Gemini CLI ​

Google's open-source terminal agent ships with a 1 million-token context window, letting you feed entire codebases into a single session. Adding an MCP server is a one-line JSON change — once configured, Gemini CLI treats your remote tools exactly like its 70+ built-in extensions.

Ge
Gemini CLI
TRANSPORT
Streamable HTTP ✓
PLATFORM
Windows · macOS · Linux
MCP VIA
settings.json

1M Context Meets External Tools ​

A million tokens means Gemini CLI can hold roughly 20,000 lines of code in memory at once. When you pair that with MCP-powered tools — like a database introspector or a monitoring dashboard — the agent can reason across your full project and act on real-time data in the same session.

Plan Mode takes this further. Before executing changes, Gemini builds a read-only plan that can query MCP tools for validation. Once you approve, it switches to write mode and carries out the work. This two-phase approach drastically reduces mistakes on large refactors.

Other highlights that interact well with MCP:

  • Research subagents — delegated workers that gather context from MCP before the main agent acts
  • Checkpointing — built-in undo for any action, including MCP tool calls
  • Shell autocompletion — tab-complete MCP tool names in the interactive prompt
  • Apache 2.0 — fully open-source, no vendor lock-in

Configuration ​

1. Copy Your Vinkius URL ​

In Vinkius Cloud, navigate to Connection Tokens and create one. The resulting URL is your MCP endpoint.

2. Add the Server to settings.json ​

Open or create ~/.gemini/settings.json and add the mcpServers block:

json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vinkius": {
      "uri": "https://edge.vinkius.com/{TOKEN}/mcp"
    }
  }
}

3. Launch and Verify ​

bash
gemini

Gemini CLI reads settings.json on startup and probes every MCP server. Your tools will show up in the session alongside built-in extensions — no separate import or plugin install.

Per-project config

Drop a .gemini/settings.json in the project root to add servers only for that repository. The project file merges with the global one.

FAQ ​

Where does Gemini CLI store MCP configuration? Global config lives at ~/.gemini/settings.json. You can also add a .gemini/settings.json per project for repository-scoped servers.

Does Plan Mode support MCP tools? Yes, but in read-only mode. Plan Mode calls MCP tools whose descriptions are marked read-safe, giving you a dry-run preview before any mutations.

Is there a free tier? Gemini CLI is Apache 2.0 open-source. Google offers a free Gemini API tier, though rate limits apply for heavy usage.

How many MCP servers can I add? There is no hard limit. The mcpServers object in settings.json accepts as many entries as you need.