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Gemini CLI notes

6 min read

The command line interface (CLI) is a powerful tool, but often, we only scratch the surface of its capabilities. When you combine the raw power of a modern CLI like the Gemini CLI – with its ability to read/write files, execute shell commands, search content, and even fetch web data – the possibilities for automation and hyper-personalized workflows become truly limitless.

Forget just listing files or running basic scripts. Let’s dive into 25 imaginative and niche ways you can leverage the Gemini CLI to streamline your work, automate tedious tasks, and even spark new creative endeavors.

Supercharging Your Development Workflow

  1. Automated API Documentation Generation: Read source code files, extract function signatures and docstrings, and automatically generate Markdown or HTML API documentation.
  2. Smart Git Commit Message Enforcer: Read the .git/COMMIT_EDITMSG file, validate its content against predefined rules (e.g., conventional commits), and suggest corrections or block the commit if standards aren’t met.
  3. Dynamic Website Scaffolding: Create new components, pages, or modules for a web project by reading template files, replacing placeholders with user-provided names, and writing them to the correct directory structure.
  4. Codebase Dependency Auditor: Scan package.json, requirements.txt, or similar files, then search the codebase to identify unused dependencies for cleanup.
  5. Custom Code Snippet Library Manager: Allow users to save, categorize, search, and retrieve frequently used code snippets from a local Markdown or JSON file.

Automating Content Creation & Management

  1. Personalized News Digest Creator: Fetch articles from specific RSS feeds or news sites, filter by keywords, summarize key points, and compile a daily personalized news briefing in a Markdown file.
  2. Automated Image Optimization & Conversion: Find newly added images in a project, run shell commands (e.g., imagemagick, ffmpeg) to optimize or convert them to web-friendly formats, and update image paths in relevant HTML/CSS files.
  3. Blog Post Idea Generator (from web): Fetch trending news or articles from specific sources, search for keywords or themes, and then compile a list of potential blog post ideas.
  4. Social Media Post Scheduler (Local): Read a CSV of pre-written social media posts, and use the CLI to trigger curl commands or local scripts at specific times to publish them.
  5. Markdown to HTML Converter (Custom): Read Markdown files, apply custom replace rules to convert Markdown syntax into specific HTML tags, allowing for highly tailored static site generation.

Boosting Personal Productivity & Organization

  1. Hyper-Personalized Content Curation & Summarization: Automatically pull daily updates from specific academic journals or news sources, extract key findings using pattern matching, and then summarize them into a personalized daily briefing document.
  2. Smart To-Do List Processor: Read your journal or a plain-text to-do list, search for specific markers (e.g., “TODO:”, “#urgent”), extract tasks, and then organize or prioritize them into a separate, actionable list.
  3. Personal Finance Transaction Categorizer: Read downloaded bank statements (CSV), apply regex rules to categorize transactions based on descriptions, and output a summary or update a local budget file.
  4. Recipe Scaler & Unit Converter: Read a recipe from a text file, allow the user to specify a new serving size, and automatically adjust ingredient quantities and convert units (e.g., grams to cups).
  5. Automated Digital Garden/Knowledge Base Management: Maintain a complex network of interconnected Markdown notes by automatically linking related concepts, generating daily review prompts, or creating new notes based on web content.

Unlocking Data & System Insights

  1. Obscure Log File Analyzer: Parse highly specific or proprietary log file formats using regex, extract critical events or metrics, and generate custom reports or alerts.
  2. Simple Web Scraper for Price Tracking: Fetch product pages from e-commerce sites, extract price information using pattern matching, and log changes over time to track price fluctuations.
  3. Network Device Configuration Backup: Use run_shell_command to SSH into network devices, execute commands to retrieve their running configurations, and save them to timestamped backup files.
  4. System Health Snapshot & Diff Tool: Take periodic snapshots of system configurations (e.g., installed packages, running services), save them, and then compare current state to previous snapshots to detect unauthorized changes.
  5. Public IP Change Notifier: Periodically fetch your public IP address from a service like icanhazip.com, compare it to a previously saved IP, and if it changes, trigger a notification or update a dynamic DNS record.

Enhancing Learning & Research

  1. Academic Paper Citation Extractor: Fetch academic papers (PDFs), extract citation information using pattern matching, and format it into a bibliography file (e.g., BibTeX).
  2. Flashcard Generator from Notes: Read study notes or articles, identify key terms and definitions, and automatically generate flashcards in a format compatible with tools like Anki.
  3. Code Snippet Organizer: Scan your codebase for specific function or class definitions, and then organize them into a categorized snippet library for quick reference.
  4. Glossary Builder from Documents: Read multiple documents across a project, search for bolded terms or specific patterns, and compile them into a glossary.md file with definitions.

Exploring Truly Niche & Creative Applications

  1. Procedural Text/Poetry Generator: Read lists of words, phrases, or sentence structures from files, and then use shell commands (e.g., shuf, awk) or internal logic to combine them into unique, procedurally generated text or poetry.

26. Sync Your Memory Across Multiple Devices

Importance: This is a crucial setup for anyone who uses the Gemini CLI on two or more computers (e.g., a desktop and a laptop) and wants a consistent, synchronized memory.

The Problem: By default, the Gemini CLI stores its memory and settings in a GEMINI.md file located in your home directory (~/.gemini/). This file is local to each machine, meaning your memory and instructions will not be the same across your devices.

The Solution (using a Symbolic Link): You can ensure seamless synchronization by moving your GEMINI.md file to a cloud-synced folder (like iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox) and then creating a symbolic link that points from the original location to the new, shared location.

This way, both Gemini instances will read from and write to the exact same file, and your cloud service will handle the synchronization automatically.

Example Commands:

  1. Move the file to your cloud folder:

    # Replace '/path/to/your/cloud/storage/' with the actual path
mv ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md /path/to/your/cloud/storage/GEMINI.md

  2. Create the symbolic link on your first machine:

    ln -s /path/to/your/cloud/storage/GEMINI.md ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md

  3. On your second machine, delete the local file (if it exists) and create the same link:

    rm ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md
ln -s /path/to/your/cloud/storage/GEMINI.md ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md

Now, any instruction you save on one machine will instantly be available on the other.

The Gemini CLI, with its versatile toolset, empowers you to move beyond conventional command-line usage. By combining its file system, shell execution, and web fetching capabilities, you can craft highly specific, automated workflows that cater to your unique needs and interests.

This list will update as I explore more stuff.

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