Gemini CLI

Google’s Gemini CLI works similarly to Claude Code in spirit – permissions are checked by the agent harness rather than the kernel – with an optional operating-system sandbox layer you can turn on if you want stricter isolation (macOS Seatbelt, or Docker/Podman elsewhere).

Connect to Portuni

Add Portuni to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portuni": {
      "httpUrl": "http://localhost:4011/mcp",
      "timeout": 5000
    }
  }
}

Other useful keys on the same object: headers (for auth), trust (skip per-tool approval prompts), timeout (in milliseconds).

For the full picture, see the Gemini MCP server docs.

Letting Gemini into your mirror folders

Out of the box, Gemini CLI treats the directory you launched it from as its workspace and ignores everything else. Mirror folders living in a separate workspace root need to be included on purpose.

Three ways to do it:

At launch (recommended). Pass --include-directories – up to five, comma-separated:

gemini --include-directories /Users/me/Workspaces/portuni

Scope is the current session only. Bake it into a shell alias if you open Portuni mirrors often.

Mid-session. If you realise later that you need another folder:

/directory add ~/Workspaces/portuni/q2-rebrand
/directory show

Heads up: the slash command is disabled when running under a restrictive sandbox profile. In that case, use --include-directories at launch instead.

Persistent (use with care).

{
  "context": {
    "includeDirectories": ["/Users/me/Workspaces/portuni"],
    "loadMemoryFromIncludeDirectories": true
  }
}

Every Gemini session on the machine now sees the folder. Useful on a dedicated workstation; otherwise the launch flag stays cleaner.

Approval modes

Gemini CLI has a few different personalities when it comes to asking for confirmation:

Mode	How to enable	What it does
`default`	no flag	Asks before every tool call
`auto_edit`	`--approval-mode=auto_edit`	Auto-approves edits; still asks for the rest
`plan`	`--approval-mode=plan`	Read-only planning – no writes execute
`yolo`	`--yolo` or `Ctrl+Y`	Auto-approves everything

--yolo automatically turns the sandbox on, which is a sensible safety net when you’re letting the agent act freely.

The optional sandbox

If you’d like stronger isolation, Gemini can run the agent process inside a sandbox. Turn it on with --sandbox / -s, the GEMINI_SANDBOX=true env var, or tools.sandbox: true in settings.

macOS – uses sandbox-exec with the permissive-open profile: writes outside the project directory are restricted, most other operations are allowed.
Linux / cross-platform – uses a Docker or Podman image called gemini-cli-sandbox, which you can customise via .gemini/sandbox.Dockerfile.

Pair the sandbox with --include-directories so the sandbox image picks up your mirror folders at start-up. Runtime additions through /directory add are blocked under restrictive profiles.

Running more than one Portuni instance

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "portuni": {
      "httpUrl": "http://localhost:4011/mcp"
    },
    "portuni-alt": {
      "httpUrl": "http://localhost:3002/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Gemini CLI doesn’t ship a SessionStart-equivalent hook, so when you start a session, just call a Portuni tool (like portuni_get_context) as your first move to bootstrap context.