ask-gemini-skill

README

ask-gemini

A small CLI that asks Google Gemini for a second opinion, with conversation history across calls and support for attaching photos, videos, and audio. Ships with a Claude Code skill that wraps it.

Setup

From a local clone (installs the binary and the Claude skill):

make install

Or just the binary, from anywhere:

go install github.com/akostibas/ask-gemini-skill/cmd/ask-gemini@latest

The binary lands in $(go env GOBIN), falling back to $(go env GOPATH)/bin. make install also copies skill/ to ~/.claude/skills/ask-gemini/; override either with GOBIN=... or SKILL_DIR=.... If you used go install and want the Claude skill too, symlink it:

ln -s "$(pwd)/skill/SKILL.md" ~/.claude/skills/ask-gemini/SKILL.md

Then configure credentials. ask-gemini reads the API key in this order:

1. GEMINI_API_KEY — the key directly.
2. ASK_GEMINI_KEY_COMMAND — a shell command whose stdout is the key.

export GEMINI_API_KEY=AIza...

# or, via a secrets manager:
export ASK_GEMINI_KEY_COMMAND='op item get "Gemini API" --fields password --reveal'
export ASK_GEMINI_KEY_COMMAND='security find-generic-password -s gemini-api -w'

Don't inline the key into ASK_GEMINI_KEY_COMMAND (e.g. 'echo AIza...') — command arguments are visible to other processes via ps. Use GEMINI_API_KEY for that.

Usage

ask-gemini [flags] <prompt>
echo 'prompt' | ask-gemini [flags]
echo 'payload' | ask-gemini [flags] <prompt>

When both a positional prompt and stdin are given, stdin is appended to the prompt, separated by a blank line.

Flags:

• --session <name> — name the conversation; persisted at $TMPDIR/ask-gemini-<name>.json. Reuse the name for follow-up turns.
• --reset — delete the named session and exit.
• --photo <path> — attach an image (repeatable).
• --video <path> — attach a video (repeatable). Waits for File API processing.
• --audio <path> — attach an audio file (repeatable).
• --model <id> — override the model (default gemini-3.5-flash).
• --system <prompt> — system prompt; only applied on the first turn.
• --history — print the current conversation and exit.
• --version — print the binary version and exit.

File API uploads are retained by Google for ~48 hours, so a single --session can keep referencing attachments across turns without re-uploading.

Staying up to date

On a real consult, ask-gemini checks GitHub for a newer release — at most once a day, cached to the system temp dir — and prints a one-line notice to stderr if you're behind. All failures (offline, rate-limited) are silent. To upgrade, run the skill's update.sh, which clones the latest tag into the system temp dir and reinstalls the binary and skill in place:

~/.claude/skills/ask-gemini/update.sh         # preview current → latest
~/.claude/skills/ask-gemini/update.sh --yes    # apply

It needs git, curl, and the Go toolchain. You can also just re-run make install from a fresh clone, or go install ...@latest for the binary alone.

Privacy: the update check is an unauthenticated GitHub API call, which reveals your IP to GitHub. Set ASK_GEMINI_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1 to disable it.

Bugs and feature requests

Open an issue at https://github.com/akostibas/ask-gemini-skill/issues. Include the command you ran, what happened (stdout/stderr/exit code), what you expected, and a minimal repro.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.