay up to date with the latest API patterns, we built the gemini-interactions-api Skill. It injects best-practice patterns for Interactions API development into your agent’s context (streaming, function calling, structured output, Deep Research and more)
Get started
The Interactions API is available through the Python and JavaScript SDKs. If you’re already building with one of our supported partners, LiteLLM, Eigent or Agno, you can start using their Interactions API integrations today
Grab your API key from Google AI Studio and follow the Interactions API documentation to get started. If you’re migrating from generateContent, our migration guide maps every field to the new schema. You can also view the full API Reference
The Interactions API was built based on developer feedback, and that focus won’t change with general availability. Tell us what you need on the developer forum
