[Windows] adk deploy fails with Unicode path error (\UXXXXXXXX escape) during Agent Engine setup

[kamalm96]

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Describe the bug
Trying to run the adk deploy command after following the guide at Step Deploy to agent engine.
I get this error:

Deploy failed: Failed to set up agent engine <vertexai.agent_engines._agent_engines.ModuleAgent object at 0x0000025B0CA84D90>: (unicode error) 'unicodeescape' codec can't decode bytes in position 2-3: truncated \UXXXXXXXX escape (agent_engine_app.py, line **8)**

right after these 2 steps:

Writing to gs://project-id/agent_engine/dependencies.tar.gz
Cleaning up the temp folder: C:\temp\agent_engine_deploy_src\20251015_222606

To Reproduce
Please share a minimal code and data to reproduce your problem.
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Windows machine
2. Follow the same guide to create the weather agent.
3. Follow this guide here as well til you reach the deploy phase.
4. Thats it, error will show after you run the adk deploy command.

Expected behavior
I guess maybe taking care of the escape character for windows users, I'm assuming that's what's happening, since most windows users have the "C:/Users" path, the /U is an escape character as mentioned in the error.

Screenshots
If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: Windows
• Python version(python -V): 3.11.4
• ADK version(pip show google-adk): 1.16.0

Model Information:

• Are you using LiteLLM: No
• Which model is being used(e.g. gemini-2.5-pro)

Additional context
Add any other context about the problem here.

[RaibekTussupbekov]

Hit the same issue on my Windows machine.

[hangfei]

Merge to main issue(#3306) and closing this one.