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...
thecupisblue · 4h ago
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.
energy123 · 2h ago
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 · 42m ago
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 · 3h ago
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 · 3h ago
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 · 2h ago
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 · 3h ago
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 .
nstart · 1h ago
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]
> 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 · 3h ago
If I didn't know better, I'd think you were joking.
Workaccount2 · 1h ago
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.
barrkel · 1h ago
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 · 1h ago
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.
No comments yet
siva7 · 3h ago
> 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.
Similarly I tried contacting some human support for billing issues but was denied because automated checks deemed me unworthy for consulting anything besides documentation pages which i didn't understood so i gave up and switched to another cloud provider.
artdigital · 3h ago
And this can't authenticate the same way the normal gemini cli does, it needs an API key from the looks of it, so free, standard and enterprise plans through OAuth currently don't work for authentication, just the free tier of the Google AI Studio, which is different than gemini-cli free tier, and has way tighter rate limits.
ants_everywhere · 3h ago
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.
jstummbillig · 3h ago
> because they are all over the place and spreading themselves thin
Well, they do have a lot to spread. But yeah, intense amount of overlap.
thecupisblue · 3h ago
They do, but at this point it's becoming comical, especially if they are trying to move away from search as a profit center. You need equity in people's heads if you want to conquer the market.
If instead of Google search they made 3 products each called "Google Search", "Super Search" and "YaGoo!", they wouldn't be where they're at today.
Rebuff5007 · 3h ago
I believe in silicon valley terms, this is called "moving fast and breaking things"
jtrn · 3h ago
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)
mohsen1 · 1h ago
it says "in the chat interface" write this and that. what chat interface?
fhinkel · 30m ago
That description is 100% correct!
In this case, the "chat" happens as a comment on an issue or PR addressing @gemini-cli
turblety · 4h ago
> 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 · 4h ago
I need AI to understand their subscriptions.
dude250711 · 4h ago
Having some end users is a tolerable side-effect of their activities for Google.
The primary goals are promotions, bonuses and stock price.
siva7 · 4h ago
> 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.
johnecheck · 3h ago
The markets are fickle. That can change quickly.
radarsat1 · 2h ago
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.
campers · 1m ago
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
ryoshu · 2h ago
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 · 1h ago
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.
hotfixguru · 2h ago
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
rurban · 21m ago
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.
No comments yet
artdigital · 3h ago
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 · 2h ago
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 · 1h ago
This is an add-on to Gemini-CLI, which is entirely local.
brtkwr · 3h ago
I wondered the same thing, naming things is hard but they've royally screwed up the naming here.
apwell23 · 2h ago
not surprising from a company that greenlighted the name 'bard' for their AI.
gundmc · 1h ago
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
ncrmro · 1h ago
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.
brtkwr · 2h ago
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.
OtherShrezzing · 4h ago
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 · 4h ago
What existing assistant is so good you mean Claude? Gemini has to be about the same, only with clear and reasonable subscription.
v5v3 · 2h ago
Isn't there not a trademark issue over naming it Gemini CLI GitHub Actions?
As Microsoft own GitHub and it's a competitor.
coredog64 · 1h ago
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.
dcre · 2h ago
If that was the case, nobody but GitHub could build actions. There is a whole GitHub Actions Marketplace and Google is in there.
Sorry to be blunt, but Google needs a better Product Marketing team.
As an engineering manager with an AI budget, I'm always looking for better and cheaper tools.
I have a decade of engineering experience and consider myself fairly intelligent.
I still can't figure out what this is, who it's for, or how much it costs.
hi_hi · 2h ago
I may not have fully grasped this, but on the surface, it looks like they want me to have an AI agents inserted directly into my git workflow...like right there with all my wonderful juicy code? Is that correct?
Isn't this a recipe for disaster, or is all the FUD around agents wrecking havoc getting to me? I love Claude Code, but it can be somewhat bonkers and is at least at arms length from doing any real damage to my code (assuming I'm following good dev practices, and don't let it loose on my wider filesystem).
HatchedLake721 · 2h ago
What’s wrong with receiving code/security/MR review comments from AI?
yahoozoo · 2h ago
Not a fan of agents that require and can’t function without access to your GitHub repository. They should be local first.
esafak · 2h ago
gemini-cli is very much local. This GH integration is new.
criley2 · 4h ago
Curious to try this against the Github (website) Agent. The website Agent is definitely dumber than the vscode agent (because it has to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to build and start my monorepo apps) but on the flip side, it doesn't take up my computer and thus any value it creates is additive.
We have tried out Gemini code review vs Copilot code review and Gemini is consistently offering better code review tips. It has officially caught multiple potential bugs, even a few that reviewers might have missed, so it's definitely been additive.
Observability looks way worse. Github Agent has a full UX built into the Github PR that lets you dig into the agent behavior. This requires you to egress text logs and make sense of it yourself.
Also curious about customization. Github just rolled out "agent writes its own instructions" https://github.blog/changelog/2025-08-06-copilot-coding-agen... which is super cool, how do I customize this one and teach it how to start and manage apps across my monorepo?
artdigital · 3h ago
> Curious to try this against the Github (website) Agent. The website Agent is definitely dumber than the vscode agent (because it has to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to build and start my monorepo apps) but on the flip side, it doesn't take up my computer and thus any value it creates is additive.
Yeah that's on you. Add a `copilot-instructions.md` file and configure the `copilot-setup-steps.yml` workflow to setup your environment. Both are supported more or less since Copilot Agent got released (though in "preview")
Most agents read `AGENTS.md`, I just symlink it to CLAUDE.md, and do the same for GEMINI.md
criley2 · 1h ago
I have a well documented copilot-instructions.md (and have used githubs new agentic self-documentation prompt) and the reality is that it takes about 15-20 minutes to build and start multiple react, reactnative and expressjs projects.
Github now appears to support defining setup tasks in a Github Action that runs prior to the agent, so that's the next avenue of research.
Regardless, the website agent will always be slower. My local is already running and fully ready to go so the ide agent can hit the ground running on any task. The website agent has to spin up a machine and install and build. It will take time.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/blob/main/docs/c...
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.
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.
No comments yet
Similarly I tried contacting some human support for billing issues but was denied because automated checks deemed me unworthy for consulting anything besides documentation pages which i didn't understood so i gave up and switched to another cloud provider.
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.
Well, they do have a lot to spread. But yeah, intense amount of overlap.
If instead of Google search they made 3 products each called "Google Search", "Super Search" and "YaGoo!", they wouldn't be where they're at today.
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)
In this case, the "chat" happens as a comment on an issue or PR addressing @gemini-cli
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!
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.
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.
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.
> Delegate work with an "@ mini-cli" tag and the agent can complete a range of tasks, from writing bugs to fixing bugs
No comments yet
Why not follow Claude Code naming with this and just call it `gemini github action` or `run gemini`?
The Gemini assistant will need to be several times better than the existing tools to even fractionally displace them.
As Microsoft own GitHub and it's a competitor.
https://github.com/marketplace/actions/run-gemini-cli
As an engineering manager with an AI budget, I'm always looking for better and cheaper tools.
I have a decade of engineering experience and consider myself fairly intelligent.
I still can't figure out what this is, who it's for, or how much it costs.
Isn't this a recipe for disaster, or is all the FUD around agents wrecking havoc getting to me? I love Claude Code, but it can be somewhat bonkers and is at least at arms length from doing any real damage to my code (assuming I'm following good dev practices, and don't let it loose on my wider filesystem).
We have tried out Gemini code review vs Copilot code review and Gemini is consistently offering better code review tips. It has officially caught multiple potential bugs, even a few that reviewers might have missed, so it's definitely been additive.
Observability looks way worse. Github Agent has a full UX built into the Github PR that lets you dig into the agent behavior. This requires you to egress text logs and make sense of it yourself.
Also curious about customization. Github just rolled out "agent writes its own instructions" https://github.blog/changelog/2025-08-06-copilot-coding-agen... which is super cool, how do I customize this one and teach it how to start and manage apps across my monorepo?
Yeah that's on you. Add a `copilot-instructions.md` file and configure the `copilot-setup-steps.yml` workflow to setup your environment. Both are supported more or less since Copilot Agent got released (though in "preview")
Most agents read `AGENTS.md`, I just symlink it to CLAUDE.md, and do the same for GEMINI.md
Github now appears to support defining setup tasks in a Github Action that runs prior to the agent, so that's the next avenue of research.
Regardless, the website agent will always be slower. My local is already running and fully ready to go so the ide agent can hit the ground running on any task. The website agent has to spin up a machine and install and build. It will take time.