Gemini CLI supports several built-in commands to help you manage your session, customize the interface, and control its behavior. These commands are prefixed with a forward slash (`/`), an at symbol (`@`), or an exclamation mark (`!`).
- **Description:** File an issue about Gemini CLI. By default, the issue is filed within the GitHub repository for Gemini CLI. The string you enter after `/bug` will become the headline for the bug being filed. The default `/bug` behavior can be modified using the `advanced.bugCommand` setting in your `.gemini/settings.json` files.
- **Description:** Save and resume conversation history for branching conversation state interactively, or resuming a previous state from a later session.
- **Sub-commands:**
- **`save`**
- **Description:** Saves the current conversation history. You must add a `<tag>` for identifying the conversation state.
- **Note:** These checkpoints are for manually saving and resuming conversation states. For automatic checkpoints created before file modifications, see the [Checkpointing documentation](./checkpointing.md).
- **Description:** Clear the terminal screen, including the visible session history and scrollback within the CLI. The underlying session data (for history recall) might be preserved depending on the exact implementation, but the visual display is cleared.
- **Keyboard shortcut:** Press **Ctrl+L** at any time to perform a clear action.
- **`/compress`**
- **Description:** Replace the entire chat context with a summary. This saves on tokens used for future tasks while retaining a high level summary of what has happened.
- **Description:** Manage workspace directories for multi-directory support.
- **Sub-commands:**
- **`add`**:
- **Description:** Add a directory to the workspace. The path can be absolute or relative to the current working directory. Moreover, the reference from home directory is supported as well.
- **Usage:** `/directory add <path1>,<path2>`
- **Note:** Disabled in restrictive sandbox profiles. If you're using that, use `--include-directories` when starting the session instead.
- **Description:** Display the full, concatenated content of the current hierarchical memory that has been loaded from all `GEMINI.md` files. This lets you inspect the instructional context being provided to the Gemini model.
- **Description:** Reload the hierarchical instructional memory from all `GEMINI.md` files found in the configured locations (global, project/ancestors, and sub-directories). This command updates the model with the latest `GEMINI.md` content.
- **Note:** For more details on how `GEMINI.md` files contribute to hierarchical memory, see the [CLI Configuration documentation](../get-started/configuration.md).
- **Description:** Restores the project files to the state they were in just before a tool was executed. This is particularly useful for undoing file edits made by a tool. If run without a tool call ID, it will list available checkpoints to restore from.
- **Note:** Only available if the CLI is invoked with the `--checkpointing` option or configured via [settings](../get-started/configuration.md). See [Checkpointing documentation](../checkpointing.md) for more details.
- **Description:** Open the settings editor to view and modify Gemini CLI settings.
- **Details:** This command provides a user-friendly interface for changing settings that control the behavior and appearance of Gemini CLI. It is equivalent to manually editing the `.gemini/settings.json` file, but with validation and guidance to prevent errors.
- **Usage:** Simply run `/settings` and the editor will open. You can then browse or search for specific settings, view their current values, and modify them as desired. Changes to some settings are applied immediately, while others require a restart.
- **Description:** Display detailed statistics for the current Gemini CLI session, including token usage, cached token savings (when available), and session duration. Note: Cached token information is only displayed when cached tokens are being used, which occurs with API key authentication but not with OAuth authentication at this time.
- **Description:** Display the Privacy Notice and allow users to select whether they consent to the collection of their data for service improvement purposes.
- **Description:** Toggle vim mode on or off. When vim mode is enabled, the input area supports vim-style navigation and editing commands in both NORMAL and INSERT modes.
- **Features:**
- **NORMAL mode:** Navigate with `h`, `j`, `k`, `l`; jump by words with `w`, `b`, `e`; go to line start/end with `0`, `$`, `^`; go to specific lines with `G` (or `gg` for first line)
- **INSERT mode:** Standard text input with escape to return to NORMAL mode
- **Editing commands:** Delete with `x`, change with `c`, insert with `i`, `a`, `o`, `O`; complex operations like `dd`, `cc`, `dw`, `cw`
- **Description:** To help users easily create a `GEMINI.md` file, this command analyzes the current directory and generates a tailored context file, making it simpler for them to provide project-specific instructions to the Gemini agent.
Custom commands allow you to create personalized shortcuts for your most-used prompts. For detailed instructions on how to create, manage, and use them, please see the dedicated [Custom Commands documentation](./custom-commands.md).
- **Description:** Inject the content of the specified file or files into your current prompt. This is useful for asking questions about specific code, text, or collections of files.
- The command uses the `read_many_files` tool internally. The content is fetched and then inserted into your query before being sent to the Gemini model.
- **Git-aware filtering:** By default, git-ignored files (like `node_modules/`, `dist/`, `.env`, `.git/`) are excluded. This behavior can be changed via the `context.fileFiltering` settings.
- **File types:** The command is intended for text-based files. While it might attempt to read any file, binary files or very large files might be skipped or truncated by the underlying `read_many_files` tool to ensure performance and relevance. The tool indicates if files were skipped.
- **Output:** The CLI will show a tool call message indicating that `read_many_files` was used, along with a message detailing the status and the path(s) that were processed.
- **Description:** If you type a lone `@` symbol without a path, the query is passed as-is to the Gemini model. This might be useful if you are specifically talking _about_ the `@` symbol in your prompt.
- If the path specified after `@` is not found or is invalid, an error message will be displayed, and the query might not be sent to the Gemini model, or it will be sent without the file content.
- If the `read_many_files` tool encounters an error (e.g., permission issues), this will also be reported.
- **Description:** Execute the given `<shell_command>` using `bash` on Linux/macOS or `cmd.exe` on Windows. Any output or errors from the command are displayed in the terminal.
- **Environment Variable:** When a command is executed via `!` or in shell mode, the `GEMINI_CLI=1` environment variable is set in the subprocess's environment. This allows scripts or tools to detect if they are being run from within the Gemini CLI.
