Unified Interaction Architecture

The Gemini Interactions API acts as a singular entry point for interacting with Gemini models, replacing fragmented endpoints. By using the ai.interactions.create method, developers can handle text generation, streaming, multi-turn conversations, and multimodal inputs (images, audio, video, documents) through a consistent structure. The API manages state via previous_interaction_id, allowing for seamless multi-turn chat without manual history management.

Advanced Capabilities and Tooling

Beyond standard text generation, the API supports:

  • Structured Output: Integration with Zod schemas allows for type-safe JSON responses, ensuring the model adheres to defined constraints.
  • Function Calling: The API supports a loop-based pattern where the model returns function_call steps. Developers execute these locally and return function_result steps to the model to continue the interaction.
  • Tooling & Grounding: Built-in tools like google_search can be injected directly into requests to ground model outputs in real-time data. Other supported tools include code execution, file search, and Google Maps.
  • Managed Agents: Developers can offload complex tasks to remote sandboxed environments by specifying an agent instead of a model, enabling autonomous code execution and file management.

Production Patterns

For production-grade applications, the API offers two critical patterns:

  • Background Execution: By setting background: true, developers can trigger long-running tasks that return immediately, allowing the client to poll for status and results asynchronously.
  • Streaming: Real-time feedback is achieved by setting stream: true, where the client iterates over step.delta events to process text chunks as they are generated.