Complete Guide to Gemini CLI

Why Google Made It Free

Hey there!

So, Google released Gemini CLI a while ago, and it’s fast, surprisingly powerful, and free — like $600-a-day-worth-of-API-usage free. It installs in minutes, and lets you run ops, code, and works out errors on its own. Not perfect, but disruptive.

In Google's words, it is “an open-source AI agent that brings the power of Gemini directly into your terminal.”

But in our words, it is an AI agent that absolutely broke norms for tools like this, and maybe the competitors' backs as well.

Which could very well be the goal here; we’ll get to that a bit later. In today’s issue, we’ll go over:

1. What Gemini CLI is 🧠

2. How to get it 💻

3. What you can do with it & basic syntax 🛠️

4. Worthy use cases 🔥

5. A comparison to other instruments 🧰

6. Why Google made it free 💸

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But first…

What Is Gemini CLI? What Does CLI Even Mean?

Let’s brush up on some definitions.

1. CLI stands for Command Line Interface — a way of interacting with software using commands written as lines of text

Think Neo from The Matrix typing into a terminal. Yep, he was using a CLI tool way before they became cool.

2. An AI agent is an autonomous system designed to perform tasks, make decisions, and adapt based on data and user feedback

It operates independently, powered by a large language model (LLM) like GPT-4 or Claude Sonnet 4. These agents often include multiple supporting modules — such as memory or profile modules — to enhance autonomy.

Put them together: Gemini CLI is an AI agent that “lives” in your terminal. It brings Gemini 2.5 Pro with a million-token context window, built-in tool access like MCP, Google Search, and more.

Cool, How Is It Going to Change My Life?

It won’t fix your tragic time management, your 470 open tabs, or the fact that you haven't touched sunlight in days.

But it will replace your bloated AI tool stack, claw back hours of your life, and make you look like Gandalf with a keyboard.

Allow me to demonstrate. Let’s see how long it takes me to install and use Gemini CLI. Start counting.

1. As a prerequisite, you’ll need Node.js v20 or higher installed (I already had it)

2. In my terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T if you’re on Linux Mint like me), I run the command:
   “sudo npm install -g @google/gemini-cli gemini”

3. Next, it prompts me to choose a color theme

4. Then, it asks how I’d like to authenticate — I go with sign in with a Google account

5. Boom. Up and running!

From reading the GitHub page to having it installed, authenticated, and responding — all under 5 minutes.

Alright, let’s see what this thing can do.

I open VS Code, launch the terminal, type gemini, and ask it to create a new Rust project. Something simple — but one that ChatGPT has failed at multiple times. Prompt:

I need a white mesh/plane where I can move around with arrow keys, and can zoom in and zoom out with buttons in the corner, kind of like what you see when you first load a new Figma project. Build this using Rust.

And voilà, first try.

Okay, saying “first try” is a bit of an exaggeration. The first attempt failed to compile miserably. But to its credit, Gemini worked through the errors on its own and delivered something functional in about 2 minutes.

The Simple Gemini CLI Syntax

So we installed Gemini CLI and gave it a playful little go. Now lets ground ourselves and enjoy this table-bit-of-a-technichal-detour with some helpful commands you might want to tool up with for doing actual basic stuff.

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What Can I Do With It?

1. Anonymyzing a 10k-Row Spreadsheet

Let’s crank it up. Say you want to process a large amount of data in a spreadsheet using an MCP server.