Google releases open-source terminal AI agent "Gemini CLI"
On June 25, 2025, Google announced “Gemini CLI,” an open-source AI agent that runs in the terminal. Released in full under the Apache 2.0 license, its standout feature is that anyone with a personal Google account can use Gemini 2.5 Pro’s 1-million-token context window for free — arriving as Google’s answer to Claude Code and OpenAI Codex.
Details
- Open source: Published the entire codebase on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, letting anyone inspect the code, report issues, and contribute to development
- Free tier: Simply signing in with a personal Google account grants a free Gemini Code Assist license, offering 60 requests per minute and 1,000 requests per day — one of the most generous free tiers in the industry at the time
- Capabilities: Beyond coding, it supports Google Search grounding, Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration, and custom prompt configuration, covering a wide range of task automation and problem-solving
- Non-interactive execution: Includes a non-interactive mode that can be embedded in scripts and workflows, callable from CI/CD and other automation pipelines
- Relationship to Gemini Code Assist: Shares its underlying engine with Google’s IDE-based AI assistant, “Gemini Code Assist,” enabling multi-step planning and error remediation in agent mode both in VS Code and in the terminal
- Getting started: Emphasized how easy it is to get started — all that’s needed is an email address to begin using the
gemini-clirepository on GitHub
What happened next
Gemini CLI’s development moved quickly afterward, with enhanced VS Code integration in August 2025 and the addition of the new model “Gemini 3 Flash” in December, expanding its capabilities. It gathered strong community support as an open-source project, surpassing 100,000 GitHub stars with more than 6,000 community pull requests merged. However, in May 2026 Google announced it would fold Gemini CLI into its successor, “Antigravity CLI,” bringing the individual-focused Gemini CLI’s run to a close in under a year.