Gemini CLI

Gemini CLI is Google's open-source terminal agent: an Apache-2.0 client that brings Gemini models into the command line with MCP support, project context files and a sandbox. It was, for about a year, the most generous free coding agent available. As of 18 June 2026 it no longer serves personal accounts.

Overview

Two facts about Gemini CLI are true at once, and most write-ups pick only one.

It is retired for individual developers. At Google I/O on 19 May 2026, Google announced it was consolidating developer tooling under the Antigravity brand. On 18 June 2026 Gemini CLI stopped accepting requests from individual, free, and Google AI Pro and Ultra accounts, as did the Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions. If you are a solo developer and gemini stopped working, that is why, and Antigravity CLI is the supported replacement.

It is not abandoned software. The repository remains Apache-2.0 with more than 106,000 stars and 14,400 forks, and releases kept shipping through late July 2026 — v0.50.0 on 8 July, v0.52.0 on 22 July, v0.53.0 on 28 July. Organisations holding Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licences, or paid Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform API keys, retain uninterrupted access.

So the honest summary is: Gemini CLI became an enterprise product. The free tier that made it famous — 60 requests per minute and 1,000 per day just for signing in with a Google account — is gone, and it is not coming back.

Key Features

• GEMINI.md context files. Persistent project instructions the agent reads on every run. These transfer to Antigravity unchanged, which is the one part of migration that costs nothing.
• Four approval modes. default prompts before each tool use, auto_edit auto-approves edit tools while still gating commands, plan is read-only, and yolo approves everything. YOLO can only be set from the command line (--yolo or --approval-mode=yolo) — a deliberate friction so nobody enters it from a menu by accident.
• Trusted Folders. Execution policy set per directory, so a scratch repo and a production repo can carry different rules on the same machine.
• MCP support. Custom tool integration through configured MCP servers.
• Extensions and custom commands. Shareable additions to the command set. These convert to Antigravity plugins with agy plugin import gemini.
• 1M-token context. The Gemini family's context window was the CLI's clearest technical advantage — holding a large monorepo without retrieval.

Use Cases

Given the licensing change, the realistic uses today are narrow and worth stating plainly.

• Enterprise teams on Code Assist licences. Standard at roughly $19/user/month and Enterprise at roughly $45/user/month (annual) keep full access. For these teams nothing broke, and the tool is still receiving weekly updates.
• Reading the source. Apache-2.0 and heavily starred, it remains a good reference implementation of an agentic CLI — sandbox policy, approval modes, MCP wiring — regardless of whether you can run it against Google's endpoints.
• Understanding your own migration. If your team has years of GEMINI.md files, extensions and custom commands, the repository documents exactly what those artifacts are before you convert them.

For new individual work, this is not the tool. Use Antigravity, or one of the alternatives below.

Getting Started

Installation still works; access is the constraint.

# no install
npx @google/gemini-cli

# global install
npm install -g @google/gemini-cli

Homebrew, MacPorts and Anaconda packages also exist.

If you are on a personal account, stop here — installation will succeed and requests will not. Move to Antigravity instead:

curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash
agy                          # detects legacy config, offers a migration checklist
agy plugin import gemini     # converts extensions to plugins

The migration trap worth knowing in advance: workspace skills do not move automatically. Rename .gemini/skills/ to .agents/skills/, and move global skills from ~/.gemini/skills/ to ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/. Nothing warns you — the skills just stop appearing as slash commands.

Limitations

• No personal-account access since 18 June 2026. This is the limitation that supersedes all others.
• The free tier is not returning. Google's consolidation moved individual users to Antigravity, whose own free allowance is explicitly tied to spare capacity.
• Enterprise licensing is per seat and annual. Roughly $19 or $45 per user per month, which is a different procurement conversation than "sign in with Google".
• Documentation is split across a retirement boundary. Guides written before June 2026 describe a product individuals can no longer use, and many still rank well in search. Check dates.

Alternatives

• Google Antigravity — the official successor, and the only path that preserves your GEMINI.md, extensions and hooks.
• Claude Code — the closest equivalent in shape and maturity, with a subscription that has not been withdrawn from individuals.
• OpenAI Codex — Apache-2.0 like Gemini CLI was, with an OS-level sandbox and a published rate card.
• Aider — open source and model-agnostic. If the lesson you took from this retirement is "do not depend on one vendor's client", this is the answer.

Community & Support

• GitHub: google-gemini/gemini-cli — Apache-2.0, 106k stars, still active
• Release notes: geminicli.com/docs/changelogs — carries the retirement notice alongside ongoing releases
• Migration guide: antigravity.google/docs/cli/gcli-migration

The repository is the most reliable source on what the tool currently does; almost everything else written about it predates June 2026.