Add Gemini CLI to oriz coding-agent fleet

decision Tue Jun 30 2026 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) agentfleetgemini-cligooglefree-tierno-cardgrill-decision

Add Gemini CLI to oriz coding-agent fleet

Decision

Gemini CLI joins the oriz coding-agent fleet as an agent-class member (not a model server). Surface: terminal CLI. Auth: Google account OAuth (no API key needed for the free tier).

Grill record (2026-06-30, 4 MCQs)

Why Gemini CLI fits

• Free. Verified against Google's docs 2026-06-30: 1,000 req/day, 60 req/min on the free tier accessed via OAuth. No card-on-file required.
• No new key surface. Login uses the user's existing Google account. We do not hold credentials; agents authenticate interactively — passes the no-card-on-file hard rule cleanly.
• MCP-compatible. Google's Gemini CLI added partial MCP support in 2026, satisfying the agent-fleet-parity "every agent sees the same .mcp.json" criterion.
• Reverses prior verdict. fleet-cut-to-4-agents-2026-06-29 listed Gemini CLI as "Partial MCP, not currently needed." The 2026-06-30 grill explicitly promotes it to fleet — that row of the 2026-06-29 verdict is now superseded; the rest of the cut (Cline dropped, fleet-of-4) stands.

What this agent is NOT

• Not a public REST API endpoint. Gemini CLI is a client-side agent. It does not expose its model routing/server as a callable endpoint for other programs. Scripts can drive it headlessly via -p and --output-format json from a node with an active OAuth session, but that is local invocation, not server-side API. For programmatic access from a Cloudflare Worker or another script, see the sibling zero-cost-inference-backends-2026-06-30.
• Not a daily-driver replacement for Claude Code. Quota (1,000/day) is <5% of what a typical oriz monorepo session consumes on Anthropic-paid Claude. Positioned as secondary/parallel — failover for free-routed work, not replacement for Claude Code on primary paid work.
• Not credentialed for production automation. OAuth-dependent; CI/CD or scheduled jobs need a long-lived API key path (REST + service account), which is a card-on-file surface — explicitly out of scope.

What needs to change (apply in a follow-up grill, NOT this one)

Per auto-grill-on-architectural-decisions, the rule is "write decision, THEN code":

1. Add row to AGENTS.md fleet table (becomes 11th agent)
2. Create .agents/gemini/AGENTS.md pointer stub
3. Extend scripts/sync-mcp-configs.mjs to add Gemini CLI MCP target
4. Extend scripts/install-agents.ps1 + scripts/install-agents.cmd to install Gemini CLI
5. Add ~/.gemini/skills/ to scripts/wire-agent-skills-junctions.mjs TARGETS array for skill parity

The follow-up also has to reconcile the already-drifted fleet count: the working AGENTS.md documents 10 agents; the agent-fleet-parity rule still says "four agents, no more." Bringing both into sync is part of the same follow-up grill session.

Cross-refs

• agent-fleet-parity — rule this decision satisfies

• auto-grill-on-architectural-decisions — process producing this file

• fleet-cut-to-4-agents-2026-06-29 — predecessor; Gemini CLI row verdict is reversed; Cline-drop and 4-agent verdict stand

• zero-cost-inference-backends-2026-06-30 — sibling decision covering Ollama / Workers AI / Puter.js

• cloudflare-workers-ai — serverless AI sibling

• puter-js — browser-side AI sibling