My Ultimate Google Gemini CLI Cheat Sheet: 20 Killer Commands & Workflows!

Step-by-step prompts, shell tricks, and pro tips to automate coding, debugging, and DevOps with Google’s free Gemini CLI.

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Google’s brand-new Gemini CLI pipes the full Gemini 2.5 Pro model straight into your terminal. A quick Google sign-in unlocks roughly 60 requests per minute and 1 000 per day, free. The tool is Apache-2.0 on GitHub, so you can fork or extend it however you like.

Below you’ll find two parts:

• Free Preview – five copy-and-paste workflows you can run right now.

• Paid Subscriber Section – a 20-command deep-dive cheat sheet, ready-made aliases, safety flags, and a downloadable toolkit.

Quick Install (⏱ ≈30 s)

If you need to install NodeJS in Windows, you an use the following:

winget install -e --id OpenJS.NodeJS

After you install NodeJS, you can then install Gemini CLI.

# Node 18 or newer required 
npm install -g @google/gemini-cli 

#Launch the Gemini CLI
gemini

Prefer a one-off run?

npx https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli

Key launch modes

Interactive chat:

gemini

You plan to ask follow-ups, run shell commands (!) or tools.

Single-shot:

gemini --prompt "…" (alias -p)

Free Preview – 5 Instant-Win Workflows

1. Scaffold an app from a PDF

gemini --prompt "Generate a minimal Flask API that satisfies requirements.pdf. Include a Dockerfile and unit tests.

2. Auto-document any repo

gemini --prompt "@. Create a Mermaid diagram of this repo’s modules, classes and external services."

@. injects the whole repo (obeying .geminiignore). Gemini outputs Mermaid text – render it with npx @mermaid-js/mermaid-cli or a VS Code extension.

3. One-liner Conventional Commit

git diff --cached | gemini -p "Generate a Conventional Commits message based on this diff. Output only the message."

4. Shell-mode troubleshooting

gemini # start the REPL > !journalctl -u kubelet -n 500 > Summarise the recurring errors and propose three fixes.

The ! prefix runs a local command and streams the output back so Gemini can analyse it.

5. Release notes + hero image in one go

gemini --prompt "@. Take CHANGELOG.md, craft 280-char release notes, then call Imagen to create a 16:9 banner."

Requires the gen-media MCP server – details in the paid section.

Enjoying the preview?

Unlock the full 20-command power cheat sheet, a 40-line gemini_toolkit.sh, and future updates by becoming a paid subscriber.