Gemini CLI supports an extensive range of file types through its multimodal capabilities, making it a versatile tool for various development and content creation tasks. The tool can process and understand text-based files including all major programming languages, configuration files, documentation in formats like Markdown, JSON, YAML, XML, and various log files. Beyond traditional code files, Gemini CLI can work with multimodal inputs including images (for analyzing diagrams, sketches, or visual designs), PDFs (for extracting information or understanding documentation), audio files, and video content. This broad file type support enables use cases like generating applications from sketches, extracting requirements from PDF documents, or analyzing visual assets.
The tool’s file handling capabilities extend to both reading and writing various formats. You can reference local files using the @ symbol in the CLI to trigger file selection, allowing you to upload and work with specific files from your system. Gemini CLI can read existing files to understand context, analyze content, and make modifications, while also creating new files in various formats based on your requirements. For example, it can read a PDF specification document and generate corresponding code files, or analyze image files to understand visual designs and create matching web interfaces. The tool can also work with binary files, compressed archives, and various data formats commonly used in development workflows.
What makes Gemini CLI’s file support particularly powerful is its ability to understand relationships between different file types within a project. It can analyze how HTML files relate to CSS stylesheets and JavaScript modules, understand how configuration files affect application behavior, or trace dependencies across multiple file types in complex projects. The tool can also perform batch operations on files, such as converting images to different formats, organizing files based on content or metadata, renaming files according to specific patterns, or extracting and processing data from multiple files simultaneously. This comprehensive file handling capability, combined with the 1 million token context window, allows Gemini CLI to work with entire project directories and understand complex file relationships across large codebases.