New AI Coding Teammate: Gemini CLI GitHub Actions
61 comments
·August 7, 2025thecupisblue
lubujackson
Face it, they have hit the "Yahoo phase" of their company life. It was a good, long run. All that remains is buying larger and larger successful startups and grinding them in to dust.
But the the "sunsetting" of projects good or bad, random shotgun approaches to everything, super awesome islands of product that slowly get bled dry... it is a failure of management structure, not just management.
I don't know the guts of Google, but I imagine there are 500 VPs (or equivalent) each with their pet project, each trying to curry favor with the boss who sent an email blast to "go big on Gemini". It feels like many teams just dropped their old busted projects and moved on to the new hotness, to hell with the customers, consistency or revenue. The only metric now is "Gemini engagement".
energy123
They need a boundary between their research culture and their software culture. One org, two cultures.
The chaos you describe is actually a significant positive in research environments. It's not spreading oneself thin, it is diversifying and decorrelating ones' efforts. You can't centrally plan all innovation.
But for the interface between the customer and the research output, which is a software and product problem, that definitely needs a different approach.
thecupisblue
Completely agree - the research output should be integrated into a customer facing product, instead they are trying to integrate customers into into research output.
gexla
My take on this is that Google has a bunch of "incubating" spaces where they have teams of people building things that may or may not take off. So, when something does take off, it sort of becomes a victim of its own success. It confuses people because it's not a "core" Google product that fits nicely among other Google products. NotebookLLM seems to be another example.
Personally, I would rather Google did this sort of experimentation even if it is more confusing.
Or I could be wrong about this. But following NotebookLLM, it seemed like the team developing it had a lot of autonomy.
thecupisblue
That is so, but the problem this causes is more than just customer confusion - it is a lack of integration and responsibility. There is no "let's polish this and see if it works based on real user feedback", but it's "let's throw this out and shut it down if it doesn't work".
And if it isn't shut down, it is left in that terrible half-documented state, with confusing integrations and terribly integrated into the rest of the product.
Considering I'm confused both as a customer, user and a shareholder, I'd say the tactic isn't working.
kubb
Yeah and they have like 50 coding agents, because everyone in the entire company turned to doing the same thing. There's not that much you can invent in this space.
MaxPock
I've come to realize that life is all about having different eggs in different baskets . Some will go bad and some will hatch into beautiful chicks .
barrkel
Jules works in a VM, asynchronously, on a separate checkout of the code.
Gemini CLI works synchronously with the user (unless you YOLO) and in your own directory on your own machine on your own checkout.
Two different modalities.
artdigital
And Gemini CLI github action (this project) runs again in a VM (github action runner) on a separate checkout of the code. This is what OP meant with multiple coding agents.
null
nstart
Also, if you are on Google Workspace, then everything changes there too. Activating the Gemini CLI is a smile while crying emoji kind of activity if you are trying to provide this to an entire organization [1]
[1]: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/docs/c...
vasco
> Even thought they have access to my Google Account and my phone, their Gemini app is useless.
This is the funniest thing to me. When you open the app, Gemini says:
"Hello, Vasco"
In the welcome screen. I then ask this amazing intelligence this question:
"What's my name?"
"I do not know your name. I am an AI and I don't have access to your personal information."
I know why it happens, but it's so funny.
thecupisblue
If I didn't know better, I'd think you were joking.
Workaccount2
To be fair, the "Hello Vasco" is a generated background image and not part of the chat context. But still, you would think they would put your name in the system prompt.
null
ants_everywhere
gemini-cli is a command line tool that calls Gemini and shells out to common text utilities and MCP for tool use.
This appears to just be a plugin where you do things on GitHub, that sends out notifications to gemini-cli running on cloud, then gemini-cli responds and sends notifications back.
Basically just saving you the hassle of cloning at a specific commit, calling gemini-cli manually, and then uploading the result manually.
jtrn
The amount of time I have to spend on investigations, to understand the basics of what something ACTUALLY IS, never ceases to amaze me. Having to scrape away buzzwords, ill-conceived descriptions, and unnecessary verbose stuff... it's tiresome.
So i THINK this is what it IS:
A GitHub Action that can be included in GitHub workflow YAML files. It executes the Gemini CLI, passing in prompts, repo context, and event data (like issue text or PR diffs) to generate responses or perform actions. In other words: it's a wrapper that installs and runs the Gemini CLI inside GitHub Actions environments.
It can use GitHub's API (via tokens or apps) to read repo data (issues, PRs, code) and write back (e.g., add labels, comments, or code suggestions). It makes calls to standard HTTPS API endpoints for Gemini LLM" (via the CLI's backend interactions with Google's Gemini API)
turblety
> 7. Google One and Ultra plans, Gemini for Workspace plans These plans currently apply only to the use of Gemini web-based products provided by Google-based experiences (for example, the Gemini web app or the Flow video editor). These plans do not apply to the API usage which powers the Gemini CLI. Supporting these plans is under active consideration for future support.
Again, with the complicated subscription. Please just give us a monthly subscription for developers that I can pay whatever, and then use Gemini CLI, this github action, Gemini chat, Jules, etc. Just like Claude and their max subscription.
This would be a game changer for me.
Sorry, congrats on the release too. This looks cool!
siva7
I need AI to understand their subscriptions.
dude250711
Having some end users is a tolerable side-effect of their activities for Google.
The primary goals are promotions, bonuses and stock price.
siva7
> The primary goals are promotions, bonuses and stock price.
If that's the case, last i checked they are doing pretty well on stock price.
radarsat1
I'm honestly a bit confused by the free tier of Gemini. I've been using it with different agents (Aider, and then Crush), and I hit the rate limits FAST. Like, after maybe 5 or 6 requests it just blows up. Then I can try again quite a few times, and it hits the limit. Then eventually I guess I hit my daily limit and it just stops working until the next day.
I mean this has been enough to get my feet wet and have some fun with exploring agent-based development, no doubt, and I appreciate it, but I'm having a hard time crossing my experience with,
> generous free-of-charge quotas
as they say. It's not that generous if it stops working after 5 mins? (This morning literally a single sentence I typed into Crush resulted in some back and forth I guess it called the API a few times and it just rate limited-out. Fine, it was probably a lot of requests going on, but, but I literally gave it a single small job to do and it couldn't finish it.)
Meanwhile I seem to be able to use the Gemini web app endlessly and haven't hit any limits yet.
ryoshu
With Gemini CLI I blow through Pro requests in < 10 minutes and it switches to Flash. I can't trust either to be autonomous. Pro will write unit tests, get a test to 100% coverage and then delete the test. Flash will get stuck in endless loops where it replaces a string in a file, doesn't realize the string has been replaced, and keep failing to recognize that fact getting stuck in a doom loop.
Glad I didn't add an API key. I've had friends who did and ended up with $xxx in charges because the models can't think or use tools properly.
rs186
This. I have a side project that I intend to finish in vibe coding mode, but Gemini CLI has been stuck fixing build errors for an hour, after multiple attempts to correct errors or refactor code. The interfaces don't even make any sense. Time for me to go in and fix the mess myself.
campers
I added a key rotator to my AI coder, and asked a couple of friends to make keys for me. That helped code a good chunk of http://typedai.dev when 2.5 Pro came out
stillsut
Last year, I was actually working on a bounty platform for Github PR's.
The low quality human-authored PR's that came in (due to the incentive we offered) combined with the fact that a draft PR could be made for pennies with AI made this concept dead in the water as far as I'm concerned.
The pain point of getting some attention and action on your opensource codebase is really no longer relevant, in fact the pain point seems to be moving to how to optimize the limited reviewer / maintainer bandwidth under the onslaught of proposed suggestions.
To this end I've been experimenting with a framework that builds PR's from the major agents and but with a focus on how to structure the tasks and review process that optimize the review => accept/revise cycle. If you're interested I've been writing up some case studies here: https://github.com/sutt/agro/blob/master/docs/case-studies/a...
hotfixguru
I find their image text for the third image in the carousel funny:
> Delegate work with an "@ mini-cli" tag and the agent can complete a range of tasks, from writing bugs to fixing bugs
artdigital
I wonder why they call this `gemini cli`, it's not really a CLI anymore when it's primarily used through GitHub, is it?
Why not follow Claude Code naming with this and just call it `gemini github action` or `run gemini`?
dcre
My guess is that it was built by the Gemini CLI team and institutional pressures caused this name, either to make sure they get credit, or to avoid making it sound like they’re taking over a very broad product area.
Workaccount2
This is an add-on to Gemini-CLI, which is entirely local.
rurban
I tried this out last month. It was useful to summarize big PR's, and even found minor issues. But nothing really useful for professionals, only for overworked open source maintainers to review and feedback newbies.
jondusaza
[dead]
gundmc
This sounds like Gemini Code Assist rebranded under the successful Gemini CLI banner. I'm sure this was done to "consolidate" offerings and brands, but this is just way more confusing. CLI has a meaning, and this doesn't seem to have a CLI at all? Product looks cool, but the naming is just baffling
brtkwr
It seems too good to be true that this is free, unless training data is the price we'll end up paying with. Also there is no option to opt-out which is all the more sinister. I guess it should be used with caution in private/internal repos.
ncrmro
We’ve been having really good results with Copilot Agent. Sometimes we have to close a PR and refine the issue or pull down and work locally on cursor but it also jumpstarts a lot of stuff.
OtherShrezzing
Given the amount of setup required, this seems like a very high-friction version of the GitHub Copilot Agent that's already available for every user who could interact with this.
The Gemini assistant will need to be several times better than the existing tools to even fractionally displace them.
dostick
What existing assistant is so good you mean Claude? Gemini has to be about the same, only with clear and reasonable subscription.
v5v3
Isn't there not a trademark issue over naming it Gemini CLI GitHub Actions?
As Microsoft own GitHub and it's a competitor.
dcre
If that was the case, nobody but GitHub could build actions. There is a whole GitHub Actions Marketplace and Google is in there.
coredog64
Having seen this play out at another hyperscaler, the practical distinction is that as long as the non-GH product name comes first, that's enough to avoid confusion.
Wait, is this CLI or is this a github action or is this a github application?
Also, I thought Jules was the "coding agent" they are working on. Now this is taking it over or is this like another case of Google self-competing?
Someone needs to take charge at this company with a strong vision, because they are all over the place and spreading themselves thin, which in turn spreads thin the customer/brand equity.
At this point, as someone who: - Has been writing Android code for about 13 years now
- Has collaborated with Google on stuff
- Lead Google developer communities and conferences
- Knows many, many GDE's and has discussions with them often
- Uses Gemini API for their product
I'm so damn confused. How is a normal customer expected to understand then?
- They have 2 SDK's for communicating to their Gemini API.
- The documentation is spread and thrown all over the place.
- Half the time I'm trying to do something I have to dig through their code to find how to.
- The features I really want are rate limited or available only to private testers.
- They have 3 coding agents now.
- Even thought they have access to my Google Account and my phone, their Gemini app is useless.
- I tried to do a basic thing (add a service account) in Google Cloud recently, which wasn't allowed due to default rules that are deprecated and are so confusing to change due to their confusing UX.
The only usable thing is the AI studio, which is a great tool for experimenting with diff models and improved the DX of getting a Gemini API key by a mile.
I'd say congrats on the release, but honestly this is such a mid low hanging fruit of a product.