Key highlights for week of 12/1/2025 - v0.20.0

[NTaylorMullen]

Here is Gemini CLI’s November 24th weekly update for v0.20.0

• 🎉 Session Management: Gemini CLI now has rich session management that enables you to view, preview, search or resume conversations through --resume or /resume.
  • Blog: https://developers.googleblog.com/en/pick-up-exactly-where-you-left-off-with-session-management-in-gemini-cli/
• 🎉Permission Controls: You can now control the policy in which Gemini CLI asks for tool call permissions. These can be controlled via policy files which allow you to manage when you’re asked (or not) and how!
  • Documentation: https://geminicli.com/docs/core/policy-engine/
  • Blog: https://allen.hutchison.org/2025/11/26/the-guardrails-of-autonomy/
• 🎉Terraform Gemini CLI Extension: Seamless integration for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) development, including advanced automation and interaction.
  gemini extensions install https://github​.com/hashicorp/terraform-mcp-server
• MCP:
  • Server Instruction Support: Server instructions, optionally provided by an MCP server on initialization, are now included in the system prompt. (pr by @chrstnb)
  • Remote URL Configuration: Simplifies remote MCP server configuration with a single url field, automatic transport detection, and improved OAuth authentication. (pr by @jackwotherspoon)
  • Initialization Visibility: Server status is now shown during CLI initialization to better understand server activation behavior. (pr by @werdnum)
• Informative Persona: Gemini CLI should now explain more of its actions before acting. (pr by @silviojr)
• Advanced Model Configuration: Fully customize specific model behavior by defining custom aliases to control most aspects of Gemini model behavior. (pr by @joshualitt, docs)
• SCP Extension Installation: Users can now install extensions from non-GitHub SCP-styled URLs like git@gitlab.com:owner/repo.git (pr by @m0ps)
• Configurable Shell Timeout: Automatically cancel inactive shell commands that stop producing output after a set duration. Configure with tools.shell.inactivityTimeout in your settings.json (pr by @galz10)
• Logged in User in About: We’ll now display the logged-in user's email in the /about box when authenticated via Google login. (pr by @ptone)
• Small features, Polish, Reliability & Bug Fixes: A large amount of changes, smaller features, UI updates, reliability and bug fixes + general polish made it in this week!