Google killed Gemini CLI on June 18, 2026. The open-source terminal agent — built by a community that contributed over 6,000 pull requests — is gone for free, Pro, and Ultra users. In its place: Antigravity CLI, a closed-source Go binary you invoke with agy
. If you were typing gemini
in your terminal last week, it stopped working. Here is what changed and exactly what to do about it.
Migrate in Four Steps #
Skip the backstory for now. If you need to be back up and running, this is the path.
Step 1 — Install:
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash
irm https://antigravity.google/cli/install.ps1 | iex
The binary lands in ~/.local/bin/agy
. If you get “agy not found” on first run, add ~/.local/bin
to your PATH — this is a documented gotcha with its own GitHub issue.
Step 2 — Authenticate: Run agy
and select OAuth on first launch. It opens your browser, you click through a Google consent screen, and you are done. No .env
file with GEMINI_API_KEY
required — OAuth replaces that flow.
Step 3 — Import your config:
agy plugin import gemini
This pulls your MCP server registrations, allowed commands, and custom keybindings from Gemini CLI. Test each plugin after import — they do not all work.
Step 4 — Verify CI/CD separately: If you ran gemini -p
for automation, the equivalent is:
agy -p "Your prompt here"
One critical caveat: direct Google AI Studio API key auth for headless environments appears broken. If your CI pipeline authenticated with a bare API key, this is an active, unfixed problem — track it on the Antigravity CLI issue tracker.
The Quota Problem Is Real #
Gemini CLI gave free and Pro users around 1,000 requests per day. Antigravity CLI runs on a weekly compute-based cap — community reports place the effective limit at roughly 20 requests per day equivalent. That is a 98% reduction.
| Gemini CLI | Antigravity CLI | |
|---|---|---|
| Quota period | Daily | Weekly compute-based |
| Free tier (approx) | ~1,000 req/day | ~20 req/day equivalent |
| Quota shared across | CLI only | Desktop app + CLI + SDK |
That last row is the trap. If you use the Antigravity desktop app in the morning and the CLI in the afternoon, they pull from the same weekly bucket. Run parallel agents across projects and you will hit cooldown walls within hours. One paid Pro user reported hitting “Individual quota reached” after two prompts — the same quota that previously survived 1,000+ code modifications in Gemini CLI.
Feature Gaps Before You Commit #
Google kept the core pieces: Agent Skills, Hooks, Subagents, and Extensions (rebranded as Antigravity Plugins). Multi-file editing and MCP server support are present.
What is missing or broken:
1:1 feature parity— Google said so explicitly at launch. Gaps exist.** Headless API key auth**— broken for CI/CD pipelines that relied on bare API keys** Open-source contributions**— the Antigravity repo is essentially bare compared to the Gemini CLI codebase
Antigravity is genuinely faster — Go versus Python is a real difference in startup time. The multi-agent architecture, with dynamic subagents and background tasks, is a legitimately interesting direction. The execution problem is not the technology. It is the trust.
The Part Worth Being Angry About #
Google accepted 6,000+ merged pull requests from community contributors to Gemini CLI over nearly a year. Then they cited those contributions as evidence of success, restricted the tool to enterprise-only, and replaced it with a closed-source product for everyone else.
The community noticed immediately. GitHub issues filled with frustrated posts accusing Google of using open-source contributions to road-map a proprietary replacement. Enterprise customers keep Gemini CLI access unchanged. Individual developers who built real workflows on it — including CI/CD pipelines — get a closed-source binary with a fraction of the quota and no clear fix for broken authentication.
This is the Google Graveyard pattern, applied to a tool that developers were actively building on. The official announcement frames the transition as an upgrade. The usage reports say otherwise.
If You Are Done With Google’s CLI #
The quota cut and open-source reversal are reasonable grounds to leave. Honest alternatives worth evaluating:
— 178,000 GitHub stars, 75+ AI providers, fully open source, terminal and desktop, local model support. Bring your own API keys.OpenCodeClaude Code— Anthropic’s terminal-native agent, usage-based Anthropic API pricing, integrates with VS Code, Cursor, JetBrains.** Aider**— lightweight, git-first, open source, minimal footprint. Good if you want terminal-first without a platform.** Kiro**— AWS’s spec-driven IDE, announced this month. Early, but a different approach worth watching.
Where This Leaves You #
Light Antigravity CLI use — occasional queries, small tasks — will probably stay within quota limits. The tool is faster than Gemini CLI, and if you are already inside the Google ecosystem the OAuth flow is seamless.
If you relied on Gemini CLI’s 1,000-request daily free tier for real development work, the math no longer adds up. Take this as the push to seriously evaluate the alternatives that have been gaining ground — OpenCode in particular has been pulling Gemini CLI users for months, and the June 18 shutdown accelerated that trend.