While everyone’s talking about AI coding assistants like Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Windsurf, there’s an incredibly powerful tool flying under the radar – Gemini CLI. As an AI Engineer at Google, I’ve discovered that Gemini CLI fills a completely different niche that’s game-changing for automation, CI/CD pipelines, and headless operations.
This isn’t just another API wrapper – it’s a full-featured terminal-based AI agent that brings Gemini’s power directly into your command line and automation workflows. Let’s dive into how to set it up and use it effectively.